In the drug war, drugs are winning

slimvictor

slimvictor

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"Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/drug-241592-mexico-kill.html

When someone next door is coping with trouble, the neighborly thing to do is help. Mexico has a growing problem with extreme violence. And many people in California have a good idea of how to help.

Mexico has been wracked by murders connected to the drug trade. Last year, it suffered more than 6,500 drug-related killings, triple the number in 2007. And 2010 looks worse.

As of mid-March, more than 2,000 people have died in drug-related homicides – which puts Mexico on pace for more than 10,000 such deaths this year. That's more than one every hour.

This is not an epidemic of crazed meth addicts slaughtering people at random. It's the byproduct of a war involving narcotics traffickers, who sometimes kill each other, sometimes kill police and soldiers, sometimes kill journalists who report their crimes and sometimes kill innocent bystanders.

So what can the Golden State offer in the way of assistance? Something potentially valuable. In November, Californians will vote on a ballot initiative that would make it legal not only to use marijuana but to grow and sell it.

You may think this would help only by allowing Mexicans to flee northward and escape their troubles in a stoner fog. But it would do more. Mexico is the biggest supplier of cannabis to the United States. Control of that market is one of the things that Mexican drug cartels are willing to kill for.

Legalizing weed in this country would be their worst nightmare. Why? Because it would offer Americans a legitimate supply of the stuff.

Criminal organizations would no longer be able to demand huge premiums to compensate for the major risks that go with forbidden commerce. If the referendum passes, some 39 million Californians will have access at lower prices, from regulated domestic producers.

So the drug cartels would see a large share of their profits go up in smoke. Those profits are what enables them to establish sophisticated smuggling operations, buy guns and airplanes, recruit foot soldiers and bribe government officials. Those profits are also what makes all those efforts – and the murderous violence the merchants employ – worth the trouble.

By now, it should be clear that using force to wipe out the drug trade is a task on the order of bailing out the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon. Law enforcement can interdict shipments and imprison dealers, but the success is invariably short-lived.
Each seized cargo is an opportunity for another seller to fill the gap. Each arrested trafficker is an invitation for a competitor to grab his business. The more vigorous and successful the law enforcement campaign, the higher the prices drug suppliers can command – and the more people will be enticed to enter the market. It's a self-defeating process.

All this would be academic if Americans (and Mexicans) would simply lose their taste for illicit drugs. But we might as well hope the Sahara Desert will run out of sand.

There has always been a demand for mind-altering substances, and there always will be. That's why, despite all the resources the U.S. government has expended on locking up sellers and their customers, drug use is higher today than it was two decades ago.

Prohibition is no match for the obstinacy and ingenuity of many human beings. Iran has a repressive theocratic regime that imposes severe penalties for using and selling drugs – including death by hanging. Yet it has one of the highest rates of addiction in the world.

President Obama's promise of change is inapplicable in this realm. The Bush administration provided hundreds of millions of dollars to help Mexico fight the drug war. The Obama administration intends to keep sending money, the only real difference being that it will go to the police instead of the military.

On a recent trip to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Americans' demand for drugs helps sustain the Mexican merchants and resolved to address the problem. "We are looking at everything that can work," she said.

Well, almost everything. The most viable option is the one that is considered unthinkable. The head of Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy has said that "legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, nor is it in mine."

No, but failure is.
 
Dopey Conservatives for Dope
Written by Cliff Kincaid

http://www.rightsidenews.com/201003299301/editorial/dopey-conservatives-for-dope.html

The conservative Townhall.com website, owned by the Salem Communications company, a Christian firm, is distributing a column by Steve Chapman claiming that the legalization of marijuana will somehow undermine the power of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations and usher in a new era of peace and tranquility north of the border. The silly column more appropriately belongs on a website associated with George Soros, the moneybags behind the drug legalization movement.

"Mexico is the biggest supplier of cannabis to the United States," he writes. "Control of that market is one of the things that Mexican drug cartels are willing to kill for. Legalizing weed in this country would be their worst nightmare. Why? Because it would offer Americans a legitimate supply of the stuff."

What he fails to realize is the fact that the Mexican drug cartels have already infiltrated the U.S. and are growing the "stuff" in the United States. Hence, legalization could have the effect of making these criminals into "legitimate" businessmen. "Big Marijuana" could join "Big Pharma" as another powerful special interest group. In order to be consistent, "Big Cocaine" and "Big Meth" would have to follow.



"Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] have expanded their cultivation operations into the United States, an ongoing trend for the past decade," notes the recently released National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010. "Well-organized criminal groups and DTOs that produce domestic marijuana do so because of the high profitability of and demand for marijuana in the United States. These groups have realized the benefits of producing large quantities of marijuana in the United States, including having direct access to a large customer base, avoiding the risk of detection and seizure during transportation across the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders, and increasing profits by reducing transportation costs."

The situation has gotten so bad, according to the report, that "Significant quantities of cannabis are cultivated on public lands, particularly by Mexican DTOs and criminal groups, as evidenced by high and increasing eradication figures."

Rather than legalization, the obvious answer is border control, including the building of a fence across the southern border of the U.S., and the eradication of the gangs and their crops in the U.S.



The activist group American Border Patrol has produced a dramatic video documenting how the portions of the fence which have been built have reduced drug smuggling and illegal immigration from Mexico. What is needed, they argue, is more and better fencing.

Chapman's column was apparently prompted by the announcement that a measure to legalize marijuana will be on the California ballot this November. However, his approach is the equivalent of giving amnesty to the "undocumented" and raising the white flag of surrender. It makes illegal activity into something that is suddenly being recognized as lawful. But making it legal doesn't make the harm go away.

But Chapman is not alone. Over at the Fox News Channel, Judge Andrew Napolitano has become a prominent advocate of drug legalization and features interviews with apologists for the drug culture. On his "Freedom Watch" FoxNews.com program, for example, Napolitano has interviewed Paul Armentano, describing this "High Times" magazine contributor and official of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) as an "expert" and allowing him to spew such nonsense as that smoking marijuana, which includes cancer-causing properties, can somehow prevent cancer.

While advocates of legalization claim the measure will produce tax revenue for the state, "the cost to our communities will be significantly greater," notes Scott Chipman, a San Diego businessman. He says a 2009 Rand Corporation analysis states that the tax revenues being projected from legalization will be significantly less than asserted and that the cost to taxpayers of treating the myriad social problems from increased use will actually put a further strain on the state budget.

Carla Lowe, chairman of Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM), predicts that legalization in California will lead to increased use of the drug, resulting in more high school dropouts, gangs, crime and drugged driving cases.

Forest Tennant, M.D., the former mayor of West Covina, says the provision in the legalization measure that would authorize local governments to regulate and tax the drug makes no sense. "In order to protect the public, drugs like cannabis that have potential adverse health effects need to be standardized, packaged, and regulated by the Federal Food and Drug Administration," he says. "The idea that every city and county in California has the ability to safely and competently control aspirin, much less a dangerous drug like cannabis, is an idea that is laughable and must be rejected."

Distribution of so-called "medical marijuana" in California is already out of control, as the case of the Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell demonstrates. Despite a history of mental problems, he got a "medical marijuana" card from a pro-pot doctor and proceeded to travel from California to the Pentagon, where he opened fire and wounded two security guards before being killed in the crossfire. Bedell was a psychotic pothead who thought the drug should be the official currency of the U.S. and believed in the "inside job" theory of 9/11-the idea that U.S. officials deliberately sacrificed nearly 3,000 lives in a scheme to justify war in the Middle East.

On the same day of Bedell's armed assault, however, the Obama Administration's Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), came out in strong opposition to drug legalization in a major speech to the California Chiefs of Police. He said legalization was a "non-starter" because of marijuana's scientifically documented harmful health effects.

He also described some of the serious problems associated with the "medical marijuana" dispensaries in California and said that "science should determine what a medicine is, not a popular vote."

However, his hands in this area have been tied by Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement that federal resources won't be used to close down the "legal" marijuana business. Holder is implementing an Obama campaign promise to leave the marijuana "clinics" alone.

As noted by John Walters, former ONDCP director under President George W. Bush, in a column titled, "Obama Just Says No to Soros," some of the officials running Obama's ONDCP and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are not following the advice of George Soros, the billionaire who funds the drug legalization and "medical marijuana" movements and is a financial backer of Obama and the Democratic Party. But Walters is not optimistic that Obama will personally take a leadership role and try to take back America in the same way that President Alvaro Uribe has all but defeated the drug trafficking terrorists in Colombia. That was a "great drug war victory," Walters notes.

It speaks volumes that the term "war on drugs," like the phrase "war on terrorism," has been abandoned by the Obama Administration because the concept of a war implies a desire for victory.

Anti-drug activists are now looking for Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D., to take a stand for victory, at least in the sense of publicly telling the truth about marijuana. "As America's Doctor," her bio states, "she provides the public with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and the health of the nation."

They want Dr. Benjamin to use the power of her office to inform the American people that there is a close scientific correlation between marijuana use and various mental problems, and that marijuana damages all major organs of the body, including the brain, lungs, reproductive, and immune systems.

Such a stand, however, would make her a public enemy of drug legalization groups like the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and the Marijuana Policy Project.

Accurate information about the extent and nature of the drug problem is necessary because of the propaganda emanating from the likes of "conservative" columnist Steve Chapman, who had preceded his call for legalization of marijuana with a column about the virtues of "medical marijuana."

Over at the Fox News Channel, Andrew "The Judge" Napolitano of the Fox News Channel has not only been promoting legal dope but has become a big booster of radio personality Alex Jones, the 9/11 "inside job" advocate who is now offering a video, "How Weed Won the West," about how marijuana is supposedly a "safe medicine" and should be legalized in California.

In addition to his appearances on the Napolitano program, Jones has emerged as a regular guest on Russia Today television, an official propaganda outlet for the Kremlin, where he defended the Russian invasion of Georgia and claimed that the U.S., NATO and Israel had provoked Moscow.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at [email protected] .
 
Yeah, I don't really buy into this idea that if weed were legalized, the cartels would still make a shit ton of money by legally selling it in the states.

If weed gets legalized that means there's lots more competition. People could grow the shit themselves. They could go down to their local dispensary and buy a plethora of different high-grade strains for ridiculously good prices.

How does a bunch of shady illegals tap into that market to the extent they have with weed being illegal? Here in Texas there is Cartel weed all over the state. Except it's all low grade brick weed. In some places, it's the only weed you can get. That monopoly goes flying out the window if weed becomes legal. The cartels would be fighting Joe Blow American for profits while the cost of producing the weed would skyrocket.

Oh, and this idea that weed makes you crazy and damages all of your bodily organs is even more laughable than the whole "ecstasy burns holes in your brain!" tripe.
 
^ I agree. He is missing the key word from his vocabulary that would free up police time for violent crime, empty the jails, free up the courts, take money away from gangs, and free exploration of consciousness. Just because he wants to maintain control that the war on drugs gives him. What a little shit. Obama, too.
 
What he fails to realize is the fact that the Mexican drug cartels have already infiltrated the U.S. and are growing the "stuff" in the United States. Hence, legalization could have the effect of making these criminals into "legitimate" businessmen. "Big Marijuana" could join "Big Pharma" as another powerful special interest group. In order to be consistent, "Big Cocaine" and "Big Meth" would have to follow.

His presumption that the author, or anyone else for that matter, isn't aware that the cartels are growing in the united states is baseless. And Drug cartels/the money drugs generate already are a powerful special interest group.

It might open up a new venue for cartels to make money more openly. It would most certainly diminish their profits/market share. There is also the presumption that they aren't already involved in legitimate business. It's a fact of matter, cartels like the zetas are buying up ligit businesses, the mafia operates legitimate/semi legitimate business'. Also a fact of the matter is that despite this, their illegal business is far more lucrative then ANY legitimate business holdings they might own.

Problem with a completely legitimate business like the situation you would ideally have if marijuana were legalized in california is that it would be regulated. Once a corporation begins openly distributing something, they become subject to legislation. Now obviously it isn't much of a strech to assume a criminal organization will not further commit crimes to make regulation more difficult, there really isn't a scenario where by a cartel monopalizes an industry, and manages to A. remove competition B. funnel money back to mexico C. do these things discretely. They would be subceptible to law suits. Once they have to play by the states rules it would be more and more difficult for them to operate as the author suggested, untill like the mafia's dominance in las vegas casinos there influence close to died out. Granted there's alot more to regulate in the proposed situation then in the Las Vegas casino industry, I still don't see any reason why the situations wouldn't parallel each other.

The reason these cartels are making the money their making is suply and demand. Drugs aren't as easily obtainable(though they certainly aren't that difficult either) as a pack of cigarettes, and there is a considerable risk inherent to both customer and merchent. They have the distribution network set up. Others could set up a distribution network, and others have although they haven't been as succesfull at building and maintaining said system. It's not that they're better than their competition from the customers perspective. Doese the author honestly think they could go toe to toe with phillip morris? He might, he appears to be one of America's "morally minded", maybe he thinks the earth is 6000 years old too...

Once you prove say that a legitimate organization has direct ties to drug cartels, what is to stop someone affected by drug war violence from taking legitimate corporation to court demonstrating evidence of connection, and demonstrating that corporation is liable. In that case, the wack a mole of take one dealer down 4 take his place isn't aplicable. It may be when the profits are that high, and they don't know where to find you. But when they do it becomes alot more difficult. Best case scenario for the cartels is they operate in the shadows, with a greatly reduced market share.

Rather than legalization, the obvious answer is border control, including the building of a fence across the southern border of the U.S., and the eradication of the gangs and their crops in the U.S.

Not the obvious answer in any sense of the phrase. I can see how secure borders would seem to take care of the problem in mexico, kind of not really. It doesn't however take care of the demand side. It doesn't take care of the supply side either, what about Canada, what about the fact that it's a plant anyone can grow? I mean I guess he's assuming that the demand is a result of the supply? It's not. If you get rid of the simple drug is grown in mexico, drug is moved over border, drug is distributed across U.S. you might not like the results. I don't know about pot, but hard drugs would make the move towards even more synthetic sources. There are synthetic alternatives to heroin and cocaine, and the only people that would be able to develope and distribute them don't because it is against their interests and if it isn't broken don't fix it. Break it, and it's likely that's how they'll fix it. It would most likely greatly diminish the amount of drugs law enforcement intercept, it might greatly diminish costs for users, and it would certainly be counter productive. In regards to eradicating large gangs, yea because you have clear history of doing that. Name me one gang the size of the cartels you've sucessfully "eradicated"? We'll we took down Capone! And then Paul Ricca suplanted one of the dumbest bosses with one of the smartest, which lead to Tony Accardo who I don't think ever spent a day in jail. Didn't get rid of the crips. You might want to start there before you go after the cartels.


Chapman's column was apparently prompted by the announcement that a measure to legalize marijuana will be on the California ballot this November. However, his approach is the equivalent of giving amnesty to the "undocumented" and raising the white flag of surrender. It makes illegal activity into something that is suddenly being recognized as lawful. But making it legal doesn't make the harm go away.

The comparison by analogy to amnesty is A. an irrelavent red herring B. rabble rousing. It's basically saying if you don't approve of this then you shouldn't approve of that! Then there's the whole surrendor white flag thing, as if we're in a war we still have a chance of winning, with some sworn enemy. Which ties into his next statement, which is some what backwards. It makes illegal what is according to laws of rationality not. It get's to the heart of the paradox of the drug war, you can get rid of a source, but the demand will always remain. The war is at the end of the day on us, and that is stupid.

While advocates of legalization claim the measure will produce tax revenue for the state, "the cost to our communities will be significantly greater," notes Scott Chipman, a San Diego businessman. He says a 2009 Rand Corporation analysis states that the tax revenues being projected from legalization will be significantly less than asserted and that the cost to taxpayers of treating the myriad social problems from increased use will actually put a further strain on the state budget.

Ewww THE SCOTT CHIPMAN? From San Diego Designs? Frequent republican campaign contributor, including to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign? Well if Scott says so it must be true, after all he's a business man... Also the credibility of the RAND corporation is pretty questionable. Yea because look at alchohol, we don't make any tax money on alchohol, and it's got a myriad and a half of resulting social problems.

Carla Lowe, chairman of Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM), predicts that legalization in California will lead to increased use of the drug, resulting in more high school dropouts, gangs, crime and drugged driving cases.

The chairwoman of an organization call Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (or CALM, hehe;)) predicts that drug legalization will be bad? SHOCKING!

Distribution of so-called "medical marijuana" in California is already out of control, as the case of the Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell demonstrates. Despite a history of mental problems, he got a "medical marijuana" card from a pro-pot doctor and proceeded to travel from California to the Pentagon, where he opened fire and wounded two security guards before being killed in the crossfire. Bedell was a psychotic pothead who thought the drug should be the official currency of the U.S. and believed in the "inside job" theory of 9/11-the idea that U.S. officials deliberately sacrificed nearly 3,000 lives in a scheme to justify war in the Middle East.

Correlation doese not indicate causation. I'll extract the logic. Distribution of Catcher in the Rye is already out of control as demonstrated by the case of that guy who killed john lennon, who was totally nuts, and said he was inspired by the book. Distribution of Islam is already out of control as evident in the case of the 911 Hijackers, all of whom proffessed to be muslim... FAIL.

He also described some of the serious problems associated with the "medical marijuana" dispensaries in California and said that "science should determine what a medicine is, not a popular vote."

Science should, and has for the most part. It is scientifically sound that Marijuana has medicinal properties. Science should also dictate how the drug problem is addressed, not some tool from the white house national organization on drug policy. People should be able to vote on what laws they collectively choose to obey.

Anti-drug activists are now looking for Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D., to take a stand for victory, at least in the sense of publicly telling the truth about marijuana. "As America's Doctor," her bio states, "she provides the public with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and the health of the nation."

They want Dr. Benjamin to use the power of her office to inform the American people that there is a close scientific correlation between marijuana use and various mental problems, and that marijuana damages all major organs of the body, including the brain, lungs, reproductive, and immune systems.

I don't know anything about Dr Benjamin, she may very well make some kind of statement alluding to marijuana's harmfull effects. Lots of other things have side effects, it doesn't mean we relegate them to criminal status. She would be perjering herself though if she were to state that marijuana damages all major organs.

In addition to his appearances on the Napolitano program, Jones has emerged as a regular guest on Russia Today television, an official propaganda outlet for the Kremlin, where he defended the Russian invasion of Georgia and claimed that the U.S., NATO and Israel had provoked Moscow.

In conclusion the author is a communist working for the pinkos over at the kremlin to undermine our american family values!8)
 
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