Legalizing Drugs Won't Stop Mexico's Brutal Cartels

[not special]

Legalizing Drugs Won't Stop Mexico's Brutal Cartels
FOREIGN POLICY
ELIZABETH DICKINSON
JUNE 22, 2011

MEXICO CITY — When the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) releases its annual status report on the narcotics trade later this month, it will almost certainly show a decrease in the volume of cocaine traveling through Mexico into the United States. Last year's report did too -- a 40 percent drop in seizures between 2006 and 2008. Worldwide, the cocaine market today is worth about half as much as it was just 15 years ago -- $88 billion compared with $165 billion in 1995.

This would be excellent news -- if it weren't for some alarming trends going in the other direction. As the cocaine trade through Mexico has fallen dramatically, the violence here has risen remarkably. Whereas 2006 saw just over 2,000 deaths attributed to drug violence, in 2010 there were an estimated 11,000 such killings, according to data from Stratfor and local press accounts. Ciudad Juárez, a border city of approximately 2 million at the center of the ongoing violence, has seen a particularly sharp spike. In 2001, there were just 16 murders for every 100,000 Ciudad Juárez residents. In 2010, that number reached 93 -- an increase of nearly sixfold -- according to the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/22/legalizing_drugs_wont_stop_mexicos_brutal_cartels

 

[slimvictor]

I noticed in the first paragraph how the writer equates fewer cocaine seizures with cocaine decrease - as if a consistent proportion of cocaine were always caught. What if luck played a role, allowing the government to catch 50% of all cocaine moved in one year, and 25% in another year?

She does get this right: "the war on drugs may be taking its toll on the narcotics trade, but it hasn't done anything to end the violence"

But her bigger argument, that

The cartels are now active in all types of illicit markets, not just drugs

, and therefore legalizing drugs would not stop the violence, is just wrong.
Legalizing drugs would (as she admits) take money, and therefore power, away from the cartels, even if they are territorial.

She argues that [/quote](Legalizing drugs) would almost certainly hurt the cartels, but it probably wouldn't be enough[/quote]

Well, should we therefore abandon the plan?

Her alternative that she offers is this:

Among the most popular alternative ideas floating around Mexican civil society is that of creating "citizen security" -- empowering local communities to resist organized crime. That means not only improving policing but also reintroducing the state in other ways, through education, economic opportunity, and a judicial system that investigates and punishes crime

I love this! I would support it for the most part, especially the last part.
But, please, does she really think that "improved policing" - which translates to more money to police departments - is part of the solution, but legalizing drugs is not?

Legalizing drugs is necessary to drain away the cartels' power.
It needs to be part of a larger solution that involves "education, economic opportunity, and a judicial system that investigates and punishes crime".

 

[slimvictor]

The first commenter would agree with what I posted above:

Not a zero sum game

Of course legalizing pot and cocaine, even opium wouldn't kill the cartels outright, but it would cut off their single biggest cash supply. Like the Italian mafia after prohibition, they will continue to exist but they will simply not be nearly as lucrative as before. Sure, they will go into other trades, but the reason that they are in the drug trade now is because costs are low and profits are huge.

Community policing would, as the article suggests, help too, but the problem is also economic. More opportunities for the poor and working classes must exist in Mexico-this would not only lure them away from the drug trade, but make the American working class happy by reducing the incentive to immigrate. And these opportunities cannot be low-wage mass assembly plants for the US market, they need to be good jobs.

Either way, the locals have never been empowered in Mexico, and this has been one of the long struggles of Mexican history-trying to empower the campesinos and weaken the latifundistas and militarists. This was what drove peasants to join Zapata's armies, support Cardenas and push for the Ejido program, but their interests have been ignored for decades now and their supporters have been marginalized as dangerous.

 

[Lady Codone]

Considering that Americans spend more on illegal drugs than most (or all?) other countries, legalization in Mexico is likely to do little good. Example: Most of our meth comes from Mexico, not car trunk meth labs you hear about in the news. If the U.S. were to legalize drugs, cartels would have to find other countries to sell to, and even then they would be taking a hit to their bottom line.

Insatiable demand for drugs + endless wealth + draconian drug laws = the perfect market.

 

[slimvictor]

Another interesting comment:

I have not heard many people in Mexico advocating the idea of "creating "citizen security" -- empowering local communities to resist organized crime." On the contrary, I have heard the civil society requesting accountability from the president for not being able to provide security to its citizens, when it is his and his government responsibility to do so, not that of the citizens.

Furthermore, implementing any kind of "citizen security" is a very dangerous proposal. We do not have to look any further than Colombia, where the "paramilitares" are probably a bigger headache nowadays than the FARC or the drug traffickers themselves. Unfortunately, this type of "private force" has started to sprung, mainly among entrepreneurs in the North of the country, in an attempt to protect their companies an assets, task at which the Mexican government continues to demonstrate is incapable of fulfilling.

 

[slimvictor]

Insatiable demand for drugs + endless wealth + draconian drug laws = the perfect market.

QFT
Thanks for this perfect quote!

 

[Solide]

Oh my god .. Of all the stupid ideas people come up with just so they don't have to admit the drug war isn't working, this one has to be one of the most rooted in bullheaded stubbornness

creating "citizen security" -- empowering local communities to resist organized crime

Now feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, but to me that means implying the Mexican government isn't up to the task of battling the cartels so the citizens have to take matters into their own hands. She wants to start an actual civil war?

"Sorry people of Mexico for giving rise to those pesky drug-cartels that murder everyone. What was that, legalise drugs to make them go away? Ofcourse not silly Mexican, we're not going to try and decrease their income or power. Here's a better idea to protect your families: more guns and war ! (Available from your nearest Arizona gunshop right over the border)

But would legalization really work? With each day that passes, it looks like it wouldn't be enough, for one overarching reason: The cartels are becoming less like traffickers and more like mafias.

The longer we wait the less effective it will be and if we wait long enough it would only hurt them rather them cripple them. That's the argument? What is this, I don't even ?

Fuck you lady.

[/angryrant]