Colombia still has drug cartels. They are still the world's biggest supplier of cocaine. All they have done is allowed the Mexicans to handle most of the distribution, especially within the U.S., and the they just focus on production. They have people growing coca in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. They're producing as much as ever. They just stay out of the limelight. Cocaine is as available as ever and over the years on the streets in this country it has gotten cheaper and more pure. The violence just moved to Mexico for the most part, and that wouldn't have happened if the Colombian cartels hadn't figured out that they could still get rich producing and selling cocaine in bulk wholesale while letting the Mexicans fight over distribution and take all the heat invloved.
This won't such an as easy task with Mexico. They have distribution locked up. They had well established distribution networks for marijuana and were already involved with distributing drugs like cocaine and heroin when the Colombians allowed them to take over cocaine distribution. I suppose a lot of the cocaine distribution could move somewhere else but I'm not sure where. The Mexicans are uniquely situated to get drugs produced south of our border into the U.S. and distribute them here. Most likely they'll keep their position as the ones who control most wholesale illegal drug distribution in this country. If our government and the Mexican government can work together to go in and put the hurt on some of these folks in the cartels down there, we probably will see a drop in the violence. All this craziness down there now is bad for business and bringing them all the wrong kind of attention. If we put enough pressure on them the cartels and gangs will probably figure out that they need to knock it off and we will see a reduction in violence. But it won't last. The drugs are going to keep flowing as long as there is demand and big money to be made supplying that demand. Competing organized crime groups are going to be involved to make all the billions to be made. They're going to fight with one another over money and turf. They're going to bribe folks in the government and sometimes things will get out of hand enough that they'll start terrorizing and killing government officials who do not cooperate. That's just the nature of the business.
We're not going to stop this or even really put much of a dent in it until we take the money or a substantial part of it out of the drug business. If we allowed our government to make this country a hardcore totalitarian police state like Chairman Mao's China we probably would see a substantial reduction in demand for illegal drugs and a corresponding decrease in the size of the black market for drugs and its attendant problems. But most of us wouldn't want to live in a country that resembles Chairman Mao's China.
We can keep ratcheting up the drug war a little more here and there and see negligible benefits at great cost, or we can try something entirely different. I say we try something entirely different. I say we legalize and regulate the production and sales of marijuana, which would deprive these organized crime groups in Mexico and here that derive most of their money from illegal drug sales of most of their income. If we deprive them of most of their income they'll be smaller, less powerful, less of a threat, and much easier to contain. And taking the marijuana industry from them would deprive them of most of their income. The Mexican government has known for a long time that marijuana is the cash cow for these organizations and our government has finally admitted that this is the case as well. The ONDCP estimates that Mexican cartels gross about $13.8 billion a year from drug sales to Americans, with about $8.6 billion of that coming from marijuana alone. They only gross about $3.9 billion from cocaine, the second most popular drug, and they are only the middlemen for cocaine. According to the USDOJ’s National Drug Threat assessment Mexicans produced about 15,500 of marijuana in Mexico in 2007 with most of it coming here. Our government estimates that the total amount of marijuana on the market here in a year is between 12,000 and 25,000 metric tons so most of what is consumed here is probably coming from Mexico and the profits are funding these organizations that are causing all these problems we are seeing today.
“Mexicans produced about 15,500 of marijuana...”
That should have said “about 15,500 metric tons of marijuana...”
I think potheads are stupid.
Having said that, I have reluctantly come to the same conclusion as you. Marijuana should be legalized and taxed.
Users of other drugs should go to tent-jails, like those in Arizona.
I'd like to see a good part of the snooty drug-using movie-makers sweat it out in the desert for a few months.