Drug violence reaches into U.S.; time to act

Responding to fears of escalating violence in Mexico that could spill over the border into Texas and other states, the U.S. government has stepped up law enforcement.

Border Patrol and Drug Enforcement Administration agents were sent to shore up local law enforcement, and to their credit the violence has not spread to those communities and regions. In fact, El Paso — just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, which ranks as one of the most dangerous places in the world — is ranked as one of the safest cities in the United States.

Unfortunately, the stepped-up enforcement in border cities hasn’t kept Mexican drug-cartel violence from the United States. It simply moved it.

Today, cities far afield from the southern border face increasing violence from the cartels. As far north as Sioux Falls, S.D., and Anchorage, Alaska; east to Atlanta; west to you name it, the drug cartels have taken up residence. The Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center says that 230 U.S. cities are home to drug cartel activity.

The United States has not yet seen the beheadings and police executions that are commonplace in many Mexican cities, but the violence is escalating.

Phoenix experienced more than 300 kidnappings last year resulting from cartel drug activity. Five men in Birmingham, Ala., were found with their throats slit after obvious torture by electric shock. The incident list goes on and on.

Mexican authorities have stepped up their interdiction efforts, as have U.S. agencies, but it hasn’t been enough. In fact, the U.S. Joint Forces Command issued a report in recent days that places Mexico on the same level as Pakistan in terms of the risk of potential collapse of the government.

Investigative agencies have determined that the Mexican cartels, at war with each other as well as law enforcement, have ties to Italian organized crime.

All this is fed, of course, by the demand for drugs in this country. At stake for the cartels is $28.5 billion in drug sales in this country.

With that much money at stake, and with nothing to lose back home, the cartels are likely to do anything to hold onto their turf. The cartels have now armed themselves with everything from automatic weapons to rocket launchers.

The answer, of course, is multifaceted. Demand for drugs must be reduced. Law enforcement resources including people and equipment must be augmented. And international cooperation must be continued and improved.

Yet the alternative — all-out warfare in the streets of the nation’s cities — is not something that can be permitted to occur.

“For example, the Netherlands, has HALF the rate of drug use that the USA.”

As much as I agree that the drug war causes us problems and we should legalize marijuana, I can't keep watching you post this and not say anything. You've said that drugs are basically legal in the Netherlands, they are not. Aside from alcohol and tobacco and caffeine, the only non-medicinal drug they allow is marijuana. They aren't nearly as punitive as we are on other drugs, but they don't allow retail sales and they don't allow possession of drugs that are illegal here except in the case of marijuana. And drug use didn't drop in the Netherlands when they started allowing marijuana. It actually went up, considerably. Now, marijuana use was low there and throughout Europe at the time. It hadn't taken off like it did here yet. In the seventies and eighties it went up in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. The increase in use was no more pronounced in the Netherlands than it was in other European countries where it was still criminalized. So, allowing possession and sales probably had little or nothing to do with the rise in use. And even though they allow retail sale of marijuana and allow people to grow a few plants, per capita use is still much lower there than here, no matter which study you look at. Only about half as many of the Dutch have even tried marijuana compared to Americans. You are absolutely right about that, but the Dutch policy of allowing sales and possession of marijuana did not make use go down.

Sure, but look at historical numbers for the Netherlands and you will see that marijuana use went up dramatically, something like 250%, in the years following their law and policy changes that allowed for the coffeeshop system. Use was already on the way up there, as it was throughout much of western Europe. And today their use rates are middle of the road for western Europe and a good bit lower than ours. I don't think the marijuana laws matter that much. If people are going to do it, they're going to do it. If some western nation where the people and the culture aren't that different from ours that for some reason had no marijuana smokers were to legalize marijuana and sell it from shops, use would go up significantly, but the per capita use rate would probably level off somewhere around our level or that in western Europe. Marijuana has limited appeal and I don't think the laws do much to stop people who want to smoke it from smoking it, especially if use is already pretty high and it is already relatively cheap and easy to find anywhere like it is here.

I do not dispute that the percentage of people who smoke or even try marijuana is lower in the Netherlands than it is here. You are absolutely right about that. What I disagree with is your assertion that legalization lowers use. You keep saying that, and you've even said that that has been the case in every country that has tried it, which is patently false. I'm surprised no one has called you on this already. Maybe they just don't want to mess with doing a lot of research and providing you links, and I don't really want to do that either because I don't have the time and I agree with you on much of what you say. I just wish you'd look this up amend your arguments to reflect reality. Legalization does not cause demand or the number of users to drop.

I disagree with you on legalizing all drugs but I am 100% for legalizing marijuana. I think it's already cheap and so easily available in this country that it would be hard for us to make it much more available with legalization. I think the result would be different for drugs that are expensive and harder to find. Heroin, for instance, is practically nonexistent in my area. I'm an attorney and I've handled countless drug cases, hundreds of pounds worth of cocaine and meth cases, thousands of pounds worth of marijuana cases. Most of the weight involved has been in drug mule cases I've handled, but I've handled a lot more simple possession and delivery or manufacturing cases that involved much smaller weights. The only heroin case I've ever had involved one kilo that was being transported on the interstate highway. These guys wouldn't even have stopped in my area had they not been pulled over. I've never had a heroin possession or or delivery case. Most lawyers in my area have never had any heroin cases and most police officers have never made any sort of heroin arrest. It's just really not here. We don't have a heroin problem, and there are a lot of places in this country that are similarly situated. If we were to legalize it and sell it cheaply from a local shop most people would be smart enough to leave it alone, but some would mess with it and before long we'd have a small contingent of heroin addicts causing us lots of problems. We don't need that.

Drugs like meth and cocaine are much more available in my area, but not nearly as easily available as they would be if they were legal. Compared to the number of marijuana smokers in my area, there aren't that many people who use these drugs. Consequently there are far fewer people who sell them and far fewer users you could ask to help you find them. And with these drugs the people who do use and/or sell them are often trouble and it would be hard to mess with these substances and not have to deal with people who are trouble. This is something that makes these drugs less easily available. If you can go down to a nice clean shop and buy a drug it is easily available. If you have to deal with people who are trouble to get it it is not as easily available.

Aside from not always being so easy to find and the fact that you are likely to have to deal with people who are trouble to get them, these drugs are pretty expensive on a per use basis. That also makes them not so easily available. It's harder to come up with the money to buy them. Users of these drugs are less likely to break them out and share them with people than they would be their cheapo Mexican pot. A few hits off a joint costs pennies. A few lines of cocaine costs some pretty serious money for most people. Along with these other things we've talked about, the high cost of these drugs makes them not nearly as easily available as a legal product like beer, or even an illegal product like marijuana that is relatively cheap on a per use basis and is used by so many people that it's dead easy to find and easy to get without dealing with scary people or shifty untrustworthy drug addicts. Americans consume more marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined. It's everywhere. More than a 100 million Americans have already tried it. More than half of all adults under 60 have already smoked it.

I don't think that the argument that legalizing marijuana would make less people use it holds any water. But, we're not going to make it much more easily available. It's already cheaper than beer on a per use basis for the most part. The chance that a pot smoker will get caught is very slim, especially if he's moderately careful and doesn't do stupid things likely to garner unwanted attention from the police, and if he does get caught the punishment will likely amount to a slap on the wrist. I don't think we are stopping many people from smoking it with out laws. I don't think use would go up much if we legalized it, but it probably would go up some. It may very well go down later though. Look at cigarettes, a legal product. Use has dropped precipitously over the years to the point that according to the statistics high school kids are only slightly more likely to try cigarettes than they are to try marijuana. But I don't think there is any evidence to back up the assertion that just legalizing marijuana, or any other drug would make use drop.

If we legalized marijuana use probably would go up some at first. If we legalized drugs like meth, cocaine, and heroin, the percentage of users of these substances is likely to go up more because they are expensive on a per use basis and not so easily available and that would change if we legalized them. Most people wouldn't mess with them. But so few do today that it wouldn't take that many more users to double or triple or quadruple the number of addicts over time. And people addicted to these drugs do cause us real problems and that would change that much if these drugs were legal. They'd still be causing us lots of problems and we'd have a lot more of them. Marijuana smokers don't cause us that many problems to begin with, even those who smoke it all the time, but hardcore drug addicts are a different matter entirely.

How did Mao eradicate Opium use in the PRC?
Colonial India had huge use of opium I hear...do the Indians consume as much today or are they busy being gainfully employed?

Would you “waterboard” drug (narco-terrorist) traffickers?

What is a suitable punishment for “narco-terrorists?
Columbia was/is practically “destroyed” by them. Who was/is the largest customer for their drugs?

Would you all not agree that to be “drug free” is Patriotic?

Eradication of drug trafficking and sales...how the hell do you do THAT?

I drive into most towns and see signs prominently displayed, that warn, “WE ARREST DRUNK DRIVERS” and “CLICK IT! OR TICKET!”

Must of missed the ones that warn “Get caught in our County selling or doing drugs...MINIMUM OF 10 YEARS HARD TIME”

If you do drugs you are un-Patriotic and deserve no mercy from us. You support those that want our demise.

How about some educational signs like: “Drug use supports Terrorism: be a Patriot don’t use any!”
“English only in this County - No habla espanol”

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