Posted on 03/25/2009 7:11:39 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An "insatiable" appetite in the United States for illegal drugs is to blame for much of the violence ripping through Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
Clinton acknowledged the U.S. role in Mexico's vicious drug war as she arrived in Mexico for a two-day visit where she discussed U.S. plans to ramp up security on the border with President Felipe Calderon.
A surge in drug gang killings to 6,300 last year and fears the violence could seep over the border has put Mexico's drug war high on President Barack Obama's agenda, after years of Mexico feeling that Washington was neglecting a joint problem.
"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians," Clinton told reporters during her flight to Mexico City.
"I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Drugs flow unimpeded in Mexico where they are defacto legalized
Mexico is full of crime
Legalizing drugs here will be the same
Criminals will move into other areas
Those gang bangers smoking legalized pot and shooting legalized meth look at you and say you look good to assault and rob. And being high on drugs makes them more eager to go after you and your family
"Defacto legalized" is gibberish. It just means that the criminals have bought off or killed law enforcement.
The drugs are still illegal. Being prepared for shipment into the US where they are still illegal and worth billions.
The fact of the matter is that the ONLY reason these illegal drugs are worth billions is because they are illegal drugs.
If they were legal, they'd be worth as much per pound as aspirin or foot powder.
“Got to get some for my brother; he’s got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.”
- Roger Clinton, accused drug trafficker
Clean up your stash at home before lecturing us, Hillary.
“Got to get some [cocaine] for my brother; he’s got a nose like a vacuum cleaner.”
- Roger Clinton, accused drug trafficker
Clean up your stash at home before lecturing us, Hillary.
Wow—— I doubt small users/sellers of coke meth or marijuana are prosecuted in Mexico. The place is a lawless heap. Post with evidence to the contrary if you can
I, as a patriotic American, have vowed only to smoke domestic mary jane. None of that low-end barrio trash for me!
Spot on!
I have no idea what your post even means, or what connection it has to what I posted.
I' ll bite.
First as an conservative I would have been against Prohibition as an states rights proponent.
2)Alcohol, unlike cocaine was/is and will be a part of America's(and Western Europe) cultural legacy and is firmly ingrained in our society. America would not have come into existence if it were not for the rum trade. It would be as if Peru, who has a history of chewing coca leaves, outlawed the usage of it's historical and cultural medicinal plant(not cocaine).
.
3)Alcohol can be made by the simplest of methods. All is needed is yeast, a source of sugar and time to ferment. It is made in even the most restrictive, monitored locations anywhere, our nation's prisons. Even the most uneducated of our nation's people, Appalachians could and did distill high grain alcohol(moonshine) and sent it into our largest cities. Prohibition could never be fought realistically because of these facts.
4)The Cocaine trade can be restricted effectively. There is no cocaine equivalent to bathtub gin. Cocaine must be grown in tropical regions, has to be processed using large amounts of dangerous chemicals and has to be smuggled into this country at tremendous risks and costs.
5)Alcohol and cocaine are entirely different birds. It takes years of usage to became addicted to alcohol. Not so cocaine. Cocaine usage is very addictive, in the end stage makes users paranoid, and causes tremendous costs to the user, their families and society at large.
As an states rights supporter, if any state was willing to legalize coke, as an experiment, I would not be against that. Though I believe it would be very destructive.
That's only a temporary problem though. Pretty soon the winners emerge and there isn't enough money to continue funding big gang wars. You gave the example that marijuana and cocaine would be legal, but meth and so on not legal. According to our government, and the Mexicans, marijuana and cocaine account for about 90% of the cartels’ income from drugs. Over 60% comes from marijuana and approaching 30% from cocaine.
It's true there would probably be fighting over the remaining 10% of the illegal drug trade, but with most of the income and profit potential gone, these organizations would have to shrink. They'd fight over what's left but there wouldn't be enough left to support the massive organizations we see today with all their hired guns. These organizations will shrink when the money coming in shrinks.
Cocaine won't be legalized though. Pot will be legalized someday, but not in the next few years. There isn't quite enough support from voters to legalize it yet and our law making bodies are still controlled by old geezers who'll never go for legalizing it. There will never be enough support to legalize drugs like cocaine and meth.
I wish the argument about legalization would stop. It’s a waste of time. People will cut down use when the supply is stopped....NO ONE is going to stop use, so forget it. If they decide to legalize drugs, which they won’t, it won’t be because of how any of us feel about it. It’s gotten so we can’t talk about the mess coming from mexico without the entire thread turning to calling each other druggies. We could stop most immigration if we cut off welfare too, but that’s not going to happen either. The ‘libertarian’ model only works from the ground up and it’s too late.
It’s irrelevant at this point. We can’t even get the government to build a law mandated fence that they voted for. How do you suppose we’d get them to vote to legalize drugs or cut off welfare for aliens?
Well, I flattered. You joined today and picked my post to respond to first.
Yea, it could be temporary. The American Revolution, WW I and WW II were temporary as well, if you get my drift.
I am just saying that you can't just "legalize drugs" and expect to resolve the situation. As with many other things, a secondary problem appears. What will become of the cop industry here in the U.S.? And the revenue form confiscation, prison jobs supported by "government" money, fines and fees for probationers and parolees, jobs for all those supervising them, etc, etc.
I don't see much in the way of legalization occurring.
Which means the drug wars will continue and now the current communist administration and it's supporting party the "democrats" are chanting the lie of "American guns are the problem."
Take a WAG where that is going to go. All in the name of “War On Drugs.”
Support for legalizing marijuana is growing though and while more are against it than are for it, the gap is small now and is steadily closing. If the trend on public attitudes on legalization and regulation of marijuana continues, within a few years we'll see more for it than against it. That's already the case in some parts of the country and we are seeing state lawmakers take notice of this and introduce more “marijuana friendly” legislation. In the coming years we should expect to see more states decriminalize marijuana and more legalize medical marijuana.
Eventually, not in the next five years but some time in the next ten or twenty years, I fully expect to see federal laws change and see marijuana legalized in most states and regulated similar to the way we regulate alcohol. That won't happen though until the majority of voters are for it and most of our senior lawmakers are replaced by younger politicians who are a lot more likely to have smoked marijuana themselves.
In general younger politicians are much less likely to be as strongly opposed to legalization than our current senior lawmakers who are mostly people who came of age before marijuana use became popular. A lot of the younger guys especially are probably for legalization but they are afraid to make a stand on it. The most powerful lawmakers tend to be older though. The average age of committee leaders in Congress and the Senate, for instance, is in the late sixties, with quite a few of these guys being people born in the 1930’s or even earlier. The old geezer lawmakers have the most power but they are slowly but surely going to be replaced by politicians who came after them who just on average tend to be more open to marijuana legalization. Eventually we'll see support for marijuana legalization by the majority of voters and serious discussion about doing it in our federal legislative bodies by politicians who are no longer afraid to bring up this political hot potato. It will probably take several years to happen, but my bet is that within ten or twenty years marijuana is going to be legal and regulated similar to alcohol in most states and under federal law.
I agree on the lagalization...but realistically, there wouldn’t be drug lords or drug violence without drugs, would there?
Taking a different (faulty) line of reasoning:
I agree. I personally want nothing to do with murder, but there comes a time when it is obvious that we will never win the war on murder...NEVER... then the only other option is to legalize and tax murder. Then you apply the same laws to murders as we now have for alcohol. Murderers are going to be murderers whether it is legal or not. We have to live with that, but we can make a profit from the murders.
Do any of you really believe that legalizing drugs will stop the illegal drug trade or the drug lord violence? Are you going to legalize all drugs? If you don’t then there will still be trade in the ones that are illegal. If you legalize them all and try to regulate or tax them then nothing will change; the drug lords will still be shipping drugs illegally to avoid the taxes, regulations or price controls you put on them. Get a grip!
It could stop most of it.
“Are you going to legalize all drugs?”
The only illegal drug that has any real chance of being legalized is marijuana.
“If you don’t then there will still be trade in the ones that are illegal.”
That's true, but according to government estimates it looks like many thousands of tons of marijuana are consumed in this country every year, compared to only a few hundred tons of cocaine, meth and heroin. Marijuana is the cash cow for organized crime. Government estimates are that more than 60% of all the money the Mexican cartels make comes from marijuana sales. Some estimates are as high as 75%. According to John Walters who I suppose is still our drug czar until Obama’s pick is confirmed marijuana is the Mexican drug cartel's “bread and butter,” their “center of gravity.” It's what they make most of their money from and all the other drugs they sell come in on top of their pot and get pushed through the distributors that sell their marijuana. Pot dealers who buy their pot end up selling a big part of their hard stuff for them. Losing the many billions they make from pot sales, losing most of their income, would really hurt these organizations. Losing all these countless pot dealers out there they use to distribute their hard stuff will hurt them even more.
Note that Mexican drug cartels are not only in the business of selling all these other drugs, they actually already supply most all the meth, heroin and cocaine consumed in this country. They already have the market cornered on these drugs. It's not like they can just switch to selling these drugs to keep their profits up, because they already supply most all the demand for these drugs. When they lose marijuana, they'll lose most of their income and there is no way they are going to replace all those billions they will lose. They will shrink and they will be less of a problem for us.
“If you legalize them all and try to regulate or tax them then nothing will change; the drug lords will still be shipping drugs illegally to avoid the taxes, regulations or price controls you put on them.”
We probably will end up legalizing marijuana someday. When that happens and the legal risks are gone and big corporate farmers mass produce it on large farms like others crops, wholesale prices will drop through the floor. Think about how cheap tobacco is for a company like Phillip Morris. They buy their tobacco dried and cured in bulk for less than $2.00 a pound. Some of the varieties they blend might cost a little more, but not much. Pot may be more expensive to produce than tobacco, but there is no way that in a competitive legal market it's going to end up costing thousands or even just hundreds of dollars a pound wholesale. It's going to be dirt cheap. Yes, the government will probably tax the heck out of it, but even if most of the price someone pays for a small bag of pot at the store consists of excises and sales taxes, pot should still be cheaper than what people pay for it today. No one is going to want to buy crappy Mexican pot that might have mold or dangerous chemicals on it when they can go to the store and buy something produced in a regulated industry, a store where they will have a wide variety of choices where they won't have to worry about getting robbed or otherwise ripped off or sold toxic product, where they won't have to be breaking the law. Unless we tax it to the point that it end up being more expensive than it is today, there really shouldn't be much of a black market, and taxes would have to be just incredibly high for it to cost even what it costs today. In a legal environment it will probably be cheaper than it is today even with high taxes.
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