Saving Mexico (Legalize it)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | DECEMBER 26, 2009 | DAVIS LUHNOW

[1rudeboy]

...some argue the U.S. should legalize marijuana, let cocaine pass through the Caribbean and take the profit motive out of the drug trade

In the 40 years since U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the supply and use of drugs has not changed in any fundamental way. The only difference: a taxpayer bill of more than $1 trillion.

A senior Mexican official who has spent more than two decades helping fight the government's war on drugs summed up recently what he's learned from his long career: "This war is not winnable."

[]

Growing numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials say—at least privately—that the biggest step in hurting the business operations of Mexican cartels would be simply to legalize their main product: marijuana. Long the world's most popular illegal drug, marijuana accounts for more than half the revenues of Mexican cartels.

"Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at least of marijuana," said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly. The official said such a move would likely shift marijuana production entirely to places like California, where the drug can be grown more efficiently and closer to consumers. "Mexico's objective should be to make the U.S. self-sufficient in marijuana," he added with a grin.

He is not alone in his views. Earlier this year, three former Latin American presidents known for their free-market and conservative credentials—Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil—said governments should seriously consider legalizing marijuana as an effective tool against murderous drug gangs.

If the war on drugs has failed, analysts say it is partly because it has been waged almost entirely as a law-and-order issue, without understanding of how cartels work as a business.

For instance, U.S. anti-drug policy inadvertently helped Mexican gangs gain power.

[KoRn]

/mark

[org.whodat]

"Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at least of marijuana," said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly.

Good thing he wasn't making decisions in Britain when the Germans were looking across the channel.

[1rudeboy]

You’ll need to help me with that analogy. I don’t see it.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

How about legalize it and destroy its value as a drug at the same time?

That is, THC is found to any great degree only in the resin secreted by female plants to catch the pollen given off by male plants. For this reason, marijuana growers cull the male plants, so that the female plants will produce more resin, which makes for stronger marijuana.

However, female hemp plants, which are of the same species as marijuana, produce very little THC in their resin. And hemp growers *want* the male plants to fertilize the female plants, to produce viable seed.

That last thing marijuana growers want is hemp crops growing in the vicinity, as this radically increases the amount of hemp pollen in the air, which will fertilize the female marijuana plants, so they will produce less resin and THC.

This is why if marijuana is legalized, enormous scale hemp production should begin immediately. All that hemp will significantly lower the potency of the marijuana, all over the United States.

So buyers of marijuana will get their legal marijuana, but it will be much weaker. And the US will get billions of dollars a year from the hemp industry, as hemp grows most anywhere, needing little or no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide, and is a superior replacement for many paper and wood products.

[exbrit]

“This war is not winnable”????? Of course it is, seal off the border, deport all illegals. Sentence gang members as terrorists subject to military courts. Problem solved.

[Caipirabob]

Legalize it already, it's an unjustified tyranny at this point and it only serves to subsidize the most bloodthirsty gangs ever created by any governing body.

Yes, the government is responsible for the creation and financial subsidizing of these border gangs.

Destroying the financial gain from the illicit drug trade will remove the incentive for these gangs to engage in such activities.

Like prohibition, there can be no victory on this front. As the stakes become more attractive to the desperate, gangs will continue to increase in power.

All because of power hungry governments that want ever increasing power over what any American says or does with their lives.

[Red Dog #1]

Mustn’t forget about saving Canada.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDj4ZTVknNE

[Ueriah]

The growers actually don’t want to produce seeds. Seeds means less “siminella”, or “bud” on the crop,as well as having a lowered THC percentage.

Growers typicially will grow from cuttings of plants - or cloning - as opposed to producing seed and growing from seed.

The professional breeders overseas breed recessive genes into the plants that screw them up should you decide to try to crossbreed. The reason they do this is so you continue to buy the seeds from them (at about ten to twenty bucks per seed).

Right now, in New York state, 40% of the pot comes from Mexico. 25% comes from Canada. That’s 65% of the money spent on marijuna in New York State that is going to stimulate other economies. (stats per DEA website.)

The best solution that I can see - to keep all this money in our own economy - is to legalize marijunia and tax it. I don’t see pot being any differant then booze and cigarettes (other then it’s nowhere near as deadly and dangerous as cigarettes.)

[nathanbedford]

Should we decriminalize?

It seems to me the question is not whether you or I should care about what a third party puts into his body, that is afterall a moral judgment, rather, the question is whether the government should care about what someone puts into his body?

Clearly the government has a constitutional right to regulate and criminalize drugs just as it has the right to regulate food and ethical drugs. The question is not whether it's constitutional but whether it is good public policy.

Seems to me that if a government prohibition on the use of drugs actually eliminated drug use, few except perhaps some aging hippies and top models would argue vehemently against such laws which would redeem so many wretched lives. But experience has shown that government fiat does not eliminate drug use. So the real question is, does government prohibition reduce drug use? And if it does, is the price worth paying? It is not entirely clear that the laws against drug use actually reduce their use because the prohibition itself creates a financial incentive which works to subsidize its use. The government has never found a way to eliminate or reduce drug usage without inserting a profit factor. Worse, the more the government is effective in reducing the inflow of illegal drugs, the more it creates a counter incentive of increased profitability by the law of supply and demand. Perversely, since the drugs tend to be addictive there is a physical compulsion to seek more of the drug and, since government efforts to eliminate it inevitably raise its price, users who are in withdrawal are tempted to finance their habits by becoming dealers. So it is not clear whether the government's efforts to reduce drugs by prohibiting their use actually does more harm than good.

One of the prices we pay for our government's campaign against drugs is certainly a loss of liberty. I tend towards the Libertarian's view that it is none of the government's damn business what I put in my body. However, I recognize that such usage inevitably presents a risk to society. I do not want inebriated drivers plowing into my automobile whether they are drunk on alcohol or drugs. But society has learned a hard lesson, that it is better to make the drunk driving the crime but not the consumption of alcohol itself.

Another price we pay is a loss of privacy. Mandatory testing of both government and private employees is to some degree intrusive. Queries about drug use and application forms are equally intrusive. Undercover agents operating in public bathrooms is an affront to our dignity. Eavesdropping of telephone conversations is unquestionably an invasion of privacy. It is the reduction, or rather the presumed reduction, if any, in the amount of drug usage obtained by these intrusions worth the price?

We pay a great financial price as well. The war on drugs costs us billions of dollars annually in enforcement and incarceration costs. Is this money well spent?

There is an insidious price as well: corruption and its handmaiden, cynicism. Our police, our border agents, our judges, one might say the entire criminal justice apparatus has been infected with a corruption generated by the huge profits to be made-profits which are there only because the government by its policies has created them. Inevitably cynicism results in the whole of the people beginning to despise rather than revere the rule of law.

Because drugs are illegal, the price is high and profits are enormous. Yet we send our boys to fight in Afghanistan to deprive Taliban chieftains of their poppy fields which finance at least indirectly the very terrorism we fight against. Would it not be better simply to eliminate the profits in poppies by legalizing the drug? Can we ever hope to bring sanity to Columbia while we in effect subsidize narcos by billions of dollars a year? Is the damage to our foreign policy, like the damage to our precious rule of law, worth what benefit we get from criminalizing drugs use?

On balance, I have to throw my lot in with William F. Buckley and say that the war against drugs is lost and we ought to try a new tact.

[Ueriah]

Don’t overlook the fact that this is a very hot issue amongst the younger voters. Look for this to be used for politicial manipulation of that voting bloc. I only hope we are wise enough to use it first.

[umgud]

In my youth, I tried MJ several times. I even inhaled, but I never turned into a pothead. The fact that marijuana was illegal had no bearing on whether or not I used it. If it were suddenly made legal tomorrow, I wouldn’t become a pothead either. Many people feel the WOD has failed, but they are not yet ready to trust their fellow citizens to legal MJ.

I am. I think there is a certain percentage of our population that are going to be addicts with or without regard to legality. I don’t believe lgalizing MJ is going to turn our society into brownie munching potheads.

I also agree, at least where MJ is concerned, that legalization would deprive an entire community of drug criminals of massive sums of money.

[HospiceNurse]

Ther should be a pothead ping list.

[Ueriah]

Agreed.

[bamahead]

U.S. anti-drug policy inadvertently helped Mexican gangs gain power....Because governments make drugs illegal, the risk associated with transporting them translates to high rewards for those willing to take that risk.



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[uncbob]

Good thing he wasn't making decisions in Britain when the Germans were looking across the channel.

Good thing he was making decisions when the USA ended PROHIBITION

[voveo]

Treat is as a Health Issue. Legalize it, tax the sale and use the revenue for rehab.

[freekitty]

Well, the government could collect a lot of taxes if they legalize Marijuana.

[Magic Fingers]

“You’ll need to help me with that analogy. I don’t see it.”

Neither do I.

[Magic Fingers]

“...seal off the border, deport all illegals. Sentence gang members as terrorists subject to military courts. Problem solved.”

Ummm...domestic production? Problem not solved.

Besides, we don’t even subject real terrorists to military courts.