I just saw this article about Vicente Fox’s plea to his successor to legalize drugs to break the cartel’s hold on power.
Now personally I am strong believer that ALOT of Mexico’s problems with drug violence would go away if AMERICA legalized drugs. But I am less convinced that Mexico legalizing drugs would help matters all that much. I mean the problem is not users in Mexico buying drugs, but users in the US buying drugs. So there would still be a huge, lucrative, illegal trade across the US border irrespective of where the drugs came from. And that is the root cause of Mexico’s drug violence.
Interesting reading from Foreign Affairs magazine. Note that the article by Robert Bonner seems steeped in his prior exposure to Colombian violence. His argument is that the violence is due to the efforts by the Mexican government to push the Mexican drug cartels out of their cozy relationships with federal and state government institutions and personnel.
Whether or not they’re legalized, it’s not as though suppliers will suddenly be able to cross the US border openly carrying the stuff. The money is here.
It wont stop the violence entirely, but it would do some things to slow it down, and move it (out of Mexico, into the US, probably).
At this point, the Cartels aren’t just drug running gangs, they’re governments unto themselves – not democratic governments, but warlord-esque totalitarian dictatorships. They’ll continue to exist, and some of them with “go straight,” but some wont.
My guess is that some of them become legitimate political/corporate entities, and some die as petty street gangs. But one or two wont go away, and they’ll continue to wage a war (hopefully in a way that’s increasingly unsuccessful as time goes on) against the Mexican Federal Government.
It seems to me that legalizing the conduct of the cartels would solidify the cartels’ hold on power in Mexico, not break it. They would still be accumulating money and weapons, just with fewer restrictions.
It solves one set of problems but brings in another. There was a time when a lot of drugs were legal. Look through old copies of papers, and you will see tons of problems that heroin, cocaine and such caused before they were legal.
Alcohol is legal. Does this mean it’s problem free. No, you would have all the problems alcoholics have now, but only with heroin addicts, coke addicts, meth addicts etc etc.
It’s not like the users would say “OK now that it’s legal I’ll only use a responsible amount of the drug.”
There’s nothing a drug cartel can do while drugs are illegal that they can’t still do if drugs are legal. If they’re each “trying to impose a monopoly by force of arms” now, there’s nothing stopping them using the same tactics once their product is no longer illegal.
There’s nothing they can’t do I suppose, but importing drugs would no longer be a profitable venutre, therefore they most likely would not do it since the 4000% profit margins would no longer exist.
Those profit margins will only no longer exist if legal drug sellers undercut the drug cartels’ current prices. But seeing as we’re talking about people willing to wage war against one another to maintain their drug profits, why wouldn’t they do the same thing to their new competitors?
For the same reasons they don’t bother to try to do that with other legal products. A better organized legal organization has such huge advantages in a legal market that it won’t work. One of the most significant being that a criminal organization has to pay for all those thugs, while a legal organization has the government to do its fighting for it.
Most all Western, developed countries would solve their ‘drug problems’* if drug use was legalized and, of course, strictly controlled. The only reason the stuff spawns crime is because it’s illegal! What ‘drug trade’ would their be if you could pick up an Ecstasy prescription for your night out form your local GP? A fair trade, that’s what kind. Indeed, how many rubriks do you read about Ecstasy** addled ravers committing violent crime? …About as many as politicians who haven’t inhaled methinks. :rolleyes:
As far as Mexico is concerned, I doubt it would help there as it’s still a ‘developing country’ and the population is too prone to getting hooked on substances and becoming indolent as a result. Legalizing drug use/trade there might have some impact on the organized crime, but in the medium-to-long term the negative offshoots of addicted denizens would outweigh the problems there now imo. They could at least monitor and control substance use I guess, so it may work. Better than civil war at any rate!
The hoopla that surrounds drug use is all stirred up by governments so as to stimatize the practice even though substances like alcohol and tobacco cause significantly greater societal damage. The majority of the time the ‘ills’ associated with illicit drugs has to do with their abuse - something that could be greatly reduced and controlled if legalized - and the illegal sale of - again, something that becomes essentially null and void if drug use/trade were legalized. There are far more industries, organizations, jobs and livelihoods dependent on illicit drug trafficking than there are drug addicts! So it’s obvious why it’s in govts’ best interests to keep drugs the ‘evil’ of society, despite the notion’s patent ridiculousness. I mean, what is the percentage of those who use drugs do so to an extent that the practice is a detriment to their health, those around them and society at large? Not high, I’d wager… pardon the pun!
*Term used VERY loosely as governments’ idea of a ‘problem’ does not encompass the social problems associated with alcohol abuse, tobacco addiction, gambling… You know, the vices that are they TAXED! :rolleyes:
**Using Ecstasy as an example only, as there are myriad amphetamine, cannabis and other drugs that can be safely used without deleterious health effects if used prudently and in controlled conditions. Opium, although addictive, was used for hundreds of years without detriment to one’s health stemming from the drug specifically. The ‘cutting’ of the drug with other compounds is what makes drugs dangerous in most cases, not the drugs themselves. Otherwise they’d be know as poisons not drugs!
Of course back during prohibition we had extreme violence and police corruption over alcohol control and distribution. Banning it makes it worse. People will see how much money can be made and do it regardless of the penalties.
Drug legalization would have a bonus of cutting the cozy relationship of governments and drug cartels. It would release the police and border agencies from the waste of interdiction. It does not work. Lets grow up and actually make intelligent decisions.
But right now the Mexican government is asserting its independence from drug cartel involvement. This is the second nonPRI government since 2000 and the entrenched corruption and inertia that 90 years of single party rule allows is being severely disrupted. Cozy relationships for the drug cartels seem to be being disrupted while they are actively being chased down for their own criminal activity. Hence the violence, which as far as I understand is predominantly between the cartels.
The problem being that it seems the government can not mitigate the violence and so appears to be losing the monopoly on violence that central governments work off of. As Boner points out collapsing the cartels one by one requires both reduction in drug consumption in the US, reduction in the supply of small arms into Mexico from the US and the establishment of independent government institutions.
