I read about the horrible mass murder at a carwash in Mexico-15 people gunned down. I also understnd that there have been thousands of murders in Mexico, mostly committed by drug trafficking gangs and criminals. All of this violence has a root cause-the thirst of US consumers for illegal drugs.
What I’m debating: how much responsibility to drug users have for this carnage in a neighboring country?
Of course, you could argue that the Mexican gangs are that countrie’s problem-but very soon this violence will be spilling over into the USA.
Personally, I’m in favor of allowing addicts to obtain drugs legally (via licensing the users). But this stands no chance of ever happening-meantime, I weep for the poor people of Mexico, who suffer because of American’s selfish attitudes.:mad:
I’m with you, ralph. Norte demand is fuelling a very large part of the violence.
Aren’t the gangs funded by contraband trafficking in general? In drugs, sure, but also in guns & in human beings? There’s not some unique magic about drug smuggling.
I’d say none personally. It isn’t the desire for drugs that has caused the problem it’s the morality-based criminalisation of drugs, the War On Drugs, corruption (both Mexican and US) and people being violent assholes.
Drugs users are no more responsible for the Mexican violence than your average car driver is for the Exxon Valdez disaster. Would the problem exist without the unsatiable demand for drugs/oil? No. But that doesn’t make them responsible for what the other monkeys do afterwards.
Why not? As I see it, you share moral responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of your decisions. If you decide to drive a car, then you share moral responsibility for the petroleum accidents that you know will happen. If you decide to purchase illegal drugs (assuming you don’t verify they’re locally grown), you share responsibility for the criminal violence that you know will happen. It’s all very neat and pretty to establish some sort of artificial buffer between yourself and the foreseeable consequences of your decisions, but I can’t see where such a buffer would be morally relevant.
Note the word “share”: way I figure it, the folks who criminalize drugs have at least as much moral responsibility as the drug users, and the people who pull the trigger of course have the most responsibility. If you want to behave ethically here, advocating the legalization of drugs, without taking them until they’re legalized, seems the best course.
Yeah, but if you smoke locally grown drugs then you’re reinforcing the idea that drug use is ok, so you’re just as responsible as the illegal drug users.
Also, if you cut somebody off in traffic, and they go home and beat the shit out of their wife because they’re angry at you, then you’re responsible for that as well.
Seems to me the blood is on the hands of the crazy moralists who have prevented Americans from growing marijuana in the sanctity of their own back gardens for the past ninety years.
Without their blue laws, there’d be no need for traffic in illegal weed across the border.
They are only responsible in the way that we as members of society are responsible for each other.
For instance, I have been looking for work for a long time. I’m qualified for a lot of jobs, but haven’t got any. So let’s say tomorrow I have no money to pay my rent and I go rob a 7-11. Are the people who hired someone else responsible? Is the government responsible? Is my landlord responsible?
Of course not, we are all resposible for our own actions in the end, regardless of what situation caused us to wind up there.
This logic is like if I kidnap a person and say, “If you don’t pay me money, I’ll kill your kid.” You don’t pay so I kill him. Is the kidnap victim’s parent’s resposible?
The people in Mexico tolerate the drug pushers. Why? Because they can make more money from them. Desperately poor people will do things they normally wouldn’t because they have to live and want a better life.
But they don’t have to do it.
People who would never buy blood diamonds or fur seem to have no trouble buying from violent drug cartels or companies that use child labor. Remarkable how flexible morality is. People who simply do not buy diamonds and fur claim a moral high ground, but deny any responsibility for products they actually like.
Call me crazy, but I believe that murderers are responsible for murders.
And, are not Mexican drug users also culpable?
How about Mexican drug gangs?
How about Mexican drug producers?
Are there no Mexicans that have a hand in the Mexican violence?
Best wishes,
hh
I’m not quite sure how to answer the question. Do you want a percentage? While I certainly think it’s our demand for drugs -and the laws we have regarding their use- that helps to fuel the violence down south I certainly can’t place all the blame with the United States. Honestly, I don’t know how much responsibility we have for it. It doesn’t help that Mexico has a long standing tradition of government corruption and violence.
What a shitty rebuttal.
Note the word “foreseeable.”
From a strictly moral point of view, I think this is a very important point. Mexico isn’t a hotbed of drugs because it’s a more favorable climate to grow them in or anything like that (although I suppose it is on the way from some places where it is). It’s because the government and rule of law has a fairly weak hold on much of the country which makes it easier for large scale drug production and smuggling concerns to operate. I don’t fully absolve US drug users or US drug policy, but the degree to which the drugs are responsible for the chaos versus the chaos being responsible for the drugs is I think debatable.
The first point still stands.
You think it’s foreseeable that if I smoke a joint more people will be murdered than if I do not? I think that’s a gigantic assumption.
The proximate cause for the recent violence in Mexico was the attempted crackdown by Felipe Calderon’s government, and high level arrests/deaths which created a power vacuum.
More here:
And here:
Even if American demand were less, the problems would still exist to a large extent.
You take drugs knowing the blood and murder involved in grow, processing and shipping them.
The fact that they shouldn’t be illegal isn’t an excuse - you know people are dying to sate your demand for a luxery good - you bear some responsibility for the people dying.
You can’t just consume a good that is created at the end of a long process of murder, intimidation and violence and then disavow any responsibility for what came before.
That is one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve read in a very long time. We do not “tolerate” them. They are forced upon us through corruption and very real threats of violence. We basically have no choice. Of course I am talking here of the very large majority of the population and not the small minoirty involved in drug traffic.
The largest culprit in this whole disgusting and terrifying mess are the insane prohibition laws. When people let politicians dictate morality we are in for troubles beyond our imaginations.
For those that want to blame us for this mess, I suggest you geographically move México off your southern border and replace it with another country of your choice. Whoever is in that situation will be doing much the same or worse. Until you modify your laws and the huge demand for what are now illegal substances exists nothing is going to change. This crap about fighting a “drug war” is insane. How can a war be one when you fund both sides? And the enemy in this case receives far more funds.
Nope, it’s all on the fuckers who made it illegal in the first place.
You call it a ‘luxury’, that’s one step short of calling it ‘sinful’. That’s nothing but an excuse to pretend that people ‘shouldn’t’ be doing these drugs and there’s something wrong with them for doing so. The fact is that pot smokers have been wronged by the same people who passed the laws that created the smuggling industry.
Giving in to those assholes, (ie giving up pot until it’s magically made legal) just because some people get hurt because of the consequences of stupid laws will just encourage said assholes to enact more stupid and restrictive laws.
People get hurt because of stupid laws, not because some sinfully insist on having something that someone else defines as bad, or a luxury.
I agree that US drug laws are stupid, with regard to marijuana. The persecution of marijuana smokers is truly bizarre-punishing people who are using a harmless substance.
On the other hand-what about drugs like cocaine and heroin-which are not produced in Mexico-but merely transshipped through that country?
Mexico is being used as a transit point-resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
If you buy these drugs, I’d say you are partially to blame.
Even if that’s the case, and you are partially responsible, this responsibility is so widespread that each individual consumer’s responsibility is negligible.
So all you’re arguing here is whether you have a zero-level of blame, or a ~0.00000001 level.
And who says it’s from Mexico anyway? It’s most likely grown in the US.
So less than half is from Mexico, accounting for Canada’s supply.
The deaths in Mexico are a result of the war between cartels and government. The reason there have been so many is that after drugs being illegal for so long, Mexican gangs have earned so much money and become so powerful that they can actually take on the state. The “war on drugs” is lost, only stubbornness and pig-headed thinking keeps it going. Blaming drug users for the “war’s” consequences is like blaming car users for the BP spill. In responsibility terms, they’re way, way, way down the list; if they’re even on it at all.