NW-Bound - I am not particularly targeting your post, but rather using it to make some points as I sit here watching the place across the river, a few miles from my back yard, become one of the most dangerous places in the world. In just a few years too. In 2002 it was perfectly safe to drive into Mexico and see all sorts of neat stuff. Now folks don't dare even go over to visit the border towns and we have a lot of people who are legally immigrating to cities north of the border, fleeing the violence not to mention refugees. And it's about to destroy all the economic infrastructure of Northern Mexico - the city of Monterrey as well as the border cities who up until now had been prospering so well economically.
Same as others, I have wondered if that would work. In case it doesn't, how do we go back?
The "war on drugs" has been going on my entire adult life. And as far as I can see, it has been an abject failure resulting in overcrowded prisons and organized crime becoming so powerful in our neighboring country that they are on the verge of taking over the government for all practical purposes. The only institution that can still combat them is the Mexican Army. And they barely have the capability - so far it's not clear that they are "winning".
Good point. I can see a side effect of unilateral legalization here. The US will become an exporter of it. If other countries still ban it, will the US become like Mexico now, where it is not legal but enforcement is apparently lax?
I would no longer describe the situation in Mexico as "enforcement is apparently lax". Unfortunately, the situation has gone far beyond that. The organized crime is so powerful with their imported cash and guns (that's the current US export - high-powered guns and cash) that the local communities become pretty much helpless - held hostage by the violence and terrorism.
One big difference between the US and Mexico, is that in the US, citizens can trust their local law enforcement. This has not been true in Northern Mexico, because the local law enforcement has been rendered useless - bribes to some extent, but far more widespread is murder, death threats, threats to family members. It's insidious. Can you imagine 14 mayors in an area smaller than the size of TX being murdered by drug cartels in the past year? A candidate for governor murdered? The press is muzzled because reporters are kidnapped and murdered and TV stations/newspapers are routinely attacked. It's virtually impossible to imagine that happening in the US. Have you ever noticed in the video footage of the Mexican Army doing it's thing that the soldiers wear ski masks? This is to protect their identity, to prevent backlash against family members. I read an opinion somewhere that enforcement officers having to cover their faces to hide their identity was a indication of a failed state. It very well may be. I think it's an open question.
How many "rogue nations" will we allow to come into existence that are able to take over a country because the drug interests become so powerful they take over governments?
I think international governments have to step back and study this intelligently about the most effective way to pull the rug out from under these super powerful criminal organizations, and I think legalization must be a major part of it. We can't keep doing what we have been doing for the past several decades and expect different results. Things have gotten far worse, not better.
It's not about whether it is "right" to use an illegal substance. Use hasn't grown (I don't think) over the past decades, and it may have even dropped a bit, but the demand is still high enough to fuel massive organized crime, and that is getting worse, not better. IMO over the past 2 decades it's just gotten a lot more organized and deadly due to wars between cartels, and we have raised a generation or two of hardened criminals. At this point it is all about not letting criminal organizations rise to such power because of various black markets. Circumvent the black markets, and all of a sudden these organizations lose a lot of their fuel. Unfortunately we are still left with a lot of professional criminals who will probably turn to other means (kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, etc.) as they already have somewhat. But by removing a major part of their reason for existence, eventually a lot of that should fade because it's not ultimately profitable.
Anyway - this is clearly now a national security and international security issue.
Audrey
P.S. One interesting experiment with decriminalization -
Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report - TIME