George Friedman at Stratfor, a publication by current and retired intelligence officials, lays out the stark reality of what’s happening in Mexico right now, warning of that country’s potential to become a failed state. The root of the crisis is the growing influence of the cartels who operate an approximately $40 billion a year industry in illegal drugs, nearly all of which is consumed in the United States. Friedman sees a possibility that the cartels, who already dominate most of northern Mexico, could soon become powerful enough to usurp the power of the elected government in Mexico City as well.
The recent violence from Mexico has been staggering. Over a thousand people, including hundreds of police, have already been killed this year in fighting between federal officials and the cartels. The cartels operate with such impunity in parts of the country that they’re able to publicly advertise for recruits. Some Mexican police officers in the border region are even attempting to flee to the United States.
Friedman makes the appropriate comparison to 1920s alcohol prohibition, reminding us that during that time, the city of Chicago had a failed government. And had Al Capone and his men become powerful enough to defeat the federal agents, America could have become a failed state. Thankfully, America only allowed its doomed experiment in alcohol prohibition to last for just over a decade. Our current prohibition, however, has been going on for several decades now and has turned all of Mexico into an even more extreme version of 1920s Chicago with modern weapons.
Occasionally, we see some intelligent discussion of this growing problem in the traditional media (like this column from Neal Peirce in the Seattle Times last week). But in the political realm, there are no solutions on the horizon. The only thing being proposed is the Merida Initiative, a laughable effort to provide Mexico with $1.4 billion that the Mexican government might even turn down because of the strings attached.
I’m sure that much will be made over the disagreements between the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress over the Merida Initiative, but neither party has the political courage to do what Friedman explains is the only realistic solution:
One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn’t going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.
I’ve been asked recently why I focus so much on the topic of drug policy when most of the country still considers it a political minefield. It’s because even though it’s a political minefield, that doesn’t mean it’s any less urgent to fix. Our current approach to dealing with the drug trade in Mexico is piñata policy, put on a blindfold and swing a big stick hoping that you hit something and a bunch of candy falls out. Many people think that we can do this forever, just pretending that it’s the best way while allowing us to keep from breaking free from the drug war mindset. They’re wrong. And the damage in Mexico (not to mention Afghanistan, Colombia, and in our inner cities) is the proof that they’re wrong. The millions of refugees from this war who have already fled to the United States from Mexico should be a good indication of that.
This country needs to develop a viable constituency that demands from the next American administration that we start dismantling the international drug war and to deal with the problem of drug addiction in a way that doesn’t bring a country of 100 million people to the verge of becoming a failed state. Yeah, I talk about the drug war a lot. I do it because we can’t afford not to any more.
[h/t to Transform for the link]
Does anyone know what portion of these drug cartel’s profits come from marijuana? While we may have a hard time legalizing many other drugs we just might manage to legalize mj. If we remove their profits from that it could weaken them enough to begin to break them up.
I’ve never seen anyone try to take a serious stab at those numbers, but this article claims that Mexico has a greater share of the world’s marijuana being confiscated than even the U.S. (and it’s our number 1 cash crop now – nationwide).
Although, from a money perspective, cocaine and meth are worth much, much more by volume. Legalizing marijuana would certainly dent the profits, but it’s hard to say whether it would tip the balance and allow for the violence to be curtailed. But you’re right, that’s the most realistic first step.
Marijuana should be sold at liquor stores under the same rules as liquor and hard drugs dispensed at pharmacies with prescriptions for addicts. We can do it now or wait until our problems with drugs get much worse. It will happen some day when the problem becomes intolerable. Prohibition does not work. It did not work with alcohol and we have decades of proof that it does not work with drugs.
Hey Goldy actually you don’t talk about drugs a lot.
You and other media never make public officials reveal that they did drugs, too.
I bet 60% did pot and 35% did coke or other harder drugs.
They all sit there in government, like GW Bush, enforcing laws they broke!
Go to the city council right now and demand a list of all drugs they all ever used. Then the state leg. Then our representatives and senators. Cantwell. Baird. McDermott. Think they never inhaled?
Why do we let them not answer?
Once they stop being hypocrites and come out of the closet, then we can have the discussion:
why is it okay for you to be president or senator or city council member after doing pot or coke — when these other dudes are sitting in jail for the same thing?
I’ve long been dismayed at the damage we have been doing to our own economy, as well as the political stability of other countries, by our own drug problems. We have been supplying both sides of this war: our citizens send their money overseas (Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Thailand, etc.) for illegal drugs which fund both organized crime and also political groups which are contrary to U.S. interests. Then we send tax money to those countries (mere pennies, in comparison) to fund their anti-drug efforts, AND to train & equip their military to fight against revolutionary political groups which are financed through drug profits.
We treat it illegal drug use as a lifestyle choice here in the U.S., despite the fact that purchasing illegal drugs from outside the U.S. is doing immense damage to both our economy, our federal budget, and more importantly, to the lives and political institutions of those countries where the drugs are produced, or through which they transit.
And I can imagine how most Columbians feel when we lecture them about how they need to crack down on their poorest farmers and punish them for producing cocaine, while at the same time we virtually ignore enforcement of drug abuse by our richest citizens (usually only requiring them to take a vacation at “Club Rehab”).
Of course, law enforcement action against our poorer and minority citizens is relatively worse.
I don’t have any easy solutions. But I do think we, as Americans, have to recognize that our illegal drug use isn’t just a personal choice, it hurts a lot of innocent people, even far beyond our friends and families.
I also think that anybody who believes in free market economics and the laws of supply and demand will realize that trying to solve the drug problem by restricting it’s supply in the U.S. is a policy doomed to failure. The more drugs you interdict, the higher the price, thereby encouraging more smugglers to take even bigger risks to get the products into the U.S.
I’m certainly willing to consider legalizing some drugs, starting with marijuana, subject to regulation and taxation.
oops it’s Lee not Goldy.
“Yeah, man! Like, ‘This aggression shall not stand, man!'”
Prohibiting is one root of power and a way to make a fairly useless or innocuous product into an obscenely profitable one.
The illegal drug trade is unfettered and untaxed capitalism at its finest.
Lee, I think one of the problems with addressing this issue, other than the obvious, is how complicated any legalization/decriminalization scheme would have to be.
It’s one thing to legalize/regulate marijuana. It’s another thing to legalize/regulate cocaine. Yet it’s an entirely different thing altogether to suggest legalizing/regulating something like meth, which is so incredibly addictive and destructive. How can one make the moral argument for making meth legally available, let alone convince a substantial number of politicians to advocate for it?
The lack of political leadership on this issue is daunting, but so are the rhetorical pitfalls of the course you propose.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but if I were leading the movement, I suppose I’d focus on legalizing and regulating marijuana as the most obtainable goal, and then gradually move on from there.
@9
I agree with that even though I didn’t explicitly say it. The point is that we need to recognize that the status quo is very, very dangerous and that marijuana legalization is an absolute must right now. As I’ve mentioned before, if you do legalize all drugs, meth slowly goes the way of moonshine. People will go back to using the same kinds of safer amphetamines that people like John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill used before they were made illegal. Our current drugs seem so dangerous because prohibition made them far more dangerous than they were at the time they were made illegal.
rhp, the main reason why drug use by Americans causes or contributes to the political problems you cite is because of prohibition. If trade were legal but regulated, as we do for a lot of other commodities, a lot of the power of the drug trade to corrupt institutions in other countries would be minimized. What I am reading in your post, unfortunately, is a recitation of the shaming of drug users for ‘personal moral failings’ instead of recognizing that people do drugs for a variety of reasons, some of which have to do with the continued stigma and barriers to access for decent mental health care in this country. You must be aware that a lot of people self-medicate using alcohol, prescription, or illegal drugs. (Though granted that others just want a temporary chemical thrill.)
What I’m saying is that it will be a long time, if ever, before the systemic problems in our hearts, minds, communities, and governments can be addressed so that people have the means to live with dignity and yet get help when they need it. Until then, I don’t expect that people will stop using drugs. The realistic approach is not to shame people for their ‘moral failings’ (you may not agree, but I think it is as pointless to blame an addict as it is to blame a coca or poppy farmer), but to act to reduce harm to people, countries and their institutions as far as possible.
Let’s replace the oil companies with Mexican drug lords. Then we’d get all the oil we want and it would cost only $1,000 a barrel.
Kurt Cobain became a heroin addict because of a painful stomach condition that seemed to run in his family.
The King County Bar Association is a leader in research and proposals for an enlightened drug control program. They have various reports, fact sheets and proposal that can be accessed from the following web site:
http://www.kcba.org/ScriptCont...../index.cfm
If you have never done so, I would suggest looking at their site and reading some of their publications.
@14
I second that. I’ve read through that entire document and it presents a good starting point for moving past drug prohibition.
Goldy @ 9: I would not think this is a “moral” question. It’s a question of social cost. Framing the issue as one of morality pretty much shuts down the discussion.
Tough political question? You betcha’. But them’s two different animals.
See this article for another aspect of what is happening to some parts of rural Mexico. The ongoing social disintegration of that country is truly tragic.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/ar.....ost_towns/
If the citizens were able to make living, maybe so many wouldn’t need the drug cartel money to live on. That’s what happens when a country’s economy is controlled by 100 families. Haiti fell apart when the rich elite took their ill gotten gains and ran away.
T @ 11: I’ll concede your point – I was thinking more of the “recreational” drug user at the time I wrote the post, who clearly has a choice, rather than someone who is more likely to become addicted to the drugs for other reasons.
There are indeed lots of reasons people use drugs of various kinds, and no single solution – even legalization – resolves all of them.
I know quite a few people who have quit smoking who speak of it in terms of “strength of character” and “willpower”, and are rather condescending towards those who are unable to quit. I smoked myself for a couple of years when I was a teenager, and I didn’t have too much trouble quiting later, but I realize that it was partly because I didn’t smoke very much (about a pack a week), and also I was very incredibly lucky that something in my chemical makeup made me less susceptable to nicotine addiction. I also realize that many others are not so fortunate, and even the first few smokes could establish a nearly unbreakable addiction.
I figure it is the same with other, illicit drugs.
@18
That misses the point. Nearly all third-world countries have a small number of families controlling the national economy (even in places like Saudi Arabia, which can buy and sell most third-world countries now). What happens in each of those countries is that the wealthy few play upon the politics of fear to thwart any attempts to usurp that power. When you introduce an illegal industry into the mix, the illegal industry becomes a very easy way to play the politics of fear, but if the illegal industry isn’t going anywhere, it will slowly destroy the nation. This phenomenon is even worse in Afghanistan (which I think could already be considered a failed state).
@19
There are indeed lots of reasons people use drugs of various kinds, and no single solution – even legalization – resolves all of them.
Absolutely. As long as there are sentient human beings on this planet, people will always seek out mind-altering or mood-altering substances. The object of drug policy should be to reduce the effect that this human phenomenon has on society as a whole. It can be through age controls, education, regulation, and smart zoning practices. It just can’t be done by trying to put people in jail in order to protect them from themselves.
“It just can’t be done by trying to put people in jail in order to protect them from themselves.”
True. If that were the case, we would have to jail Republicans just on general principles.