Drug Control Begets Gun Control - The violence in Mexico is caused by prohibition, not firearms.

Reason ^ | April 22, 2009 | Jacob Sullum

[neverdem]

During his visit to Mexico last week, President Obama suggested that Americans are partly to blame for the appalling violence associated with the illegal drug trade there. "The demand for these drugs in the United States is what's helping keep these cartels in business," he said. "This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States."

Obama is right that the U.S. is largely responsible for the carnage in Mexico, which claimed more than 6,000 lives last year. But the problem is neither the drugs Americans buy nor the guns they sell; it's the war on drugs our government insists the rest of the world help it fight. Instead of acknowledging the failure of drug control, the Obama administration is using it as an excuse for an equally vain attempt at gun control.

"More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States," Obama claimed last week, repeating a favorite factoid of politicians who believe American gun rights endanger our southern neighbor's security. The claim has been parroted by many news organizations, including ABC, which used it in a 2008 story that suggested the sort of policy changes the number is meant to encourage. The story, which asked if "the Second Amendment [is] to blame" for "arming Mexican drug gangs," quoted a federal official who said, "It's virtually impossible to buy a firearm in Mexico as a private citizen, so this country is where they come."

But as Fox News and Factcheck.org have shown, the percentage cited by the president greatly exaggerates the share of guns used by Mexican criminals that were bought in the United States. Fox estimates it's less than a fifth, while Factcheck.org says it may be more like a third.

If the guns used by Mexican drug traffickers do not mainly come from gun dealers in the U.S., where do they come from? Many of the weapons are stolen from the Mexican military and police, often by deserters; some are smuggled over the border from Guatemala; others come from China by way of Africa or Latin America. Russian gun traffickers do a booming business in Mexico.

Given these alternatives, making it harder for Americans to buy guns, in the hope of preventing straw buyers from supplying weapons to smugglers, is not likely to stop Mexican gangsters from arming themselves. The persistence of the drug traffickers' main business, which consists of transporting and selling products that are entirely illegal on both sides of the border, should give pause to those who think they can block the flow of guns to the cartels.

The futile effort to stop Americans from consuming politically incorrect intoxicants is the real source of the violence in Mexico, since prohibition creates a market with artificially high prices and hands it over to criminals. "Because of the enormous profit potential," two senior federal law enforcement officials told(pdf) the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, "violence has always been associated with the Mexican drug trade as criminal syndicates seek to control this lucrative endeavor."

The more the government cracks down on the black market it created, the more violence it fosters, since intensified enforcement provokes confrontations with the police and encourages fighting between rival gangs over market opportunities created by arrests or deaths. "If the drug effort were failing," an unnamed "senior U.S. official" told The Wall Street Journal in February, "there would be no violence."

Perhaps it is time to redefine failure. Three former Latin American presidents, including Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo, recently noted(pdf) that "we are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs." The attempt to achieve that impossible dream, they observed, has led to "a rise in organized crime," "the corruption of public servants," "the criminalization of politics and the politicization of crime," and "a growth in unacceptable levels of drug-related violence."

Instead of importing Mexico's prohibitionist approach to guns, we should stop exporting our prohibitionist approach to drugs.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.

© Copyright 2009 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

[Dead Corpse]

You never hear of Jack Daniel's distributors in firefights with the Jim Beam guys...

Or Marlboro packagers using hitmen to take out Camel executives. Although, with all the taxes on smokes these days, I may take up bootlegging as the profit margins are getting tempting and I live in a border State.

[calex59]

I wasn't aware that pharmacists and other legal outlets for drugs sales in the early 20th century were targets of lynchings. I thought drug killings began with drug prohibition.

Some people will never get it. There sense of moral outrage over "legal" drugs is such that no matter what the facts are they do not want to see them legalized. I would even say that some even try to change history in order to strengthen their arguments against legalizing some drugs. MJ and Cocaine need to be legalized if nothing else.

Prohibition should have taught everyone all they need to know about making a substance illegal, it merely increases demand for it and makes it profitable for criminals to deal in it, hence the raging crime rate involving bootlegging in the 1920s and 1930s until prohibition was lifted.

The reason gangs are such a problem now can be traced directly to the idiotic war on drugs. Drugs finance gangs, gangs used to be idiots running around with chains, razor blades in potatoes and zip guns, now they are well armed and their numbers are increasing because of the money to be made.

The cure is the same cure they had for prohibition, I.E.:lift the ban, legalize them and take the money out of them, gangs will die, drug cartels will dry up, the violence that is part of dealing drugs will also decrease, rapidly.

[wastedyears]

How dare you argue emotion with facts? Don’t you know American citizens are giving Mexican cartels their own arms like they did the British in WWII?

/heavy sarcasm

[Windflier]

...with all the taxes on smokes these days, I may take up bootlegging

The government has just encouraged an expansion of the black market in tobacco with these onerous new taxes.

Soon enough, the drug dealers are going to realize that there's a lot of money to be made in tobacco, too.

[gargoyle]

...”You dubbed that in. I never said that.” Yer right...

...”That problem would cease in a heartbeat.” Surely you have no problem explaining that...

[Windflier]

G, the people of that country are being terrorized and slaughtered by a home-grown criminal industry that is as ruthless and barbaric as Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Their police agencies and their government have been infiltrated by the cartels. Hundreds of individual police officers have been caught aiding and abetting the cartels. Many powerful public officials who were a threat to the cartels have been assassinated by them.

The citizens are essentially disarmed, as there is no right to keep and bear arms in their national constitution. They’re sitting ducks for easy murder and atrocities.

What do you want these people to do about it?

[Gilbo_3]

actually the el cheapo brand I WAS smokin went up 50% overnight, from 20 to 30 bucks a carton...

Ive decided high time to quit, so am in the final throes of my love affair with the cigg demon...

meanwhile, that 50% rise in price, for a 'legal' commodity just upped the ante on truck hijackings from coast to coast...afterall, if you get caught with a van full of smokes, it aint 'illegal' so the one crime of jackin it will be more attractive than the multiple 'crimes' of possession/dealing 'some drugs'...

if you decide to start botleggin, I would suggest breedin dogs as well, youll prolly go thru a bunch of em with the batfags roamin the countryside...

[oyez]

We insist on building and expanded a system that has failed and will continue fail as long as it operates on the idea of prohibition.

By trying a different approach we could take away the profit incentive in illegal trafficking. Anybody that has had any training in fire fighting, know about the fire triangle(fuel, air and heat) Take away one of the sides of the triangle and the fire is out. In this case the triangle would be supply, profit and demand. Take away demand from illegal drug cartels and they are screwed.

(VR-21 as in Carrier Onboard Delivery?)

[VR-21]

"By trying a different approach we could take away the profit incentive in illegal trafficking."

I agree. There's a fear among people in the country that legalizing some of this will lead to worse levels of abuse and addiction, but I don't believe that there's any empirical data to support it. Levels of addiction were lower when much of it was legal than it has been in recent decades. All we have accomplished (in addition to the corruption of our society, heavy handed law enforcement and unprecedented levels of surveillance of citizens) is making the scum of the earth rich.

Just yesterday I read in an FR thread that the Peruvian marxist terror organization "Sendero Luminoso." which killed tens of thousands in the 80's is having a resurgence. This group and other criminal/communist insurgencies (like Columbia's FALN) in Latin American are primarily funded by drug profits. It's a very complex issue, but like I said, I think the cure has proven to be worse for our country than the disease.

With regard to my FR name, VR-21 was a Fleet Tactical Support squadron that operated C118's (R6D's) and C-130's. In my time (72-75) COD was done primarily by VC squadrons operating S2's.

[philman_36]

Drug Control Begets Gun Control

To what good end?

Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil - only evil - and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs.
Roger Q. Mills

[gargoyle]

...Was agreed with yer premise, but not sure of the motive...

..I agree with all yer points. US citizens have that right, the constitution and the rule of law, I believe in life, liberty and property for all, and, I say to all, defend that above all, it’s not for the state to take it away...

...If and when they try to take that away, I will become an outlaw...

[Windflier]

...it’s not for the state to take it away... If and when they try to take that away, I will become an outlaw...

You'll be in the good company of millions if it ever comes to that. Bet on it.

[familyop]

There is no “war on drugs.” That’s what’s so disgusting. If there were a war on drugs, all of the dopers would be dead. The world would be a better place then.

[Nate505]

How would all the “dopers” be dead?