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Posted on 08/30/2010 11:00:18 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie
Drug-trade violence in Mexico that has left more than 28,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands more terrorized during the past four years has made an imprint on Mexican expatriates living in the Rogue Valley.
"People are scared so they want to leave the country to find another place to live more freely and not be scared to go out."
"When people get together, they're telling each other they are scared and hope nothing happens to their family members," Perez said through an interpreter.
"The cartels have more power than the government," she said. "Everyone knows the drug cartels have more power, and that's why there are so many shootings. The drug cartels are more powerful because have more money than the government. With money you buy out people, and people will do anything for money. The people are so poor in Mexico they are just trying to survive. If they are offered a not-so-good job, they'll do anything to survive, so it's easy to bribe people."
"If the Mexican government doesn't find help from other countries, then it will be very difficult to battle the cartels, because they do need outside help," she said. "Mexico can't handle its internal affairs, at least that's what it seems like right now."
"They are our enemies, we never know if they are already here," said Jose, a local businessman who asked that his last name not be printed, "because somebody could come and hurt me."
"People who object," Jose said, "they get killed, because there is no freedom of expression. Things are out of control. More recently, this president (Calderón) tried to stop everything, but he cannot do anything by himself. He needs help and needs the (rank and file) government to be honest."
(Excerpt) Read more at mailtribune.com ...
And the cartels gain even more power and influence every time the cops kick down a grandmother’s door and drag her to prison for a bit of home-grown weed to help her glaucoma.
“And the cartels gain even more power and influence every time the cops kick down a grandmother’s door and drag her to prison for a bit of home-grown weed to help her glaucoma.”
This is such a misunderstanding of the problem. The cartels make the vast bulk of their money on hard drugs—not pot. Pot legalizers need to understand that to make much of a dent in the Cartels, they have to legalize heroin and cocaine too.
Estimated US sales in 1999:
$37 billion on cocaine,
$12 billion on heroin,
$10.2 billion on marijuana, and
$4 billion on other drugs.
Much of that pot is home grown, not imported. So legalizing it would slow down the rate of cartel sales for a few years and hardly make a dent after that. That’s it.
If you want to make the “take down the cartels with legal pot” argument you have to be willing to add cocaine and heroin into the legalization mix.
Are you willing to do that? If so, you have a principled argument—not sure I agree with it, but it’s principled. If you aren’t willing to campaign for cocaine legalization along with pot legalization, then I suspect you just want your doobies and are running the cartel argument up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.
They never could, yet there's still a reconquista movement.
Of course they are here. Why do you think there aren’t any meth labs in Portland...according to Randy Leonard.
Meth is coming up I5, dropping it, and heading back down “south” to pick up some more, to deliver here, and start all over again.
Of course, their meth is much less expensive...
I’ve heard that marijuana actually is a much larger percentage for the Mexican drug gangs.
Heroin and cocaine I guess don’t come through Mexico much, maybe?
Are your numbers overall, or just Mexico?
Oh, so these people are cartelophobes, eh?
Much of the ingredients for meth, and/or the meth itself, comes from China, then into Mexico, and then comes here.
Yes, I’m willing to add cocaine and heroin to the mix. Dealing with a public health matter through the exclusive use of the criminal justice system is like using a sledgehammer to drive a screw. You’d think we’d have learned the lesson of alcohol prohibition, but so much for that idea.
The political reality, though, demands a gradual approach. Once people see that the entire civilized world doesn’t go up in flames when people can smoke a dried plant - other than the one on which the government currently collects billions in taxes - without fear of criminal prosecution, then maybe they’ll begin to accept the underlying principle. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and personal liberty won’t be restored in a day.
The difficulty with your gradual approach is that the benefits really don’t show much at all to conservatives.
I’m a conservative who is open to (not convinced by) the legalization argument. I have been on both sides at different times over the years.
For one (a big one) I’d like to see organized crime cut off at the legs. OTOH, having people able to destroy their lives with H, C, and/or M is no plus to me, even if it’s just M and it destroys thru stupidity instead of thru picking your skin off in little pieces and having every tree look like a DEA agent.
So seeing people happily getting stoned and driving 15 mph is not really a positive in a conservative worldview even though it may warm LP hearts. And I went to college in the late 60’s. So I’ve had lots of hands on as an observer and as a participant in these issues. And M undoubtedly does make most people happy and quite stupid.
Another issue for conservatives is that MJ severely interferes with one’s ability to have discriminating thoughts and tends to convert otherwise intelligent, discerning youth into socialists. “Can’t we all just get along” and “if Barack were just allowed to help people, man . . .” and “Dude, having sex with him/her/it thru a bathroom stall wall is his thing. Lighten up and chill.” are quintissential deep stoner insights. Our society needs far fewer people who have thoughts like that or we will not survive.
So your big draw in the gradual approach to build a coalition with conservatives would be if we could see druglords in the unemployment line or killing each other at greatly accelerated rates because business fell 90% in three months. That would makes up at least some for the increase in the number and profile of stupid people with stupid insights.
I just don’t care if people are happier because they have their doobies legally.
But MJ legalization doesn’t accomplish that single big thing because it doesn’t hit organized crime with anything more than a limp strand of spaghetti. Without deballing organized crime, which MJ legalization does not do, the case to conservatives for legalization gets a whole lot weaker.
That's why we have traffic cops. Maybe they can focus on impaired drivers, regardless of which drug is causing the impairment; instead of chasing down alert, vigilant "speeders" going 70 in a 55 on a road designed for 80.
Our society needs far fewer people who have thoughts like that or we will not survive.
If people can destroy themselves legally, be it via alcohol, tobacco, pot, coke, or heroin purchased at the local Walgreens, then perhaps they'll die young and won't have as many children?
You are right “B” !!
Oh, blackie, it’s awful in Medford. I don’t recognize the place anymore. They can’t keep up with the graffiti...and get this ... if the HOMEOWNER doesn’t remove it in (iirc...3days) the HOMEOWNER gets fined!!
It’s too bad the liberal rag called the Mail Tribune didn’t outline some of the Mexican Drug Cartel problems in MEDFORD.
It’s every day...murder, driveby’s, kidnapping, rape, burgler...6 gangbangers got caught a couple days ago stealing computers out of a school. Two were released to their parents! The others were over 18.
Take a look at the Jail inmates...TOO many of them illegal alien gangbangers and many anchorbaby wannabe terrorists.
Of course on the jail list they list their race as ‘white’.
http://inmate.jacksoncounty.org/
Just a few of the many foreign nationals & anchor baby criminals in one small county jail.
AMBROCIO,ACXEL JEOBANNI
RAPE 1
ILL ALIEN
MATA,ROSENDO
ILL ALIEN
MUNOZ-CORTEZ,SERGIO
ILL ALIEN
GARCIA-GARCIA,EUSTAQUIO
ILL ALIEN
GOMEZ-ROMERO,VALENTINE
ILL ALIEN
I understand your arguments; but they don’t really address what I said. You made a tactical, “move to legalization slowly with MJ so people see how good it is” argument. I responded that argument doesn’t work very well to get conservatives on board because MJ legalization does little or nothing for the biggest plus of legalization for conservatives—hurting organized crime.
It’s not a plus for conservatives that cops can arrest people driving stoned or that stoners will die young.
So I go back to my original position: if drugs are to be legalized, the only way it makes sense is to go whole hog—MJ, C, H and Meth. And I mean whole hog—that means legalize sale and use; if you just legalize use, supply stays down and demand goes up which the druglords love.
That is the only way to have some good come out of legalization to balance the bad. Even then, as I said before, I waver but am not convinced.
Bump dat!
You have a good way of deconstructing libertarian drug insanity.
“You have a good way of deconstructing libertarian drug insanity.”
Thanks. I’m really of two minds on the issue. I think the libertarian case has some very good arguments for it and, honestly, I’ve found myself on both sides of the issue.
It’s one of those “choose the least worst” alternative issues. There is no good resolution. But I am convicted that half-measures (legalize just MJ or legalize just use or don’t put much effort into enforcement) are the worst possible solutions.
I acknowledge the force of their hurt the druglords and reduce the number of federal cops arguments. They are good arguments. I also think the feds have no business under the commerce clause interfering with in-state manufacture and sale of drugs. But that said, I am very slightly on the continue the drug war side of the argument.
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