Hitting the cartels where it hurts

Former border state governor advocates ending drug prohibition.

Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, wrote in the Washington Times 5 August 2011, JOHNSON: Hitting the cartels where it hurts: Legalization of marijuana would end drug profiteering and violence

Imagine you are a drug lord in Mexico, making unfathomable profits sending your illegal product to the United States. What is the headline you fear the most? “U.S. to build bigger fence”? “U.S. to send troops to the border”? “U.S. to deploy tanks in El Paso”? No. None of those would give you much pause. They would simply raise the level of difficulty and perhaps cause you to escalate the violence that already has turned the border region into a war zone. But would they stop you or ultimately hurt your bottom line? Probably not.

But what if that drug lord opened his newspaper and read this: “U.S. to legalize and regulate marijuana”? That would ruin his day, and ruin it in a way that could not be fixed with more and bigger guns, higher prices or more murder.

As a Republican, he manages to say legalize and regulate but forget to mention tax, and he didn't mention Jimmy Carter or Javier Sicilia calling for an end to the drug war, but he did mention (I added the links):

There are ample reasons why millions of Americans, the Global Commission on Drug Policy and, just recently, former Mexican President Vincente Fox are calling for legalization of marijuana as an alternative to the failed and ridiculously costly “war on drugs.” Twenty-eight thousand deaths along the border are certainly among those reasons.

Will legalizing marijuana put the criminal cartels out of business? No. But it will immediately deny them their largest profit center and dramatically reduce not only the role of the United States in their business plans, but also the motivation for waging war along our southern border.

Our federal government has spent 40 years and a trillion dollars on a failed war on drugs. The real and societal costs of treating drug abuse as a crime problem rather than what it is - a health problem - are inestimable. Add to that reality the tragedy our laws are fueling along the border, and it clearly is time to end this prohibition, just as we ended the last one.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Dante Avecedo.