Posts Tagged ‘Merida Initiative’

This Week in Drugs (April 29, 2011)

Apr 29th, 11 / 2 Comments

Although the Justice Department said in 2009 that it would not prosecute medical marijuana patients, U.S. attorneys in California and Washington state have told officials they intend to enforce the federal laws that prohibit marijuana’s manufacture and distribution, The Arizona Republic reports. This news comes as Arizona officials begin implementing the voter-approved medical-marijuana dispensaries which took effect April 14. Although the news makes many investing in the medical-marijuana industry nervous, a spokesman for Arizona U.S. attorney Dennis Burke said the U.S. attorney plans to release a statement soon to clarify enforcement of federal law in Arizona.

Ahwatukee Foothills entrepreneur Dave Levine has invented the Cannabis Container Vending Machine and a heavy plastic container called the “Cann Can” – short for “cannabis can,” The Arizona Republic reports. The Cann Can contains “smoke shop” products like lighters, rolling papers, and pipes that dispensaries may not want to stock. Levine says the machine costs less than $2,700 and includes several sets of plastic cans that can be purchased empty and customized by dispensaries. “This is a way to avoid the inconvenience of a used-up lighter, or having to go buy different items on an a la carte basis,” Levine said. “The container holds everything a patient needs.”

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson has announced his 2012 bid for the presidency, The Hill reports. Known for his “small-government” policies, Johnson rose to national prominence largely due to his advocacy of marijuana legalization. The libertarian-leaning former governor has made little effort to appeal to the more traditional parts of the GOP’s base, saying of his stance on legalization, “It is what it is. From the context of ‘The Emperor Wears No Clothes,’ I’m the only politician that’s saying the emperor is wearing no clothes. That’s not such a bad deal.” Check out Johnson’s issue-oriented group titled “Our American Initiative,” here.

Mexico’s Highway 101 through the border state of Tamaulipas, once busy this time of year with families traveling to celebrate Easter together, has become an empty ghost highway, The Washington Post reports. As rumors spread that psychotic kidnappers are dragging passengers off buses and as authorities find mass graves amassing to more than 145 bodies, people began calling it “the highway of death.”

As Mexico’s mainstream media agrees to guidelines for covering the drug war, an anonymous blogger running the site “El Blog Del Narco” continues to break the goriest stories, Al Jazeera English reported. The blog pulls many unedited, gruesome pictures uploaded by citizens to social networking sites like Facebook. While presenting one side of the violent story of drug war violence, the blog has even posted the statements of a purported spokesman for the Gulf cartel, allowing for a new medium for communication between hit men, traffickers, dealers – and the people affected by their violence. Visit the NSFW Narco Blog here.

Residents of Mexico City’s upscale San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood discovered the dismembered body of a woman scattered over three blocks, The Associated Press reports. The discovery comes as authorities investigate the death of four women and a 14-year-old girl whose throats were slit in Acapulco over the weekend. All five worked at a beauty parlor in a neighborhood known for prostitution and drug dealing, according to the chief of detectives for the Guerrero state police. The mass killing of women is unusual in Mexico’s drug war but there is no indication that the two cases are related.

After five years and more than 34,000 dead in Mexico’s drug war, many Mexicans are organizing a movement called “ya basta” or “enough,” to bring an end to the violence, PBS NewsHour reports. Mexicans have gathered in marches and protests across the country in response to the violence that has killed thousands and displaced many more.

Illegal searches by the NYCPD occur very often but are rarely challenged in court, WNYC reports. Many defendants are told that they face “insurmountable obstacles when fighting marijuana charges” and the illegal searches that often lead to their arrests. More than 50,000 people have been arrested in New York City for marijuana possession last year and a great deal of the arrests take place in the police precincts where the most “stop-and-frisks” occur. More than a dozen men arrested told WNYC they were arrested for marijuana possession through illegal searches, none of which challenged the illegal search in court.

The US government said today that it would increase aid to Mexico’s state police in it’s anti-drug operations with a $500 million aid increase under the crime-fighting Merida Initiative, AFP reported. Many experts believe the nation’s state police are the weakest link in the fight against drug cartels due to a high rate of corruption. A statement after a meeting attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa condemned the “criminality and violence” of the drug war. This comes as the number of victims unearthed from mass graves in northern Mexico has risen to 279, Reuters reports.

The US’ seeming indifference to Mexico’s violent drug war has enraged frustrated Mexicans, according to Reuters. Even with today’s increase in aid the support pales in comparison to the more than $1 trillion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. With an increasingly brutal war raging south of the border, Mexican historian Enrique Krauze told Reuters the Merida Initiative is “almost an insult.” Krauze said Mexicans can expect ten years of war “on [their] own,” adding, “The Obama administration has been a huge disappointment for us.”

Should Washington provide more aid to Mexico? Is the drug war winnable? Tell us what you think and check out The Economist’s interactive map of Mexico’s drug war violence.

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Drug Policy, Drug War History, Guns, Mexican drug cartels, This Week In Drugs, U.S.-Mexico border, Uncategorized

The rest of the story: Is U.S. drug policy or gun policy responsible for Mexican violence?

Apr 28th, 11 / 1 Comment

Several major media outlets reported Friday that the Mexican government had retained a U.S. law firm to explore a possible civil suit against U.S. gun manufacturers. Phoenix’s 12 News interviewed me about the potential lawsuit and the flow of weapons and ammunition south from Arizona to Mexico. (Video above.)

The reporter wanted to know: Are U.S. guns and ammunition ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels? How do you know? Who bears the blame?

The only thing she used from me was a short soundbite: I told her there was no way to definitively say what percentage of cartel firepower comes from the U.S. but there is no doubt that there are thousands of guns from the U.S. being used against soldiers and innocents in Mexico.

I went on to give a far more nuanced explanation about the role of U.S. guns in Mexican violence — and where the real blame lies for the deaths in Mexico.

First, are U.S. guns and ammunition being used by Mexican cartels? Yes. I’m not sure why this is up for debate. Every few days I see a press release like this one on Friday, which announces the conviction of a Tucson man for attempting to export 9,000 rounds of ammunition to Mexico. The ATF says that thousands of guns found in Mexico have been definitively traced by their serial numbers back to U.S. gun shops. I’ve personally seen hundreds of guns and boxes upon boxes of ammunition that were sold in the U.S. and recovered by federal officials in Mexico or intercepted on their way there. (Look, I know there is the whole Project Gunrunner controversy but that appears to be a result of investigative overzealousness — not proof that cartels get their weapons from China.)

Do cartels get all their firepower from the U.S.? Of course not. Most? Who knows (I don’t). But the bottom line is that there are U.S. guns and ammunition ending up in the hands of bad guys in Mexico. And those weapons have been turned against Mexican law enforcement and could be turned against Americans, too.

Some gun rights advocates will argue vociferously that cartels don’t get their weapons from the U.S. because they fear the backlash will result in restrictions on the second amendment right to bear arms. The contention that some make that the Obama administration is lying about guns found in Mexico or at border check points so that he can “take away our guns” is ludicrous. Obama has been president for more than two years, including time with a Democratic Congress. And he hasn’t done a darn thing to restrict gun sales. He has backed away from his support for a renewed assault weapons ban (which was at one point a bi-partisan idea supported by George W. Bush). Obama even blocked an emergency rule change from the ATF a few months ago that would have applied the same reporting requirements when someone buys multiple assault weapons (in border states only) that are now in place for handguns. He hasn’t taken any action on the so-called “gun show loophole” either.

Just because you don’t like the possible policy solutions, doesn’t change the underlying facts: U.S. guns are ending up in Mexico.

So who’s to blame? I’m eager to see what kind of case the Mexican government puts together against gun manufacturers. Do gun manufacturers know some of their weapons end up in Mexico? Sure they do. [Did you know that Colt makes a whole series of .38 Supers that appear designed for the Mexican gang market with names like "El Presidente" and "El Patron"? You can even find some named after Malverde, the "patron saint" of drug traffickers. Those guns are status weapons among cartel brass, federal officials tell me.] Still, while semi-automatic assault weapons and .50 BMG sniper rifles popular with the cartels increase the magnitude of the bloodshed in Mexico, they are certainly not the cause of it.

How about gun distributors? Do they know some of their guns will end up in Mexico? Sure, some do. There are always bad actors, especially when there is a lot of money involved. But the U.S. government does not require gun distributors to do much: they run a brief background check and keep a file on who buys guns. They are asked to report anyone who seems suspicious, but the gun dealers I have talked to say that this can be hard for employees to discern: Do you report anyone who buys a lot of guns? Anyone who speaks Spanish? It is legal in Arizona (and any state without robust state gun laws) to buy as many semi-automatic assault weapons and as much ammunition as you like without a waiting period or any reporting to law enforcement or government officials whatsoever.

The gun industry does deserve some blame for blocking common sense measures that could curb some gun trafficking (such as requirements on gun shops to report bulk purchases of semi-automatic weapons, etc.). For some reason, gun advocates today insist that the second amendment is absolute in a way that even the first amendment isn’t. The first amendment gives Americans the right to peaceably assemble. Yet, no one goes crazy when you have to get a permit for a demonstration or a parade. The first amendment grants freedom of the press, yet the press doesn’t have access to cover everything public officials do. The first amendment guarantees the freedom of speech, but slander and libel laws are there to curb the parameters of what we can say.

But in today’s political discourse the gun lobby has such a stranglehold over the process that even common sense measures that in the past would have been supported by both parties are now portrayed as liberal extremism. The gun lobby has won unprecedented protection from public scrutiny (that even curbs the first amendment rights of freedom of speech and of the press!). The so-called Tiahrt Amendments, for example, require the federal government to destroy all records of gun purchases within 24 hours and blocks the agency from sharing specific trace data on guns found at crime scenes (in the U.S. or Mexico) with the public or lawmakers. This is intended to shield the industry from possible lawsuits, but it ends up making it difficult for law enforcement to fight crime and gun trafficking. (Read the ‘Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ summary of the Tiahrt Amendments here.)

So does that mean that U.S. gun manufacturers are to blame for the nearly 40,000 deaths in Mexico in just over four years?

Look, guns are a means for people to commit violent acts. And, yes, easy access to sniper rifles that can tear holes through concrete and cars and semi-automatic assault weapons (which the ATF says can easily be converted to automatic in Mexico) helps the cartels fight the Mexican military. But while guns may be the instruments of battle, they are certainly not the cause of the war.

U.S. drug policy — not U.S. gun policy — is responsible for deaths in Mexico.

People are dying in Mexico because U.S. drug policies have not worked, and our international strategy to fight drugs has pushed drug distribution into Mexico. For more than 40 years, we have been fighting a losing war on drugs. We have not succeeded in curbing drug use, but we have filled our jails and prisons with drug users. We have not won the war against production and distribution, but we have moved the theater of battle. By pushing drug distribution into Mexico, we brought the battle to our border, into a country that was already plagued with poverty and corruption. The fact that the drug cartels are exploiting our gun freedom and using American guns against our national interests in the drug war is another consequence of failed U.S. drug policy.

The inconsistencies and loopholes in U.S. gun laws that have enabled cartels to arm themselves with American weapons and increase the level of violence are important to debate and deal with.  (Read more about my take on gun laws here.) But we should not be fooled into thinking that if we completely stopped the flow of U.S. weapons south we will end the bloodshed in Mexico entirely. The cartels will find weapons elsewhere as long as they have an endless supply of money from black market sales of drugs. If the last four decades of the drug war should have taught us anything it is this: if we defeat the cartels in Mexico new narcos will pop up somewhere else to replace them.  And if we seal the U.S.-Mexico border, the supply of drugs will find another way in — through Canada, via the skies or the seas or produced here at home.

I told the TV reporter: I know you want to be talking about gun policy, but if you are asking me who is to blame for the deaths in Mexico we should be talking about U.S. drug policy. Not surprisingly, that part didn’t make the story.

Read More:

Crawford On Guns: Gun Laws and Trafficking to Cartels

Inside The Phoenix Gunshow: No Hassle to Buy Assault Rifles

Get Your Guns: Inside the Phoenix gun show

The Iron River: As concerns mount over the potential for Mexican drug cartel violence to spill over the border, a steady flow of firearms south from Phoenix is helping give the cartels their lethal firepower

More…

–AJC

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Drug Policy, Drug War History, Guns, Mexican drug cartels, Prisons, U.S.-Mexico border

This Week in Drugs (April 2, 2011)

Apr 2nd, 11 / 2 Comments

The Arizona health department released its final draft of medical-marijuana rules on Monday, The Arizona Republic reported. After a four month process, the state’s medical-marijuana program begins April 14 when patients can begin the application process through Arizona’s department of health services. Qualifying patients with certain debilitating conditions can receive up to 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana every two weeks from between 120 and 126 dispensaries throughout the state or cultivate up to 12 marijuana plants if they live 25 miles or farther from a dispensary.

Meanwhile, a Delaware bill legalizing medical marijuana cleared the Senate 18-3 on Thursday and now moves on to the House, BusinessWeek reported. Under the bill, with a doctor’s written recommendation, patients with certain serious or debilitating conditions that could be helped by marijuana would be allowed to possess up to six ounces.

MSNBC featured U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) this week, who supports legalizing marijuana. Polis said that legalizing marijuana would be a “death blow” against cartels, save money and lives. (Link to Polis’ page: fearlesscampaign.com/drugpolicy) Is a member of Congress’ support of legalization proof that drug policy reform has gone mainstream? MSNBC notes a Gallup Poll that shows support for legalization in the U.S. has gone up to 46 percent in 2010 from 31 percent in 2000.

America’s drug czar Gil Kerlikowske addressed calls for legalization in a q & a with Foreign Policy saying, “I’ve never seen any of the legalization arguments that say, here’s how it will work and here’s how we’ll regulate it. Heaven knows, we’re not very successful with alcohol.” Read the interview here.

A Texas jury has found two men guilty of kidnapping an American drug trafficker murdered in Ciudad Juarez in 2009, the Associated Press reports. In this rare case of drug war violence spilling across the border, prosecutors say Cesar Obregon-Reyes and Rafael Vega broke into the house of Sergio Saucedo, bound he and his wife and kidnapped him in front of their children for a Mexican drug cartel. Saucedo was found dead with his hands chopped off on a street in Juarez, across the border from El Paso.

A United Nations report has called on the Mexican government to consider withdrawing the military from the streets following a sharp increase in human rights abuse claims since the Army was first deployed four years ago to fight drug traffickers, The Christian Science Monitor reports. The UN human rights office working group responsible for the report said the military and other government forces have become involved in an increasing number of cases of rape, torture, disappearance and arbitrary shooting. Because troops are tried in military courts instead of civil courts for rights abuses, most cases go unpunished. Calderón has sent a proposal to Congress to try cases of torture, rape, and disappearance in civic courts, but many say that change is not enough.

Mexico’s Attorney General Arturo Chavez resigned Thursday, in the face of  harsh criticism from women’s groups that he did little to solve hundreds of rapes and murders plaguing the state of Chihuahua, the San Francisco Examiner reported. Marisela Morales has been nominated to take Chavez’s place as the first woman to fill the post in Mexico’s history if confirmed by the Mexican Senate. Chavez, nominated in 2009, is the second attorney general to resign since Calderon took office in 2006.

U.S. lawmakers debated Thursday expanding border security and whether military involvement is necessary in fighting the Mexican drug war against cartels, UPI reports. Members of the House Homeland Security subcommittee were shown videotapes of Gulf and Los Zetas cartel members attacking military and law enforcement in Mexico. Both the House and Senate are writing bills for border security next year and expanding the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative designed to help the Mexican government battle the organized crime syndicates.

Finally, check out this eye-opening story from The Washington Post on the La Familia drug cartel, “Mexico’s drug lords fall, but war goes on.”

-DR & AJC

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Drug Policy, Drug War History, Mexican drug cartels, This Week In Drugs, U.S.-Mexico border

Merida Initiative & International Drug War: no way to measure success and a long history of failure

Jul 26th, 10 / 4 Comments

(updated 5/27: 12:15 p.m.)

As the violent war with drug cartels in Mexico reached new heights last week, federal auditors reported to Congress that there are basically no measures of success in place or ability to determine if billions of dollars in U.S. funding to fight the drug war in Mexico and other countries is having the desired impact.

You may have heard about the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the Merida Initiative – the $1.6 billion plan to help the Mexican government battle the violent cartels that have essentially taken over the country in the last three years. The GAO report, which was widely covered by the mainstream media, found that only 9 percent of the funding for 2008-2010 has been spent so far amid bureaucratic delays. (See the AP story here.)

The problems plaguing the Merida Initiative so far  –not just the inability of bureaucrats to get the money where it is intended to go, but also the rampant corruption that challenges U.S. efforts — were drilled home by recent headlines: Last week saw the violence escalate with a car bombing in the war-torn border town of Ciudad Juarez that drew comparisons to Al Qaeda.  Federal prosecutors in San Diego announced the indictment of 43 people tied to the Arellano Félix cartel – including a key Mexican law enforcement official who worked closely with the U.S. on anti-drug efforts. On Thursday, a mass grave of more than 50 bodies (many showing signs of torture) was uncovered near Monterrey. And today, we learned of a prison in northern Mexico where guards gave their weapons and vehicles to prisoners and set them free to go on murderous nighttime rampages.

On the same day that GAO released the report on Merida funding specifically, the agency also released a report looking at overall, international drug war efforts by the Department of Defense. The report essentially concluded the same thing as the report on Merida on a much broader scale: the defense department does not have any effective way to measure success or gauge if international counter-narcotics initiatives (funded at $1.5 billion this year) are meeting established goals.

Testimony that accompanied that report was even more telling. Reviewing 20 GAO studies conducted over the last decade, the testimony by GAO’s director of International Affairs and Trade, Jess T. Ford, cited limited (if any) drug war successes coming out of international counternarcotics efforts over the last several years. Colombia. Afghanistan. The Caribbean. Central America. Essentially, nada.

Plan Colombia was one of the focuses of the testimony. Poppy and heroin production decreased over the last several years in Colombia (but, I’ll note, has just relocated to Afghanistan and Burma). Coca production actually increased for a time before falling recently. This minor victory, Ford explains, may not be a victory at all: while the Office of National Drug Control Policy touts a decline in coca cultivation in Colombia, the GAO says this may have nothing to do with drug war efforts but factors such as dry weather.

Furthermore, those gains are offset by what appears to be the inevitable pattern of the drug war: when you focus efforts on one geographic area it doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves it somewhere else, taking violence and corruption along with it.

Cocaine production may have fallen somewhat in Colombia, but it has increased in Peru and Bolivia, the GAO notes. And Ford said the agency is concerned that Peru could soon return to being the primary coca producing country in the world, just like it was in the 1980s and 1990s before it shifted to Colombia.

And that brings us back to Mexico and the Merida Initiative. The violence associated with our international counter-narcotics efforts is now raging within a stone’s throw (or a stray bullet) away from the U.S. because of our focus on more remote venues, such as Colombia, and our inability to address the real problems: the demand for drugs and the black market created by prohibition here at home. As long as prohibition continues and consumer demand does not ebb (which evidence suggests would require a true shift in policy and resources toward harm reduction and drug treatment) the problem will keep moving around the globe.

In Mexico, the criminality of drug trafficking organizations met with economic depression and easy access to the American market and American guns to create the perfect storm of violence and anarchy we are seeing there today.

As Congress looks to measure success in the Merida Initiative it should look beyond the metrics called for by the GAO, and it must not disregard the history of decades of failures in the current drug war strategy.

UPDATE 5/27: Note on “nation building.” I left this out of the original post, but it bothered me all night and I felt like I should add something about it. The GAO testimony noted that while counter-narcotics efforts have not been all that effective in, you know, countering narcotics, the programs have helped to further other American “foreign policy objectives.” These objectives include combatting insurgents in Afghanistan and strengthening security in Colombia.  And I am very confident that Merida funding is helping to root out some corruption in Mexico, too.

But what I kept thinking about as I read this section were all of the ways in which drug war funding has undermined our foreign policy objectives and our national values by supporting dictatorships and countries with dubious human rights records. The example that has always haunted me was the pre-9/11 money we sent to the Taliban. The TALIBAN! Ok, we didn’t know that we were going to be attacked by terrorists based in Afghanistan four months later when we sent them $43 million as a reward for fighting poppy production in May 2001. But we did know that the Taliban government committed human rights abuses against women, essentially creating a government system that valued the life and liberty of half of its populations less than cattle. (Ron Paul writes: ”How tragic that our government was willing to ignore Taliban brutality in its quest to find victories in the failed drug war.” Read an article from the Drug Policy Alliance on UN anti-drug funding to the Taliban here.)

The message we have sent and continue to send with our international drug war efforts is this: it is OK if you commit human rights atrocities as long as you help us keep people in the U.S. from getting high. And that is morally reprehensible. Read Human Rights Watch’s warning last year about Merida funding in Mexico here.

–AJC

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Drug Policy, Drug War History, Mexican drug cartels, U.S.-Mexico border