Posts Tagged ‘proposition 19’

This Week in Drugs (Nov. 12, 2010)

Nov 12th, 10 / 2 Comments

by David Robles

Results from the Nov. 2 general election in Arizona are still coming in, with medical marijuana Proposition 203 now within 725 votes of winning as of Friday afternoon. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell told The Associated Press that provisional ballots were leaning in favor of the measure. The gap has narrowed significantly since election day, when the measure was failing by about 7,000 votes. There were approximately 59,000 outstanding ballots left to count as of Friday afternoon. UPDATE: Prop. 203 passed!

Will California’s failed Proposition 19 launch a global conversation about marijuana prohibition? Reuters had an interesting post-election analysis on the measure here.

Gulf cartel leader Ezequiel “Tony Tormenta” Cardenas, or “Tony the Storm,” was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, on Friday according to the Associated Press. The next day, gunmen from the rival Zetas gang hung messages mocking his death. The Zetas, a gang of hit men formed more than a decade ago by former Mexican soldiers, split from the Gulf cartel earlier this year. President Obama called his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon on Saturday “to reaffirm United States support for Mexico’s efforts to end the impunity of organized criminal groups,”  according to a statement from the White House. More than 31,000 people have been killed in Mexico since Calderon took office and launched his cartel crackdown in December 2006.

This week saw a continuation of the flagrant drug war violence in Mexico with at least 20 murdered over the weekend in Ciudad Juarez, the AP reported Monday. Seven men believed to be attending a family party were gunned down Saturday night and 11 others were killed the same day, including two whose bodies were found dismembered. Two Juarez police officers were gunned down in their patrol car on Sunday.

As the Mexican army’s role as Mexico’s chief policing force increases, reports of human rights violations have followed suit, according to Al Jazeera English. The National Human Rights Commission reported more than 1,800 violations allegedly committed by the army in 2009, a more than 800 percent increase since President Calderon took office in 2006.

A 12-year-old boy known only as El Ponchis, or “the cloak,” is allegedly working as a hired assassin for the South Pacific Drug Cartel leader Jesus Radilla, according to The Sun. Macabre videos of the boy depict him clubbing a man with a weapon marked “CPS” (Cartel Pacifico del Sur), posing with a rifle by a dead body, and slitting the throats of gang enemies nearly to the point of decapitation.

The ATF’s anti-gun trafficking initiative, Project Gunrunner, has “significant weaknesses,” according to a Department of Justice report Tuesday. The report criticized the ATF for focusing on less important gun dealers and “straw purchasers”rather than higher-level traffickers, smugglers, and the “ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns” in Mexico, Reuters reported, along with unsystematic sharing of intelligence with partners in the U.S. and Mexico. (Read our past coverage of gun trafficking to Mexico here.)

On Tuesday U.S. federal appeals court judge Juan Torruella told an audience at the University of Puerto Rico that legalizing marijuana and perhaps other drugs is a better way to combat drug abuse and crime. Nominated to be a federal judge by President Ford and elevated to the appeals court by Reagan in 1984, Judge Torruella believes legalization is the only “realistic” alternative following the loss of the drug war at great societal cost, according to AP.

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This Week in Drugs (Nov. 5, 2010)

Nov 5th, 10 / 7 Comments

By David Robles

As of Friday mid-afternoon, Arizona Proposition 203 to legalize medical marijuana had narrowed its loss to about 4,600 votes, according to campaign manager Andrew Myers. Myers told CrawfordOnDrugs he is optimistic the measure will pass because early ballots are trending in favor of medical marijuana. There remain about 300,000 early and provisional ballots left to count, he said.

California’s attention-getting Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana for recreational use by adults was defeated Tuesday, thanks in part to the elderly, Salon.com reported. According to a tweet from AP’s Jennifer Agiesta, six in 10 California voters under 30 say they voted “yes” while seven in 10 seniors say they voted “no” on Proposition 19. Although the  marijuana measure was defeated Tuesday, many proponents of marijuana policy reform believe that marijuana legalization is a matter of when, not if. Plans for new campaigns to legalize the drug by 2012 have materialized not only in California, but Colorado as well. Although the outcome is unknown, marijuana policy has become a mainstream issue.

Read more here.

Despite the astounding number of accidental deaths related to prescription drug abuse (seven every day in Florida), Gary Martin of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office told addiction prevention and treatment professionals attending a conference on prescription drug abuse that “the misuse of prescription drugs is second only to marijuana abuse as a drug problem.” U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske (who called for an end to the “War on Drugs”) told the Broward and Palm Beach New Times that legalizing marijuana would not answer the country’s problems, saying, “Marijuana is not medicine…Treatments should be determined by scientists and not by voters.”

According to a new British study that takes societal effects into consideration, alcohol is more destructive than crack cocaine and heroin. The study evaluated and ranked substances on how destructive they are to users and society as a whole. Heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine were the most lethal to users, but alcohol ranked above heroin and crack cocaine as having the most dangerous wider social effect.

The drug war saw a particularly eventful week with the seizure of 30 tons of marijuana following the discovery of a tunnel between Mexico and California. The San Diego Tunnel Task Force discovered the 600-yard underground tunnel after observing suspicious activity involving a tractor trailer truck later found to be carrying 10 tons of marijuana packed in large cargo boxes. The tunnel connects a warehouse in Tijuana to the warehouse in Otay Mesa and is equipped with a rail, lighting, and ventilation systems.

The bodies of 18 men found in mass grave outside Acapulco may solve the mystery of 20 men who were whisked away by gunmen in late September shortly after arriving in Acapulco on vacation, the Los Angeles Times reported. In a grainy Youtube video, two beaten, bruised men confess to killing the group of 20 and reveal where they are buried. On Tuesday, police checked an anonymous telephone tip that lead to the discovery of two corpses believed to be the men who appear in the video. The 6-by-12-foot mass grave was found near the men who had an attached note that attributed their murders to a drug-trafficking gang operating in the area.

Expreso de Matamoros daily reporter Carlos Alberto Guajardo Romero died today during a confrontation between Mexican federal agents and armed gunmen in the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, making him the 66th Mexican journalist killed since 2000.

At least three main papers in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state, across from Texas, are being forced to print press releases from the Zeta cartel, Global Post reported. The press releases began arriving by email to police reporter who acts as the Zeta liaison with the press. Newspaper editor Martha Lopez says “stories” often attempt to make the Mexican army look bad, such as stories about army human rights abuses. “Some of those stories are accurate in a small way, but they are exaggerated. Sometimes they are not true,” Lopez said.

-DR

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This could be a bad night for drug policy reform

Nov 2nd, 10 / 0 Comments

(as of 9:15 p.m)

This could be a bad night for marijuana propositions.

In California, Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana for recreational use is trailing by a double-digit margin.

In Arizona, the measure to legalize medical marijuana is very close, with opponents now with a slight upperhand.

It’s hard to counter rampant misinformation and 40 years of prohibition and propaganda. And with that kind of uphill fight, reformers have done pretty darn well, no matter what happens.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 29, 2010)

Oct 29th, 10 / 3 Comments

This week was particularly bloody in Mexico, with several attacks on civilians who had no apparent connection to drug cartels. More than 50 people died in a series of attacks: Gunmen opened fire at a house party in Juarez killing 14 last friday, many of them teenagers. Two days later in Tijuana, 13 people were lined up and executed inside a drug rehabilitation clinic by gunmen who stormed the building. On Wednesday, gunmen opened fire on a carwash in the city of Tepic, Nayarit, leaving 13 dead. Six men are dead as a result of a shootout Thursday before dawn in Mexico City’s notorious Tepito neighborhood. (The Guardian notes that this was the only killing in which the victims may have been connected to drug trafficking.)  The same morning, four people  were killed outside Ciudad Juarez after gunmen opened fire on a bus taking workers home from a border factory. Nine police officers were also killed Thursday in Jalisco after gunmen ambushed a police convoy. The New York Times reports that the attacks “forced the government to concede that innocents are being swept up in the violence.”

AZ Gov. Jan Brewer

It looks like Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer might just have landed one of those cartel beheadings she was talking (lying) so much about a few months ago. The Arizona Republic says police are investigating whether suspects wanted in a murder and beheading in Chandler have ties with a drug cartel. Originally, it was suspected as a ritual killing. (More from the Associated Press here.) Brewer also continued to exploit border violence for political gain this week with a new commercial knocking the federal government for putting in new warning signs about dangers on federal lands. While Brewer is quick to “stand up” to the feds by defending state rights in relation to immigration law SB1070, she won’t stand up for state rights if Arizona doctors get in trouble in the wake of a new medical marijuana law here, capitol scribe Howie Fischer reports.

All eyes are now on Tuesday’s election. StopTheDrugWar.org reports that Oregon’s Proposition 74 to create a medical marijuana dispensary system faces an uphill battle. (The state already allows medical marijuana, but does not have a dispensary system in place.) In Arizona, Proposition 203 has a good chance of passing. As we reported last week, officials are already gearing up for passage by considering zoning and other regulations. The League of Arizona Cities and Towns released model zoning rules for municipalities this week.

Obviously, the biggest drug war election fight is in California. Polls on Prop. 19 to legalize marijuana for recreational use have shown mixed results. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that there appears to be discrepancies in polls due to what pollster Nate Silver has dubbed the “The Broadus Effect”: voters polled by a live person are less likely to admit that they support legalizing marijuana than they would to an automated poll. (The “effect” is named after pot-loving Calvin Broadus, a.k.a. rapper-actor Snoop Dogg).

Billionaire financier George Soros donated $1 million to a drug legalization advocacy group in the push to legalize marijuana . Read Soros’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in support of Prop. 19 here.* Another major legalization contributor this week: Men’s Wearhouse chief executive George Zimmer.

If Prop. 19 does pass, the ACLU says the federal government has no basis to sue California. In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the group makes the case that the proposition only removes state penalties for marijuana and that the federal government has no right to force states to have their own marijuana laws.

In anticipation of the possibility of marijuana legalization, Newsweek asked two advertising agencies to weigh in on what the legal marketing of marijuana could look like in the future. You ready for “Northern Lights” and “Mother’s Blend” brand names? Check out the slideshow of faux commercial pot companies here.

Finally, for your musical enjoyment, the family of reggae legend Peter Tosh officially endorsed  Prop. 19 this week, releasing a video featuring his famous anti-prohibition tune “Legalize It” in support of the measure. Check it out:

–AJC & DR

*Full disclosure: Amanda Crawford is a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow with the Open Society Institute, an international non-profit founded by George Soros. A fellowship grant from OSI helps to support CrawfordOnDrugs.com.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 22, 2010)

Oct 22nd, 10 / 1 Comment

By David Robles

Authorities in Tijuana seized 105 tons of marijuana after a clash with suspected drug runners on Monday in what President Felipe Calderon says was the country’s largest marijuana seizure ever. Police seized more than 15,000 packages of marijuana and detained 11 people following the armed encounter that left a government agent and a suspected drug runner injured. (See Mexican officials incinerate the pot in this clip from MSNBC.)

During a recent panel presentation at the University of Texas at Austin, The Los Angeles Times‘ Mexico City bureau chief, Tracy Wilkinson, said reporting on the cartel violence in Mexico is no different than covering a war. Wilson explained that the foreign press struggles with three main obstacles when reporting on the drug war: getting sources  to talk, avoiding being made a pawn by one side or the other, and whether and how to use the “grisly images” and “horrific details,” according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.

In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, a 20-year-old criminology student, Marisol Valles Garcia, was named the chief of police for the city of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero on Monday. No one else would accept the position of chief of police in the city where the former mayor and members of the local police force have been killed and at least eight people were murdered in the last week, MSNBC reported. Garcia said that her job would not be to fight the drug trafficking, which falls to the federal government, but instead will focus on preventative programs for schools and neighborhoods to make an impact on the community.

Mexican Ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, told the Dallas News that he believes his country needs to take a new stance on U.S. migration and border enforcement. Sarukhan says Mexico needs to boost economic growth and job creation “to anchor those women and men with well-paying jobs in Mexico” and “ensure that every single Mexican that crosses the border into the United States does so with papers, through a designated port of entry, and legally.” These are two key courses of action that he says Mexico has been unwilling to do in the past.

A new poll shows California’s Proposition 19 to legalize medical marijuana for recreational use by adults might fail. The Los Angeles Times/USC poll found voters opposing it 51 percent to 39 percent. Meanwhile, The Press-Enterprise sought to clear up confusion about the measure with a question-and-answer story here.

All 30 of Arizona’s elected county sheriffs and county attorneys have come out against the state’s medical marijuana measure, Proposition 203, as have the two leading candidates for governor. Republican Jan Brewer and Democrat Terry Goddard both announced their opposition to the measure this week. Meanwhile, officials at the Arizona Department of Health Services are beginning to contemplate new regulations, since they would have 120 days following the certification of the election to put regulations in place.

-D.R.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 15, 2010)

Oct 15th, 10 / 6 Comments

The federal government will enforce federal marijuana laws in California even if voters there legalize marijuana for recreational use by approving Proposition 19 on Nov. 2, the Associated Press reports. In a letter to former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote: ”We will vigorously enforce the CSA against those individuals and organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state law.” Holder said approval of the measure would undermine efforts to keep California communities safe from drug traffickers.

The campaign to legalize marijuana for medicinal use in Arizona, Proposition 203, put up campaign signs this week and released a new television ad. (Watch it here.) The act, if passed, will allow patients with debilitating conditions such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and Alzheimer’s disease to use marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation. If the measure passes, Arizona will be the 15th state in the nation with legal medical pot. And passage looks likely: a recent Rocky Mountain Poll found 54 percent of registered voters in favor of the law, with 32 percent opposing.

A memo from within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that Mexican cartels planned to send armed hit-men into Arizona to assassinate bandits stealing marijuana near Casa Grande, The Arizona Republic reported Friday. The memo, which a spokesman for DHS said has since “proved to be inaccurate,” said members of the hit squad planned to establish positions in Vekol Valley, then send in men wearing backpacks pretending to haul loads of marijuana through the desert to trick armed thieves, called bajadores, into attacking them.

Meanwhile, the conflict between border security and environmental conservation along the border is heating up. Utah Rep. Rob Bishop released a draft report this week documenting conflicts arising from the U.S. Border Patrol’s efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border on land protected by the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service. The Government Accountability Office report shows that only four of the 26 Border Patrol stations along the border have encountered problems patrolling protected lands. Bishop and other Republicans are pushing a measure to do away with wilderness and endangered species protection at the border.

According to a post on the U.S. Department of State Official Blog, the agency has developed a secure tipline for residents of Juarez, Mexico, to report cartel crime. According to a recent survey by Mexico’s Institute for Studies on Insecurity, 78 percent of crimes go unreported in Mexico and only two percent actually result in convictions. The state department hopes that with the anonymous hotline those in Juarez who witness a crime will feel safe enough to contact the authorities and help combat the city’s rampant drug war violence.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is also turning to technology to fight drug cartels. According to The Latin American Herald Tribune, Calderon plans to launch three satellites to be used for national security and expanding telecommunications capabilities. The satellites, expected to cost about $1.5 billion, will be finished by the end of Calderon’s administration in 2012. His announcement comes as some 2,000 delegates from 122 countries convene at 18th Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunication Union in Guadalajara.

Tijuana has seen a sharp rise in its murder rate following Calderon’s claim last week that the city is an example of success in the drug war. Since last Sunday, there have been 16 killings. Three headless bodies were also found along with a head, which did not belong to any of the bodies.

Mexican criminal enterprising are becoming increasingly involved in sex trafficking, reports the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. With profits from human trafficking estimated at as high as $6.6 billion, the organization says “conservative estimates conclude that over 100,000 women, a number predicted to increase by the end of 2010, are trafficked out of Latin America annually for the purpose of prostitution.” With other varieties of drug war violence dominating the headlines, the group said human trafficking from Latin America too often is overlooked or mislabeled as illegal immigration when, in reality, thousands of women and children are forced into sexual slavery on both sides of the border.

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Today’s Funny: The Taiwanese Take on Prop. 19

Oct 15th, 10 / 0 Comments

Next Media Animation TV in Taiwan, which produces cartoon-animated news items, has released this Reefer Madness-like take on California’s Prop. 19. So what does NMA predict will happen if California legalizes marijuana? Pot ice cream trucks will lure school kids and executives, who have seen their beer profits plummet, will go on shooting rampages — of course! I can’t believe opponents haven’t started using this yet.

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This week in drugs (Oct. 8, 2010)

Oct 8th, 10 / 4 Comments

The U.S. is hypocritical about drug policy? Say it ain’t so! In a recent interview with the Associated Press in which he touted the successes of the drug war in reducing violence in Tijuana, Mexican President Felipe Calderon blasted the U.S. for pushing his country to escalate the drug war while not doing enough to combat drug use by U.S. citizens. He called government surveys showing that consumption of drugs in the U.S. is up “truly disappointing” and said California’s upcoming vote to legalize marijuana is part of a “terrible inconsistency” in U.S. drug policy:

“They have exerted pressure and demanded for decades that Mexico and other countries control, reduce and fight drug trafficking, and there is no discernible effort to reduce the consumption of drugs in the United States,” Calderon said.

While Calderon criticized Prop. 19, a major U.S. Latino political group endorsed it this week. According to The Sacramento Bee, LULAC’s California director, Argentina Dávila-Luévano said prohibition is not working for Latinos or U.S. society:

“Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border. It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Accusations of abuse and injustice by Mexican law enforcement officers continue. Reuters reported this week that poor residents of Ciudad Juarez complain that they are being unfairly targeted and unjustly arrested by corrupt police who use them as scapegoats while allowing powerful drug lords to operate freely. To combat police corruption, Calderon is pushing to do away with municipal police forces.

Meanwhile, both tourism and the economy in Mexico seem to be doing well. The Los Angeles Times reports that foreign visitors to Mexico jumped nearly 20 percent this summer over last year. And, according to CNN, the Mexican stock market is up 6.7 percent year-to-date, compared to just a 5 percent gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The search resumed this morning for the body of a man presumed dead after his wife said he was shot in the head by cartel-connected pirates while jet skiing on a lake on the Texas-Mexico border. U.S. officials, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, have criticized Mexican officials for not doing enough to find the man’s body, the AP reports.

In Arizona, a forensic test appears to give credence to the story of a Pinal County Deputy who claims he was wounded in a shoot-out with drug cartels. The Arizona Republic reports that tests by the Arizona Department of Public Safety did not find any gun powder on his shirt, which would have supposedly been present if he had shot himself. Some experts and critics had speculated that Deputy Louie Puroll made up the story to bolster public support for Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB1070. At a press conference this week, Puroll lashed out at critics and said: “I can’t imagine why anybody would shoot themselves.” The fact that people did believe it possible that he would shoot himself is important. It says far more about the level of rancor and insanity in the border security debate than it does about this individual deputy.

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This Week in Drugs (Oct. 1, 2010)

Oct 1st, 10 / 1 Comment

by David E. Robles

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure today that makes possession or marijuana the equivalent of a traffic ticket. The governor’s unexpected decision comes a month before voters will decide on Proposition 19 to legalize recreational marijuana use for adults. The law, which decriminalizes marijuana, reduces possession of an ounce or less of marijuana from a misdemeanor crime to an infraction. The measure eliminates the need for police to book people caught with marijuana and for courts to hold trials, according to the San Fransisco Chronicle.

Texas officials renewed warnings about attacks by pirates in the border-straddling Falcon Lake after a Colorado man was gunned down in Mexican waters on Thursday while riding his jet ski. His wife, who escaped the ambush by gunmen on boats, said her was shot in the back of the head after the photographed a church on the Mexican side of the lake. The man is missing and presumed dead. According to the Associated Press, there have been five incidences with pirates on the lake this year. State Rep. Aaron Pena, as well as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said they have little doubt that the pirates are associated with Mexican cartels.

Mexican authorities arrested suspected drug lord Soto “El Tigre” Reyes on Sunday near Guadalajara. Reyes allegedly smuggled a ton of drugs into the United States monthly. The BBC said police believe he replaced Ignacio Coronel, a top member of the Sinaloa cartel, after Coronel was killed by Mexican soldiers in July.

Authorities in Ohio have discovered huge “megafarms” of pot, four of which have been tied to Mexican criminal enterprises in the past three years. Cincinnati News 5 WLWT.com reported the arrest of 11 men on Sept. 21. The men face charges of conspiracy to cultivate more than 100 marijuana plants. Police say they are collecting evidence from the sites but that DNA evidence is difficult to match as many of the suspects are not American citizens.

According to an article in USA Today, U.S. officials admit that vehicle searches along the border have been frustratingly ineffective in slowing the flow of guns to Mexican criminal enterprises. After Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced an increased vehicle search program beginning in March 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection went five straight months without recovering a single weapon in El Paso. Experts estimate 2,000 arms per day are smuggled across the border into Mexico. (Read more: Amanda Crawford writing for Phoenix Magazine and blog posts on gun laws and a recent gun trafficking sweep in Phoenix.)

An Economist Blog post reported that the murder rate in Mexico stabilized from June to August and decreased in September. Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s spokesman on security, Alejandro Poiré, said, “in certain areas like Baja California and other places where the violence is concentrated, [there has been] a diminishing of the violence rates.”

-DER

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Dear drug warriors: Does marijuana support cartels & terrorism or not? You can’t have it both ways.

Sep 30th, 10 / 3 Comments

Dear drug warriors:

I am confused. For years, you have told me and other Americans that buying marijuana was really bad because it financed nasty people and caused violence around the world. After 9/11 you scared the heck out of us with those commercials explaining how our dope financed terrorists. I mean, there was even that creepy little girl whose ghost blames a middle-aged woman for financing “the bomb” that killed her. Wow. Terrifying.

Then in 2008, the Office of National Drug Control Policy released a report that blamed marijuana — not harder drugs– for providing the bulk of funding for Mexican drug cartels. Many Americans, puffing on their joints, blamed the coke heads, crack whores, heroin addicts and meth freaks. But, no! You said marijuana provided more than 60 percent of Mexican drug cartel profits. This was just as the violence in Mexico crescendoed. Mass graves. Dead kids. Cities on the border turned into war zones. Because of pot!

So a whole bunch of people around the country, especially those forward-thinking California types, took your words to heart. They started thinking about the failure of the drug war. (Nearly 17 million people admitted to recently smoking pot last year — that’s an awful lot of Americans financing terrorists and drug cartels.) And they started talking about stopping the flow of the profits to the bad guys by making marijuana legal.

Think about it, they said: if marijuana were legal, it would stop all those millions of dollars that flow to cartels and terrorists. Instead, we may be able to tax sales and give money to schools. After more than 40 years of absolute failure in stopping drug use — even with escalating scare tactics — these people proposed another way to stop the bad guys. Californians will go to the polls in a month to decide whether this is a good idea.

That’s when you suddenly changed your tune. Earlier this month, the national drug-warrior-in-chief Gil Kerlikowske (the head of ONDCP) said marijuana provides only a “small part of the revenue” of Mexican drug cartels. Just ignore all those numbers we put out before, he said.

But I guess he forgot to send the memo to the rest of the drug warriors telling them that the “marijuana finances bad guys” spin was no longer being used. Doing some research this week I ran across this quote in a New York Times article from earlier this year about the HUGE role marijuana plays in financing Mexican cartels, from none other than the woman working the front line for the DEA:

“The cartels use the profit from marijuana to purchase cocaine in Colombia and Peru and the ingredients for meth and heroin from other regions,” said Elizabeth W. Kempshall, special agent in charge of the Arizona office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. “So marijuana is the catalyst for the rest of the drug trade.”

See why I’m confused? You can’t seem to give me a straight answer. If marijuana finances the bad guys, then ending prohibition should help to stop them. If it doesn’t finance the bad guys, then you have been willfully lying to the American people for years. You can’t have it both ways.

Look, I know you don’t want kids to do drugs. I don’t have kids, but having whacked out little munchkins roaming around my neighborhood, crashing into my sports car with their big wheels doesn’t appeal to me either. (I mean, I occasionally flip past one of the psychedelic little cartoons they watch nowadays, and I don’t think kids need any help being weird.)

But the functioning of a democracy depends on the people being able to make educated decisions about public policy. When the people exercise direct democracy, like they are doing in California with Proposition 19, they need their experts (that’s you) to tell them the truth.

Anxiously waiting for your reply,

Amanda

P.S. Same goes for medical marijuana. You would have far more legitimacy telling us that marijuana has no medical benefits if you stopped blocking the tests to show whether or not there are medical benefits. Just sayin’.

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