Clinton to Mexico: Sorry about the drug war

The good news: Hillary Clinton publicly acknowledged that the United States bears much of the blame for the drug war on the border involving tens of thousands of Mexican troops facing off against various drug cartels, many of which are simultaneously fighting each other for control of lucrative smuggling routes.

The bad news: Clinton proposes to make it up to Mexico by stepping up the aggressive, militarized prohibition that caused the problem in the first place.

Comments

[Alon Levy]

The Colombiazation of Mexico is not going to be a good thing for anyone. Colombia was a failed state for decades; it's only recently managed to start living with the violence, like Israel, but it is still plagued by weak and unpredictable economic growth, flares of war, and routine human rights violations.

[angela]

THIS IS HOW WE REDUCE THE DRUG WAR IN MEXICO

We have to reduce the coke search in airplane and mails coming from Colombia, Bresil, Perou etc, beside Mexico. WHY? Well then those countrys won't have to sell coke to the mexican gangs to smuggle it in the states.

Also, price of coke in the State will drop so there will be less money for mexican gang members.
Eventually the gangs will shrink because they will be less money to make.

I remember 2 years ago, coke was easier to smuggle by plane or post office and the coke was cheaper and healthier (i mean without the methamphetamine mix inside). And they weren't that much big deals about those mexican gangs. So can we get back in time and stop catching all the coke coming by mail and planes. By doing that we just make more jobs to the mexican gangs members to smuggle it and causing troubles.

[The Phantom]

Hillary and the Mexican govt spoke the truth when they said that a significant part of this problem rests with US demand for drugs and with the basically unrestricted flow of guns in this country.

If we didn't have such demand, the cartels could bring all the garbage they like over the border and it would not cause any harm.

The best solution involves legalization of at least some drugs, but our entire political system acts against honest solutions.

Even stuff like " medical marijuana " liberalization are built on the lie that the only way to alleviate pain is by puffing on a reefer.

I dislike drugs but want them legalized, for a million good reasons, in the USA and in Mexico and in Colombia, and in half the world.

[Alon Levy]

Phantom: there are a lot of countries that would benefit from decriminalization. However, as long as first-world governments can export the problem elsewhere, they have no reason to change course. It's not just the US - Singapore has similar issues with Myanmar: on the one hand it executes drug smugglers, but on the other it keeps propping up the junta in Myanmar from which the drugs come.

And even decriminalization doesn't solve every problem. Prostitution is legal in Germany and the Netherlands, but that hasn't stopped Eastern European mobsters from making hefty profits smuggling women into Germany and forcing them to work as prostitutes.

[Scott]

I thought Clinton publicly acknowledged that drug-using U.S. citizens are to blame. This seems to me to be very different from the claim that the U.S. bears much of the blame. Clinton was apologizing for there being drug users when she should have been apologizing for criminalizing drug use. She's totally backwards and utterly oblivious about it. Where is the good news here? (It's quite possible I missed a more serious apology than the pathetic dribble my local newspaper reported.)

[Brittanicus]

Our demand for drugs is like the 11th century barbarians sweeping down on a defenseless wilting Roman Empire in 410AD. We desperately need the military on the border, as advocated by Sen. John MCain. Not a token force of FBI, ATF and DEA agents, who have not the armed effectiveness of the drug cartels. We need to revoke the "POSSE comitutus" that was enacted in 1878, that culminated the use of Federal troops, within the boundaries of the United States. Either that or an armed National guard to shoot on sight. We must accept that the drug gangs have infiltrated our borders and not only killing citizens near its perimeter, but escalated to our cities. We have been losing the battle for years and the costs would have paid for universal health care in America--for every man, women and children--including illegal aliens. Societies appetite for elicit drugs is never, ever going away.

Peer pressure has sent our children in to multi billion detoxification centers. Thousands annually have overdosed and now lay on a stainless steel slab in the morgue. It seems a waste of police manpower and money, because narcotics are squirreled into America everyday. Drugs are in fact an endless futile war, that has no respect for any classes, race or religion in our culture. Police arrest and the next day the drug peddler is out on bail. In most major cities and even smaller communities have overcrowded county jails and prisons, incarcerating users, dealers and distributors.

Only the legalization may answer the question, but that is unlikely because many of Americas patrician class are addicted to substance abuse. They influence the legislators in Washington, so that no law will--NEVER--pass to disinfect one of societies most costly ills. Just like the illegal immigration invasion, until gain and greed is removed from this issue--nothing will ever change? We had a chance in the Stimulus/Omnibus to address this compounding dilemma, which is sacrificing American jobs for illegal cheap labor. E-verify was tabled, by Sen.Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi because they had been intimidated. by business elitists, who would hold back campaign contributions if they didn't kill the provision. Drugs are just another business enterprise, that will never be satisfied until we seal the border for good with armed troops?

[Alon Levy]

Shorter Brittanicus: illegal immigrants are like drugs, and everyone who champions their rights is like a drug addict.

[Tara]

uhm, you guys, the media, the administration have been so busy falling on the sword of shame for the U.S. exporting all those guns and creating all that mess in Mexico. Reality Check: Why deal with the border when you're not only a drug cartel but a gun and humans smuggler, too. They have boats, planes; they get their heavy firepower, military-grade s*hit from dealers in china, russia, israel, and 'clones' from pakistan and india, among other members of a global arms network. The cartels get much lesser firepower across the border, small arms, mainly. I think upping the military thing is a mistake: corruption IS the rule of law in Mexico. Those weapons will end up on the cartels' shopping list, and into their hands. It's happened before. Finally, Mexicans in general are much more heavily armed than Americans; it's a cultural thing.

[cfrost]

11th century barbarians sweeping down on a defenseless wilting Roman Empire in 410AD

Huh? Pass me some of that reefer.

[minstrel hussain boy]

ya'll would be welcome to come down to my neck of the border any old time. there are things which can only be seen and experienced to be believed.

it's not oversensationalized when they talk about morning rush hour drivers going by heads on poles.

The bad news: Clinton proposes to make it up to Mexico by stepping up the aggressive, militarized prohibition that caused the problem in the first place

excellent perception lindsey. over and over my plea to those not down here on the border with us has been

desajunes solos.

(leave us alone) more armed people, harsher responses is not what's going to work here. we are already having our economy, and our culture strangled.

[Dunc]

I dislike drugs but want them legalized, for a million good reasons

For possibly the first time ever, The Phantom says something I completely agree with. (Well, apart from the "dislike drugs" bit - I like a beer and a smoke as much as the next hippy.)

And even decriminalization doesn't solve every problem.

Decriminalisation and legalisation are different things, and legalisation is only the first step. You have to get the regulatory framework and the public health infrastructure right too. Legalisation is not the solution, but it is the essential first step towards finding a solution.

Our demand for drugs is like the 11th century barbarians sweeping down on a defenseless wilting Roman Empire in 410AD.

This is some kind of elaborate dadaist prank, right?

[The Phantom]

Alon

We don't really export the problem.

Astonishing amounts of our own resources are diverted on this Canute like effort to stop the drugs, and a lot of US and other lives are ruined.

Almost no one speaks the truth on this thing. Very recently, Obama had a chance to step up on the matter of pot legalization and did not.

A truly dramatic step would be ( after consulting with Mexico and other countries ) to announce a plan to legalize pot and a certain other drugs within three months. Much of the right and others would howl, but the public, as it did with Nixon to China, could be made to see the wisdom of the move.

[cfrost]

It would help if we finally publicly acknowledged that all drugs are not all alike, not all equally dangerous and should be handled separately based on their individual characteristics. Powder cocaine has the potential to be harmfully addictive among some people, whereas chewed coca leaf would be habit forming among lots of people but is essentially harmless and should be legalized. PCP has a very low potential for abuse for most people, but it's such a shitty drug that it should be illegal under any circumstance. Heroin is basically a medical problem for some people and not even tempting for many more who just get nauseated and dizzy when they take opiates. Marijuana/hashish is potentially dangerous while driving but pretty much harmless when watching TV. Chewing a stimulant like khat is perhaps mildly harmful while sniffing methamphetamine is a certain shortcut to senescence for some people. Etc.

[The Phantom]

And of course, we all know people who have had lives ruined by alcohol, which is perfectly legal.

I know people who have messed up their lives pretty good with pot, but those cases were not nearly as bad as the individual and family destruction caused by alcohol.

I think that Obama has already missed an opportunity here. Significant drug legalization or decriminalizatino could have been done had he been bold about it. Won't happen in his administration now. This is a historical error.

[The Phantom]

Dunc

In a world that has beer and wine in it, I fail to see the need for pot! ( Always made me cough anyway. )

[Alon Levy]

Phantom: pot is a bit weird, politically speaking. Most Americans want to see it legalized. The problem is that like with universal health care and gays in the military, there's a perception that people who support pot legalization are hippies. This means that the risk-averse move for the moderate politician is to go with the status quo, rather than with the will of the majority.

This isn't helped by the fact that most people who do speak the truth on the issue are crazy for other reasons; no issue on which Dennis Kucinich is the standard bearer will get taken seriously, no matter how good it is on the merits. This creates a feedback loop - people who have the ability to lead on the issue are naturally cautious, so they won't try to wrestle it from the crazies. Such a conundrum calls for a courageous leader, who's willing to risk his political career to do good, of the type that arises about once per generation.

When I said the US exported the problem, I didn't mean there was a deliberate government policy, just that the worst effects of US demand for illegal drugs are felt in Mexico and Colombia, rather than in the US.

Cfrost: there are two separate issues bundled together here, I think. One is whether pot should be legalized or not. The other is what to do with more dangerous drugs, like heroin and cocaine. Some people, like Lindsay, simply support blanket decriminalization. I'm personally less convinced. I think most other people who support legalizing marijuana think the drug war should be wound down but are not yet willing to condone full decriminalization. It's the latter issue that's relevant here - to my understanding, the violence in Mexico is mostly about cocaine rather than marijuana.

[The Phantom]

The best advocate for legalizing would have been a conservative Republican ( Nixon to China thing )

But Obama could have pulled it off . He would have been able to take a risk and explain and persuade and get no small number of libertarian type conservatives to sign on to it.

I can't believe that he had so much ambition on other things and not this - which would have so many good effects on relieving strain on budgets, prisons, policing, border security, for the US and on other nations.

This is the no brainer of no brainers and he's struck out on it already. He could so easily have done it.

This is a moment in time that will not come again soon.

[doyle Saylor]

Alon Levy writes;
This isn't helped by the fact that most people who do speak the truth on the issue are crazy for other reasons; no issue on which Dennis Kucinich is the standard bearer will get taken seriously, no matter how good it is on the merits. This creates a feedback loop - people who have the ability to lead on the issue are naturally cautious, so they won't try to wrestle it from the crazies.

Doyle;
Crazies in this context is a term of anti-disabled bigotry. It's a shallow political formula, political opponents have a disability because I don't agree with them. There is no reality to term 'crazies' it's just an empty phraseology like saying that guy is the devil. But unlike the mythic devil, people with disabilities do exist and such political miss labeling continues prejudice that policy makers use to cut funding for people with disabilities. For example the widespread homelessness for people with insanity because supposedly they don't deserve shelter and support.

[NoBuddy]

I think the privatized prison aspect is the reason for the present drug policy. Here's a story about judges taking bribes to sentence juveniles to privately run prisons. I think the same thing is happening with current drug policy.

The real answer is to attack the cash flow. If someone is already addicted to crack or heroin, then at that point, they should be able to get maintanance prescriptions which would then stop the cash flow that the drug gangs are warring about. Once a person is addicted, it becomes a medical problem anyhow. I wouldn't legalize heroin or cocaine, so that youthful persons wouldn't get into something they can't get out of, but there would be no financial incentive to hook new users if, once hooked, the user is off to get his maintanance prescription. I would however legalize pot and end paying for law enforcement on that issue.

I think we could save around $100B a year, local, state and federal. Of course, that's money that someone is getting to put into their pockets, and that's where the resistance comes in.

[Alon Levy]

Where does the $100b figure come from?

[NoBuddy]

“Where does the $100b figure come from?”

It's my best guess. We really don't have an accurate recounting. Depending on different ideologies or agendas, we get wildly varied estimates. Here's a chart that kinda reflects what I'm saying. It all depends on who you ask.

However, if you ask me, I think that more than half of all property crimes and at least half of the murders occuring in the U.S. is related to drug distribution, or the financing by addicts of their habits. I think that many robberies and murders aren't classified as drug related, even though they're committed by addicts or drug dealers. I think the prices we see are only reflecting convictions on drug statutes.

We send money to Columbia to conteract the rebels that are financed by a drug cash flow. The southern provinces of Afghanistan are flush with poppi cultivation - 3 guesses where the Taliban are resurgent. I don't know where I saw the report, but the report said that the poppi drug trade in Afghanistan comprises the Taliban's military budget. Now, certainly, there are international cash flows going into Afghanistan, but with that war going $2B/month(?), the effect of U.S. cash flows into the region probably yields a multibillion requirement for our military to counteract the U.S. cash flow ultimately winding up in Afghanistan.

So, I think the best thing to do in a drug war is to eliminate the cash flow where the data says it makes sense. And it especially makes sense in cocaine/crack and heroin. We need a policy that lets the dealers know that if they persuade someone to become addicted, that they'll have an avenue to the doctor, and you're not going to have a recurring cash flow.

I remember being told a long time ago, that people don't sell drugs to make friends, drugs are sold to make money. The best way, and the cheapest way to combat the drug dealers, as well as the possibility of Mexico becoming a failed state, is to eliminate the recurring cash flow in drugs trafficking, so that there is no money in selling drugs.

[Alon Levy]

You seem to be saying that if drugs are legalized, people will no longer be addicted, and no longer commit crime. This is unlikely. The US doesn't have a very high crime rate by developed world standards. Crime surveys put it in the middle, on a par with France, which has none of its militarized drug fighting operations. The US itself had no militarized drug war until after the crack epidemic had sent crime rates through the roof.

The chart makes the same assumption. It adds a few costs it admits are invented, and lumps them together with not only the cost of the drug war, but also things like "lost wages due to incarceration." Incarceration doesn't usually cause people to stop working; most of the people who're in prison would be unemployed if they were out. They'd be able to spend more money, creating more jobs, but as they're likely to be poor, this would only increase the total number of jobs by a fraction of the total number of nonviolent drug offenders to be released.

[doyle Saylor]

Alon Levy writes;
You seem to be saying that if drugs are legalized, people will no longer be addicted

Doyle;
Addiction is not a crime. Addiction is a behavior abuse structure imparted by abuse systems in society. So if you are poor and society heaps problems on you such as the extreme abuse in prisons then addiction is a behavioral outcome of the systemic process. Cleaning up abuse structures rather than relying on them to control the population reduces addiction.

Quoting the online New Yorker -
Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.

It wasn’t always like this. The wide-scale use of isolation is, almost exclusively, a phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1890, the United States Supreme Court came close to declaring the punishment to be unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in the case of a Colorado murderer who had been held in isolation for a month, Justice Samuel Miller noted that experience had revealed “serious objections” to solitary confinement:

A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover suffcient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all

Doyle;
One can't discuss the issue of drugs legalization without directly confronting abuse structures built into the system to maintain the status quo. The crack epidemic is a racist interpretation of the implementation on a national scale of African American imprisonment. Rather than let a radical sub culture develop into a serious threat, the government used moralistic anti-drug campaigns as a cover to incarcerate and tamp down rebellion in African Americans.

As an added benefit, creating suffering fosters addiction behaviors to cope. So any lower working class person is subject to police repression as a matter of course because they are 'addicts'.

[parse]

And even decriminalization doesn't solve every problem. Prostitution is legal in Germany and the Netherlands, but that hasn't stopped Eastern European mobsters from making hefty profits smuggling women into Germany and forcing them to work as prostitutes.

In this analogy, legalizing prostitution is compared to decriminalizing drugs. But what are you suggesting is analogous to the women forced to work as prostitutes? Should we worry that opium poppies will be forced to work as heroin? I don't think anyone has claimed that decriminalization solves every problem, so is there a point to your comparison other than that decriminalization is not a panacea?

[NoBuddy]

Alon Levy writes;
“You seem to be saying that if drugs are legalized, people will no longer be addicted, and no longer commit crime.”

It wasn't clear who that was addressed to, but, with the exception of marijuana, I'm not in favor of legalization, in the sense that drugs should be available at the corner store.

In the case of marijuana, I think the actions of too large a segment of the population is being criminalized. I think that drug is no more dangerous if people are educated to ingest it by means other than smoking it (for the same reasons one shouldn't smoke cigaretts. ;-)

In the case of heroin and cocaine/crack addiction, once the person is addicted, there is a change in body chemistry that causes craving. Hence it is primarily a medical problem. I've known maybe 2 dozen crack addicts, and only 1 was successfully rehabilitated. The rest are still paying into a black market cash flow. Since rehabilitation isn't very successful, I would in addition make maintenance prescriptions available, perhaps at dosing centers, to cut off the cash flow to the black markets. I am not in favor of libertarian style legalization, because I would want some inpediments so people don't get into something that they can't get out of.

I think that policies that provide financial incentives to addict new users is stupid, expensive, and most of all, immoral. By providing maintanence prescriptions to people who are already addicted, we send a message that there is no money in addicting new users.

Don't know a lot about the crime situation in France, but if they have policies that feed a black market cash flow, then, they'll have crime problems in the financing of that cash flow.