Sensible Drug Policy

Security efforts fail. Mexican drug wars rage on.

A family of 4, including two young toddlers, are brutally murdered on a US highway because of Mexican drug wars. A Mexican folk singer releases violent videos on the Internet, only to be murdered in cold blood during a concert a few months later, also because of Mexican drug wars. Bodies of Mexican immigrants are found with their throats cut, bodies bearing signs of torture from electric shock.

The Mexican drug cartels’ bloody war has left a body count of more than 6,000 in its wake.

That’s more than either death toll in the Iraq or Afghanistan Wars.

The Drug War trudges on, leaving bodies in its path. It’s not a war for our children’s souls anymore; it’s a brutal and literal life and death struggle that is spilling over the Mexican border and into the suburbia of the United States.

It’s a bloody war fueled by the demand for illegal drugs surging in the United States, according to Roderic Ai Camp, a Mexico expert at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Such blood and violence recently prompted Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan to ask the United States to again consider the legalization of marijuana. He recently told CBS News, “Those that suggest that some of these measures need to be looked at understand the dynamics of the drug trade; you have to bring demand down and one way to do it is to move in that direction [towards legalization}…”

The violence has prompted the Obama Administration to look at tightening boarder security, including the underground weapons industry funneled into Mexico from the United States that continues to fuel the war.

Yet until we completely cut off the demand for illegal drugs, there will always be a market for these drug war lords to wage their bloody business. Guns may be the instruments, but it’s the drugs that fuel violence through their worth on the black market. Put non-dangerous drugs like marijuana on the pharmaceutical counter, and you’ll be taking a big bite of the drug cartels’ market for drugs and violence.

When will we treat drug violence by cutting off the demand? Our war on drugs is misguided at best. When we wise up and make drugs a legal, government taxed industry, we take away the market for the very black market that is killing our children and others unfortunate enough to be in the path of the drug war. No more collateral damage. Talk to your representatives today. Tell them you want a MUCH more sensible drug policy in the US.