As for the drug war, I defer to the expert -- the person who has put his life and the lives of his family in danger to take the fight to drug traffickers: Mexican President Felipe Calderon.Huh-huh, he said, "joint efforts."
He has strongly condemned Proposition 19, saying that it reflects lax attitudes toward drug consumption in the United States, which is the life's blood of the drug trade.
Calling the growing acceptance of marijuana use by the American public absurd, Calderon warns that should the measure be adopted, it would only drive up demand and undercut joint efforts by the United States and Mexico to combat the drug cartels. It's a subject he knows well.
But drugs certainly are a subject Calderon knows well. After all, it's been barely a year since we read this:
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging government-financed treatment for drug dependency free of charge.The president who signed the bill decriminalizing casual drug use in Mexico?
Felipe Calderon. Go figure.
* his deference to the Mexican president over American policy aside, I found Navarette's most interesting statement to be this one: "If you decide that exposure to a given substance... is harmful to individuals and the rest of society, then you will naturally put in place laws that make it illegal to possess the product." It would be difficult to find a simpler recipe for totalitarianism anywhere. If you're not going to defend the rights of people to possess things that could harm them, how can you defend their right to possess ideas that might also do so?
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If the crop is grown and distributed domestically, then Mexican gfangs and mexican "agricultural workers" don't see any benefit from it. Even if it results in higher demand, that demand will be satisfied from higher domestic production.
Net result = Less cross border drug trafficing. Something Calderon should favor.
The simple fact is that pot is easy enough to grow everywhere in the USA so people can depend on local production. The cost will drop and transportation and border bribery can be factored out.
I personally don't see pot use even becoming more in demand than it is already. Almost everyone who wants to already uses it and can get as much as they want.
Most of the US population will still see it as a vice and abstain.
So the logical conclusion is that he doesn't want to see lower demand.
The logical conclusion is that he doesn't want to see lower demnd for Mexican producers and distributors.
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