In the months leading up to today's vote on California's Proposition 19 to legalize recreational use of marijuana, opponents of legalization have issued a barrage of confused and contradictory arguments. Their aim is to somehow debunk the common-sense fact that legal sourcing erodes the black-market profits of organized crime.
The most recent argument thrown out in the anti-Prop. 19 campaign, claims that the California marijuana market is insignificant to Mexican drug traffickers.
That argument was blown out of the water on October 18 when the Mexican Army and police seized 134 tons of marijuana, wrapped and ready to be smuggled from Tijuana across the border. The huge cache was estimated to be worth at least $338 million dollars on the street. Mexican authorities guessed that it was owned by the nation's most powerful drug-trafficking organization, the Sinaloa Cartel.
Even if much of that is distributed to other states, the sheer size of the potential shipment shows that the U.S. marijuana market for Mexican traffickers, calculated at $20 billion a year, is well worth fighting for. Since before Prop. 19 came along, reports showed that Mexico's drug cartels were concerned about how U.S. production and legalization of medical marijuana cut into their profits.
Prohibition creates the underground market that generates their economic, political and military strength. With the drop in income from marijuana sales, cartels have less money for buying arms and politicians, or recruiting young people into the trade.
The drug cartels also consider the marijuana black market worth killing for. Just days after the historic bust, thirteen young men were massacred at a drug rehabilitation center. An anonymous voice came over police radio saying the act was "a taste of Juarez" and that up to 135 people could be murdered in retaliation for the bust--one per ton.
Although calculating Mexican cartel earnings from marijuana sales will always be a guessing game, it's indisputable that as long as it's illegal every penny of those earnings goes into the pockets of organized crime. From the peasant who converts his land from corn to pot to feed his family, to the truckdriver who takes on a bonus cargo, to the Mexican and U.S. border officials who open "windows" in international customs controls, to the youth gangs who sell in U.S. cities--all are sucked into a highly organized and brutal system of contraband.
Legalization in part of the world's leading market would take a huge chunk out of this transnational business.
The government of Mexican president Felipe Calderon, along with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, has redoubled efforts in U.S. media and international forums to oppose the California legalization measure. This is not surprising. These two nations are deeply entrenched in a military-model drug war that has channeled a combined total of nearly $9 billion dollars in U.S. government funds to their governments. As in any war, powerful political and economic interests are at stake in perpetuating the drug war.
It's interesting to see what they say though. Neither President Santos nor Calderon argue that legalization will strengthen drug cartels. Instead, both complain that legalization will erode their drug war by heightening the contradiction between violent crackdowns on growers and traffickers in their countries and the lax attitude toward consumption of marijuana in the United States.
At a recent meeting of the Tuxtla Dialogue in Cartagena, Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said, "It's confusing for our people to see that, while we lose lives and invest resources in the fight against drug trafficking, in consuming countries initiatives like California's referendum are being promoted."
It's about time that contradiction was exposed. But the way to resolve it is not to increase fumigation operations that destroy peasant livelihoods and the environment and seizures of marijuana shipments that lead to the deaths of innocent civilians, while further criminalizing consumption in the U.S. The way to resolve it is to halt ineffective measures to stop marijuana use, and focus scarce resources on attacking the financial and violent aspects of transnational organized crime, and providing employment and services for vulnerable sectors. Legalization of marijuana, in addition to reducing the economic base of the cartels, frees up resources to do just that.
In a report from the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil called for discussion on legalizing marijuana, noting, "Prohibitionist policies based on the eradication of production and on the disruption of drug flows as well as on the criminalization of consumption have not yielded the expected results. We are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs." They add that corruption and violence have increased throughout the region as result of the strategy.
The war on drugs launched by President Felipe Calderon has led to more than 30,000 drug-related deaths since late 2006 and the skyrocketing of human rights violations committed by security forces. Last week an international Forum against militarization and violence in Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of the drug war, was disrupted when police shot a peace protester.
As Calderon insists that there is "no alternative" to the militarized drug war, a recent survey shows that three-fourths of Mexicans polled believe the drug war is failing. Particularly in border towns, grassroots organizations have formed to protest the violence and high social costs. Meanwhile, the government has largely bypassed non-violent ways to reduce the power of cartels, such as legalization, anti-money laundering efforts and social programs to strengthen affected communities in favor of the military/police model supported by the U.S. government.
Organized crime is a business. Reducing demand through providing legal sources hurts that business. Hardline rhetoric and wars of statistics cannot change that fundamental equation.
Follow Laura Carlsen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cipamericas
Ethan Nadelmann: Marijuana Legalization: Not If, But When
Making it legal would mean California would have been a legal distribution hub for Mexican drug cartels to spread marijuana across the country.
The Mexican cartels already grow significant amounts of pot in CA. Even if the CA market dries up considerably for them, they'll continue to export it from CA to other states. They would still be illegal under Prop 19 if they are large operations. If they are successfully hidden now, they'll just stay that way.
The seizure at the CA border is large - but who knows if any of it was even destined for CA, or that was just the point of entry before sending it elsewhere, like the East Coast of the U.S.?
Prop 19 won't eliminate the national demand for pot, or successful clandestine cultiviation and distribution in CA and it won't provide sales tax revenue. In short, it won't do most of what it promises.
It will legalize small amounts for personal use, and that will take the casual user possesing that amount out of the criminal justice system and save some money, but that's all it will do. Large scale cultivation and distribution will still be illegal, and still profitable.
YES ON 19!
:) 'ere
By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ in Legislation, Medical, News Tuesday, Nov. 2 2010 @ 11:33AM
The Iowa Board of Pharmacy on Tuesday morning reclassified marijuana as a drug with medicinal purposes. The Board agreed to change cannabis from a Schedule One to a Schedule Two drug.
The new classification by the Board means that marijuana is now considered to have accepted medical use in treatment, reports Angie Hunt at KCCI in Des Moines.
Previously, as a Schedule One drug, marijuana was regarded as having no proven or acceptable medical uses.
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2010/11/iowa_board_of_pharmacy_reclassifies_marijuana_as_m.php
Full legalization is the only way to both profit from it as a state, and control the illegal flow of weed, people, weapons and additional crime into the area.
I live in San Diego, right on the border...it's insane--but cartels remain robust BECAUSE people here can't openly grow and sell. Change that, change the cartels, at least remove some of the fangs and then work on additional measures to deal with organized crime.
Organized crime was against the lifting of Prohibition back in the day too...do you want organized crime...of any nature or country....making decisions for you and yours?
You say that "California has legalized medical marijuana," but cartels still thrive in their sales of marijuana. Are you saying that Prop. 19 would be superfluous because marijuana already is legal in California, and it hasn't dented the cartels' drug enterprise? Have you considered that the non-medicinal, black-market -- and therefore illegal -- demand for marijuana dwarfs the "legal" medical-marijuana market, and that this is why cartels are still raking in the dough?
The RAND study also is confusing, not to mention rife with questionable assumptions and its own inherent bias against marijuana. It contends that Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) earn much less money from marijuana sales than is typically portrayed (by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, by the way). The inescapable implication of this claim is that drug cartels don't earn much money from marijuana, and so don't present much of a problem.
Whatever their muddled thinking and fractured reasoning, the RAND authors do state this: "We believe that legalizing marijuana in California would effectively eliminate Mexican DTOs’ revenues from supplying Mexican-grown marijuana to the California market."