The War on Drugs and 40 Years of Escalation on the Border
Forty years ago the Woodstock Nation inadvertently marked the end of the 1960s Summer of Love even as it became the enduring symbol of it. The other enduring symbol to emerge from 1969 was a policy focus on drug use, identified as a national security threat by President Richard Nixon in a July 14 address to the nation that year.
It was the official beginning of the War on Drugs. While it was a war fought in border zones all over the U.S. -- as my friend, poet Bobby Byrd notes, borders can be more than physical lines separating countries -- there was an impact specific to the community in which I now live, the El Paso borderplex.
In 1969, the border was closed for Operation Intercept. The lives of people here, so often lived on both sides of the border, changed a little for the worse. Freedom was a little less free. The border has been called a "constitution-free" zone. War zones tend to be that way.
When I moved to El Paso in 1982, it shocked me to have to pass through Border Patrol checkpoints on the highways on the way out of the area. More recently, driving down the Columbus Highway along the border from El Paso heading west through New Mexico, I saw military vehicles and personnel.
I live about a mile from the border, and can see Juarez from the yard in front of my apartment. Helicopters regularly fly so close overhead that my windows rattle. About two weeks ago, 19 people were (shot? massacred? butchered? how does one describe such a thing?) in front of a drug treatment clinic in Downtown Juarez only blocks from the border. As a friend said, if you had been in downtown El Paso that night, you might have heard the shots.
While the vast majority of the overt violence has taken place in Juarez in the form of public executions, massacres and mutilations, El Paso suffers as well. Less than two weeks ago, a man was kidnapped in daylight in front of witnesses -- schoolchildren -- in Horizon City, a suburb of El Paso. Days later, he was found dead in Juarez, hands cut off and nailed to his chest. This was a very rare event on the El Paso side. But as many El Pasoans have been killed in Juarez as in El Paso this year, and anecdotally, it's a rare El Pasoan who hasn't heard first-hand stories of violence from friends, family or business acquaintances in Juarez (and it's a rare El Pasoan who doesn't have friends, family or business acquaintances in Juarez).
Prohibition has created a vast black market for drugs. The only forces able to respond to market demand are criminal. The only force available to counter is law enforcement. This cycle has metastasized on the border and around the world, and with each turn of the wheel everything escalates - the sophistication of criminal enterprises, the violence, the police and paramilitary response, the prison system, the toll on communities and countries where the war is not just a metaphor.
There's a particular irony here. Almost 100 years ago, El Paso was one of the first cities in the nation to pass a local ordinance against marijuana. Those were tense times, with revolution in Mexico and El Paso an outpost of the United States on the lawless border. There was more than a touch of hysteria and fear of Mexicans behind the decision.
Fear in the beginning led to fear in the 1930s, the "Reefer Madness" era during which the drug war law enforcement apparatus began to be built. It was institutionalized 40 years ago, when fear of rapid change and the social challenges of the 1960s and '70s helped drive the policy beyond law enforcement and beyond the U.S.
In Juarez, more than 3,000 people have been killed since the beginning of 2008. In the 40 years since Woodstock and the War on Drugs, how many have been killed in villages in South America, or inner city streets in the U.S.? When is it time to give peace a chance?
Sito Negron is editor of the online journal NewspaperTree.com and a member of the organizing committee for the Global Public Policy Forum on the War on Drugs, to take place Sept. 20-22 in El Paso and Juarez. For more information, check warondrugsconference.utep.edu.
Follow Sito Negron on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NewspaperTree
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I'm not an expert on how to do this and maybe it can't even be accomplished:
Why can't we torch the fields growing these drugs in Mexico and Asia. We now have satellites that can distinguish these lands and we certainly have the technology to do it. I know that this would be an economical disaster for some of these countries and politically you don't know who is helping who.
Are you serious? Tackle an internal issue by attacking foreign nations? I'm pretty sure some people from a different country attacked us a few years back for something only one industry (financial) instigated.
Want to end the war on drugs? Get rid of the rehad centers. We pay millions in tax dollars every year to keep these centers going. But why? Rehab centers have an 80% failure rate. That's right, 80% of those that go to rehab go back again and again. Why? Because the prevailing treatments are a waste. AA may help a lot of alchoholics but is a wasted program for drugs. It is time to bring back a sense of toughness to treatment. Evrey treatment center knows that a person will quit using when and only when they themselves decide to stop. It matters not the reason for stopping, for everyone has different reasons for everything they do. A person usually hits what is known as bottom then they change. That is human nature and must be considered. Also there is a shocking fact that we ignore experience. The person stopped with a blood alcohol level of .28 is no beginning drinker. Their body has adjusted to the poison in their system and they can ingest more than normal. A 20 year pot smoking veteran is not going to "gateway" to other drugs as they have found their drug. We are acting stupidly because there is money to be made in this fake war. Time to wise up?
And your solution would be to imprison them? Portugal has the most "progressive" drug laws in the world (no imprisonment for substance abuse, drug courts, rehabilitation) and has had the biggest DECREASE in addiction, drug related crime, and usage of so called "hard drugs."
Seems to me that facts and examples are out there, it's just a question of if we will face them.
It's more a war on people than a war on drugs. If they were going to "win" the war on (some) drugs they would have won by now, besides they don't to win because then they couldn't make themselves feel better by telling people what they can and cannot put in their bodies.
The only winners in the War on Drugs are the drug dealers (higher prices) and the prison-industrial complex (jobs).
It's ridiculous here also, I'm so sick of it, I try to tune it out, but it's here.
Teens And Duct Tape Are Drug Smugglers' Latest Tactic
By Amy Isackson (KPBS)
September 16, 2009
http://www
Three officers shot dead, one wounded in Tijuana
2:00 a.m. September 19, 2009
http://www
"a policy focus on drug use, identified as a national security threat by President Richard Nixon"
Nixon thought smoking pot turned people into liberals. (It's on the tapes.)
Yup, and FBI founder JE Hoover exchanged memo's to that effect.
The USA has 1.5 Million POLITICAL prisoners, caught up in the conservative war on peace protesting hippies.
The war on drugs seems like something thought up by a crook and a cross dresser.
My son must go to Juarez every couple of months on business. A few years ago, they always stayed in Juarez. Now they spend 4 hours crossing the border back and forth each day because the city is essentially a war zone and not safe for anyone. 20,000+ Mexican army troops patrol the streets. 60- 70 people are killed everyday. He's not given to being particuarly emotional, I asked him one day, how does this affect their employee's lives. He looked at me and said 'Mom, I can't get what I see out of my mind. I can't image raising my daughter in such violence.' Tears were welling in his eyes.
And all for what? The US is their market. If the market is gone (and they're are ways other than complete legalization) to shut down the maket. We are as much, if not more to blame than Mexcico. 40 years and it hasn't work? Duh...mayb
More have died from the war on Marijuana than have been killed by the actual drug.
Dead from Marijuana overdose = 0 (in the entire history on mankind in fact).
What the hell is this fight about again?
The only way to die from marijuana is to drop a hundred pounds of it on your head. This social policy is at the heart of the split between conservatives and liberals ... as describe a decade ago in a Playboy magazine article, what harm is there in crimes of conscious?
We have to choose what we know is right, elsewise we find ourselves engulfed in the consequences of our own malfeasance. Better known as sin.
The law cannot regulate sin. In fact, the Constitution is designed to afford Federalism only the right to protect the Union and to regulate interstate commerce. But the elastic clause has been stretched to taffy and now the federal government employs sooooo many people that preserving the system has become the mantra of a mass systemic stupidity.
Federalism and the victory in the civil war brought an end to slavery and upon us the terror that is the Federal government. Laws. Endless tomes of laws. So much so, that our Congress doesn't even take the time to read everything that they make into laws ...
Stop writing blank checks.
Stop spending money we don't have.
Stop promising the sky? ... yeah, not likely.
Instead, out of the G20 summit, Obama will dance Bernanke around because he "saved" the economy by enslaving an entire generation in debt owed to a PRIVATE corporation: the Federal Reserve is a sham.
Dear Dale.
My husband is a 71 year old Internist and he told me he has NEVER seen an OD from Cannabis-but the legal drug of alcohol is one of the top killers in USA.
The fight is about the need to demonize and blame somebody else for the problems in the USA and the Mexicans were deemed the 'demons' in the 1930's during The Depression.
I often wonder about what the ancients inhaled as incense when they wrote about their dreams, visions and messages from God-who in Genesis said he created all seed bearing plants and said they were GOOD!
Its not as much a war on drugs as it is a backdoor tax on we the people .Do you all remember Iran Contra where the cia brought in and sold cocain in the us to fund that black op?When you cant fund it through Congress fund it through drugs,why the hell are we in Afganistan?I think its for the opium more so than for Al-Qaeda,hell the bombs and personel we have there are worth more than the stuff they blow up!
Why would anyone think that legalizing drugs is a good idea? We have enough people abusing alcohol and tobacco. Why encourage drug use? Legalizing marijuana will not stop illegal growing and selling. It will just add another layer to the problem. People who deal drugs, or work for cash, are not going to go legit and pay taxes. If drug dealers want to kill each other, let them. Yes, many people already use drugs. Surely you realize that legalizing them will encourage even more use. Just what we need...eve
Legalizing marijuana (if not over taxed) will absolutely stop illegal growing (it's legal now--get it?) and selling (no money in it--we grow our own- get it?). No, I obviously don't get it.
And Single Payer Health Insurance will end almost all malpractice lawsuits. If conservatives want to save money the answer is at hand.
They're just too hide-bound stupid to see that.
Hey Simple, a few points. First, Alcohol is a far worse drug than marijuana. I've had experience with both and I never got into a brawl while on pot. Can't say the same about alcohol. Also, tens of thousands of people die each year from cirrosis, heard disease, etc. related to alcohol use. How many millions of broken families are there in this country, broken by alcohol. How many kids and wives get beaten each night by drunk fathers? I spent a year teaching those kids, kids turned violent by the abuse of their parents. I even learned to recognize the facial features of fetal alcohol syndrome.
Next, just because something is available doesn't mean that people will be stupid enough to use it. Cocain was about as easy to get in the upper middle class suburban school as booze was, and most of us chose not to use it. Even with the hard drugs, very few people die each year relative to booze and tobacco, something around 15,000. I wonder how many of those people are killed by varying drug potencies?
We won't become a nation of addicts. Give me a break. You are going to have to think of something better than that, you sound intelligent, step to the plate.
Also, we're wasting billions and billions on this drug war. The war is turning our neighbor to the south into a failed state.
Time to legalize drugs, your arguments are weak and tired, Simple, weak and tired.
I have spent over 25 years dealing with kids from homes where substance abuse is an issue. And I have seen kids who are high get in fights...n
Boy, someone spent a little too much time watching the DARE commercial
That was an ad hominem abusive statement that almost made sense. I hope we can all agree that the media has a huge effect on popular belief, good or bad.
"Why would anyone think that legalizing drugs is a good idea?"
You might not feel that way if it were you or your children locked up. These are real human beings being locked up for doing something less dangerous than riding a bicycle.
Open your mind enough to read this new book. (If you have kids you owe it to yourself to do so):
"Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?"
It's available on Amazon.
More have died from the war on Marijuana than have been killed by the actual drug. Dead from Marijuana overdose = 0 (in the entire history on mankind in fact).
This drug war is doing way more human damage than good. Then there is the money:
* DEA
* Lawyers
* Prisons (many are for-profit! Sound familiar?)
* Local and Federal law enforcement
* Forgone income to the prohibition generated criminal enterprise.
* College age children banished from obtaining college loans.
* College age children encouraged to drink alcohol because of disproportionate punishment for pot.
It's a public health problem. It should be treated like alcohol and tobacco. Education and unfettered access to treatment should be the approach. Sending these people to jail is just crazy.
In essence these people are being charged with a crime against themselves and that just doesn't make sense. Do you go to jail for riding a bicycle without a helmet? Do you go to jail for smoking tobacco? Of course not. These are considered personal
Your prohibitionist talk is so 20th century.
This is an unfortunate part of a larger manipulation: confiscate the drugs, sell them back to the "black market," confiscate them again. The cycle continues, and the cash rolls in. Don't believe that this is about stopping people from hurting themselves. Alchohol is pushed everywhere at every function, and then the DUI checkpoints spring up with fines and money for the for-profit prison system. Meanwhile, we are still years away from having anything like a public transportation system in most cities. It's really about the money. No matter how much you tax and regulate the drugs, it's not going to bring in more profit than Confiscate/ Sell on the "black market,"/ Confiscate again.
And since the "war on drugs" makes no logical sense, it must make financial sense to someone.
Beer and liquor companies know where their bread is buttered !!!
This so called war on drugs has been a cash cow for the military industrial complex for 40 years. Republicans do like their never ending wars, that's for sure.
cash cow for the prison industry, too.
Your statement is classical ad hominem abusive for which, I doubt, you have any documentation. Life's a Beach!!!!
The War on Drugs, whether looked at by this micro view or a macro view, must end. It is the War, not the drugs, causing the harm.
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