Former Mexican President Vicente Fox made a passionate and powerful call for an end to the war on drugs and called on the United States to legalize drugs to help reduce the violence in Mexico in an interview with BBC TV this week. Fox is critical of current Mexican President Calderon and the U.S. government's counterproductive "drug control" strategy -- and says they are responsible for the 50,000 prohibition-related deaths in Mexico in just the last five years.
Fox explains that the United States should learn from the history of alcohol prohibition and that the answer to today's violence is to legalize drugs and treat them as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue.
When the BBC reporter implies that he is naïve to think the US will legalize drugs, Fox points out that public opinion is changing rapidly. He mentions that a Gallup poll this week showed for the first time that 50 percent of Americans support making marijuana legal.
President Fox is part of a growing choir of world leaders speaking out against the drug war. This summer, the Global Commission on Drug Policy made worldwide news when they called for far-reaching changes in the global drug prohibition regime -- including not just alternatives to incarceration and greater emphasis on public health approaches to drug use but also decriminalization and experiments in legal regulation. The Commission is comprised of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan; Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group; four former presidents, including the commission's chairman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil; George P. Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State; Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; and several other distinguished world leaders.
Building on the Global Commission, there will be a major event on November 15th, organized by the libertarian CATO Institute, called "Ending the Global War," featuring heavy hitters like former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Castaneda, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Mary Anastasia O'Grady and others.
The voices rising up against the failed drug war are not only at the "grasstops" level. Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed earlier this year in drug war violence, has mobilized tens of thousands of people across Mexico to demand an end to the war. Sicilia is participating in the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Los Angeles, where more than 1,000 people from around the world -- including many formerly incarcerated people and other victims of the drug war -- are going to meet on November 2nd-5th.
President Fox and Javier Sicilia are pointing out the obvious: the war on drugs has failed. We need to join them. We need to find an exit strategy from this unwinnable war.
Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org)
Follow Tony Newman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TonyNewmanDPA
Mexico's Ex-Leader Vicente Fox: Legalize Drugs to End War - TIME
I still need more information, please. Which "drugs"? Marijuana and meth are so different in every way that it makes no sense to me not to clearly differentiate when discussing legality.
"To help reduce the violence in Mexico..."
Seriously? There are many good reasons to consider legalizing marijuana in the USA, but that is not one of them.
I was "asking" Vicente Fox to be more specific. He "called on the United States to legalize drugs to help reduce the violence in Mexico". "Drugs" is a rather broad term, and "it (still) makes no sense to me not to clearly differentiÂate when discussing legality". I did read many of the posts here and-- are you seriously implying that I would not know the difference between Marijuana and meth?. Please... Thanks for the name-calling, by the way, and the "intellectual decency" comment. ;>)
Corporate greed and individual bigotry have accelerated us towards a situation where all the usual peaceful and democratic methods needed to reverse the acute damage done by prohibition no longer function as envisaged by the Founding Fathers of our once great and free nation. Such a political impasse coupled with great economic tribulation is precisely that which throughout history has invariably ignited violent revolution.
In order to avert what will surely be a far more violent situation than we are all presently experiencing, there appears to be just one last avenue left to us - Jury Nullification.
Jury Nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. All non-violent drug offenders who are not selling to children, be they users, dealers or importers, fall into this category. If you believe that prohibition is a dangerous and counter-productive policy, then you don’t have to help to apply it. Under the Constitution, when it comes to acquittals, you, the juror, have the last word!
But since Mexico does not control our Congress, perhaps they should for once lead the way and start by legalizing them on their own. That might force our government to act.
It might also help them to get control of the drug trade in their own country. Staging a massive Drug War has done them far more harm than good. If something obviously is not working, changing the strategy is the logical thing to do.
They ask alot of the US. So far they haven't tried to get us to change by leading by example. This could be their moment.
Your move.
Legalization: A status where responsible adults may legally acquire, possess, and use a particular drug, although there may be restrictions on time, place and manner. Legal does not mean unregulated. In fact, when it comes to drugs, most supporters of legalization call for some regulation and control.
Consider gasoline. It is an extremely dangerous substance — it can cause severe health problems or death if inhaled, can be fashioned into an explosive and can cause damaging fires. It is a legal substance (responsible adults may acquire, possess, and use it), but it is subject to control and regulation. It can only be sold by licensed dealers, and there are regulations as to how it may be used, in what kind of containers it may be stored, and so forth.
Legalization of drugs is fully compatible with regulatory efforts restricting access to children, forbidding use while driving or while working in safety-sensitive jobs, banning use in certain locations or situations, controlling the means for manufacture and distribution, and creating purity and potency standards.
Your move!
Now, you say «Staging a massive Drug War has done them more harm than good.» But you seem to forget that it is the US, the largest consumer in the world and the most belligerent drug warrior, who is promoting, enforcing and perpetuating the insanity the War on Drugs policies are.
Perhaps, it would do you a lot of good to listen to the talk former Mexican president Vicente Fox gave at the Cato Institute a couple of days ago. You will find the link in my previous comment here.
Your move!
Best way to get the criminals out of a business is to legalize it (unless it's banking, that is!)
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=8452
Please, make the talk go viral, it is, in my humble opinion, that important!
I wonder what length we as Americans would go to if we buried 10,000 Americans a year over prohibition violence.
Educate, Legalize, Regulate, Tax.
I wholeheartedly endorse the Global Commission on Drug Policy report. Moreover, I do believe it is an extremely valuable contribution to the debate and my hope is that it will play a significant strategic role in the fight against Prohibition and the War on Drugs, not just because of what it says, but perhaps equally important, because of who says it.
Having said that, I do have to confess that I am rather confused as to what the Commission report says, or more precisely does not say, regarding the supply side of the drug market and more specifically, regarding the legalisation and regulation of drug supply.
Even though the Commission report does not reject the need to consider «alternative models of market regulation», it falls short of making a clear and unambiguous case for supply legalisation and regulation. It does not make explicit, for instance, what “alternative models†it has in mind and whether those models could be applied effectively to the supply side of the drug market, nor does it consider what effects they are likely to have on the supply of drugs as a whole.
Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me that when it comes to trying to resolve the so-called drug problem, the Commission report tends to rely quite heavily, if not exclusively, on demand side models rather than those on the supply side.
Calderon ended up signing the bill when he came to office (possession of small quantities of all drugs, even heroin, is no longer a crime in Mexico), but he also started this disastrous offensive against the cartels that has turned Mexico into a war zone. The month before Calderon came into office, the homicide rate in Mexico was less than half the rate in the US. Two years after he began his offensive, the homicide rate was higher than Iraq. It has been been climbing exponentially every since.
Fox was on the right track. He had the unfortunate luck of being in office at the same time as Bush.
If it's grown in America, we take away half the Mexican drug cartels market and reason for violence.
Take the profit out of criminalizÂing marijuana; liquor lobbyists, Big Pharma, bail bond chains, and private prisons profit from marijuana criminalizÂation. Municipal, state, and federal law enforcemenÂt agencies use "search and seizure" laws to finance their tight budgets.
All drugs (including heroin) should be available by prescription at Walmart and CVS for a reasonable co-pay.
There is no way the drug cartels can compete with Walmart and CVS as they will drive most of the profitability out of the market.
The harsh reality is some humans are just addictive and trying to "protect" them from their own behavior is a waste of my time and money. If people want to sit around all day in a drugged out state, as long as they don't commit any crime against another person or property and charities feed them, so be it.
Just out of curiosity, any mouse, would you advocate "free market principles" regarding immigration? I would, would you?
«Consumer countries are morally obliged to reduce their vast economic demand. If you can’t cut it, cut the economic profits. You have to find how to staunch this demand. Seek out all possible options, including market alternatives, so that drugs trafficking ceases to be a source of violence in Latin America …»
I do believe that now is a golden opportunity for drug producing countries to unite around a common purpose: to put an end to Prohibition and the War on Drugs. It is time that Latin America give their unconditional support to Felipe Calderón’s call for Legalisation & Regulation to solve the so-called drug problem.
There is no doubt that rejecting or opposing Prohibition and the War on Drugs might carry huge costs in term of retaliations by the “international communityâ€, i.e. by the US, the largest consumer of drugs in the world and the most belligerent war on drugs warrior. What we should always keep in mind is that no price can be higher than the one drug producing countries have already paid and will continue to pay as long as this insane and irrational regime remains in place.
I have to say, I wholeheartedly share Fox’s analysis. There are two things, however, that might be worth highlighting. On the one hand, it is still a mystery to me why Fox did not join (or was not invited to join?) neither the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, nor the Global Commission on Drug Policy, considering that Fox was expressing similar opinions well before they had published their respective reports — It is interesting to note, too, that in a similar fashion to the Latin American ex-presidents that signed both reports, Fox didn’t oppose the US drug policy while in power, either. I supposed, that’s Realpolitiks for you. (As it is always the case in politics, more daring alternative explanations have been intimated…who knows?) Whatever the case, his vocal demands are most welcome.
The second thing to consider is whether Fox’s stance on drugs is guided by ulterior political motives, for although I share the questions raised by Fox regarding the current situation in Mexico, he gives no credit to recent declarations given by the current president, Felipe Calderón, both in Mexico and in the US.
Even though Calderón had in the past expressed reservations about drug legalisation, he has somewhat somehow changed his tune and he now shows a more favourable position regarding legalisation — admittedly, for political and strategic reasons, he uses “market alternativesâ€, but the implication is obvious. This is what he said recently:
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