Cato Unbound Looks at the Mexican Drug War

Prohibiting marijuana, or any drug for that matter, is as ineffective and destructive as prohibiting candy would be. Too many people ignore the prohibition and buy from whoever's willing to sell to them. It's been this way for the entire seventy years of the prohibition and it'll be this way forever.

The prohibition doesn't even come close at achieving its primary goal of preventing marijuana from being used, instead its supporters are forced to tell us that the prohibition's important because it "sends a message". Well the government doesn't need a $40 billion-a-year prohibition to send a message - if they want to send a message they can hold a press conference, or put up billboards, or add whatever they've got to say to the D.A.R.E. program. They do NOT need to be wasting taxpayers' money on a prohibition that doesn't prevent people from using the very thing it's prohibiting!

But the massive waste of taxpayer's money and the 2,000 prohibition-related arrests every day are nothing compared with the real cost of the prohibition. The $8 - $10 billion a year funneled to the cartels from all those dime bags and half-ounce sales has made them extremely powerful and ruthless. The ONDCP itself said that two-thirds of the cartel's incomes come solely from marijuana sales in the U.S. This, as the ONDCP said, is their "bread and butter", this is what they fight and kill to protect.

Last year the cartels murdered more than 6,000 people in order to protect their cash flows, this year they're on track to kill more than 7,000. With half a million men, multi-billion dollar incomes, and massive corruption of the Mexican government and police forces, the cartels are virtually unbeatable. And even if we did beat them, even if we did execute every one of their men and incarcerate every corrupt beat cop, police chief and city mayor, the murders would still continue pretty much unchanged from what we see today. In no time their shoes would be filled by other poor people able to see that if they could just grow a little weed and get it across the border they could feed their families and afford the things that'd make their lives worth living.

Until the demand for cartel weed is eliminated in the U.S. these murders will continue, and innocent children, mothers, fathers, police commanders and politicians will continue to be murdered every single day. We MUST demand the right to commercially produce and sell marijuana to adults, undercutting cartel prices, stripping them of their customers and eliminating their marijuana incomes. No business can survive the loss of two-thirds of its income! This is our ONLY option to end these brutal and needless murders. We must demand it. We MUST make it happen!

Explains, too clearly for some, why the slow 'medical marijuana march' to de-facto decriminalization including 'tax & regulation' is not going to work... just make things worse!

The 'Tax & Regulate' guys hate this kind of news. Not accusing anyone of disliking - CATO - but they tend to be too libertarian for most liberals. Just musing here?

MUST FEED MONSTER!
Thomas Paine IVXX

B.S. Gotta love DRC.net for posting it though... thx... they should read it!