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If the traffickers don’t surrender soon, drug czar John Walters will kill them with his bare hands:

U.S. drug czar John P. Walters, in Mexico City to reassure officials that aid to fight drug gangs is in the pipeline, said traffickers resort to "fear and horror" in their campaign to take over government institutions but will ultimately fail.
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Ultimately, he said, the drug lords will face a stark choice: "They surrender, or they die." [LA Times]

Walters then pulled a hand grenade from his vest and destroyed a speeding SUV from 100 yards away.

Look how AFP frames the spike in drug trade violence plaguing Mexico:

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — Almost 400 people have died in the past two weeks in an intensifying drugs war in Mexico despite a government crackdown on cartels, trafficking and related violence.

Very obviously, none of this is happening despite Calderon’s crackdown. The violence is caused by the crackdown, directly and unambiguously, in every imaginable sense. When Calderon pledged to increase drug enforcement efforts, the violence increased dramatically. That’s not an opinion, it’s what’s happened right before our eyes.

AFP sees irony in the fact that the violence has increased during a drug war crackdown, as though the logical assumption is that an aggressive drug war would reduce violence. It won’t, it never has, and it never will no matter what. The drug war will not make peace. It won’t change the weather, either. And it won’t make you a sandwich. All it will ever do is cause violence. Just watch.

If our drug policy made sense, 6-year-old children wouldn’t be kidnapped in blackmarket business disputes:

Cole was snatched Wednesday in what police are calling a drug-related kidnapping. Three armed men tied up his mother and her fiance and ransacked the home, taking the boy when no money was found, police said.

A nationwide Amber Alert was canceled because police believed it had "run its course," Cannito said Saturday.

Police say Cole's grandfather, Clemons F. Tinnemeyer, 51, had been involved in "significant drug dealing" and may have taken millions of dollars from drug dealers. Authorities say the kidnapping may have been in retaliation for the theft. [CNN]

Cole is safe now, thankfully. But as long as the drug war continues, these kinds of things will never stop happening and they won’t always end peacefully. There’s a reason Anheuser-Busch and R.J. Reynolds don’t kidnap children when a retailer is late on a payment.

Any measure of the drug war’s costs and benefits is incomplete unless it accounts for the role of drug prohibition in motivating horrible crimes like this.

Until the selection of Joe Biden as his running mate there was some hope that Barack Obama would at the very least do no harm in the drug theater.Biden is poison to drug reform and to the whole drug i

Sometimes, with all the innocent people being killed, it’s easy to forget how much fun the drug war can be:

Educators in West Seattle may have discovered a new way to control 484 wildly cheering children: a burly federal agent wearing camouflage and brandishing a bullhorn.

It was unclear who was having more fun, the kids or the cops, at the culmination Thursday of several days of drug prevention programs at the Holy Rosary School in West Seattle.

The three letter agencies were there: DEA, ICE, FBI. As children wearing red sweaters and blue pants or tartan skirts lined 42nd Avenue Southwest, agents in raid jackets, swat gear and even hazardous-material suits slapped palms with the pumped-up youngsters. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Jodie Underwood -- dressed in black and packing her service revolver -- looked armed and dangerous until she turned toward a bunch of 8-year- olds with a grin on her face and asked: "Are you guys having fun?" [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Well, at least the cops and a bunch of 8-year-olds are having a good time.

Some links from our friends at Reason:

report on California's Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA), Prop. 5 hitting the ballot next month; and video of rally supporting Charlie Lynch, former medical marijuana provider facing a possible life sentence in court next month

Here's the video:

I am fed up with the war on drugs, in a democracy the people are responsible for the leaders they elect and the policies those elected officials enact in to laws, so we must educate the citizens to