The Other Other War on Terror

You know the single most effective thing we could do to defang the drug cartels Amy? Legalize drugs. You think Budweiser had that much of a problem putting Capone's successors out of business? You think Merck and Pfizer won't be able to shut down the Columbians just as effectively?
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Robert Kaplan predicted in "An Empire Wilderness" that Mexico's military and government would follow the police into the employ of the cartels. That prediction is looking increasingly and depressingly more and more accurate. Extra laws and more people in prisons really, really haven't worked. At all. Calling for new crackdowns and enforcement officials won't help anything.
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The line about insanity being to continue the same actions over and over again while expecting a different result doesn't just apply to criticisms of Bush/Cheney.

End the war on drugs, end the situation in Mexico. You have the beltway mentality Amy. It is not where the people are at anymore.

Feels weird to defend AS, but, did you follow the link, Sean? It's to a site that advocates stopping the drug war. It's not clear from this post what her view on this, of course. But the link is suggestive that she also thinks this is insane.

jayack
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I don't know man, its pretty confusing as to whether AS is advocating carrying on the war on drugs or advocating changing it. The acting guy we have seems to be a stay the course kinda guy. So does that mean we need a more permanent guy in to turn the heat up or to totally change the tone/ Is hard to say from the embarrasingly short post from AS what exactly she is advocating. BTW I think you meant to put the word "year" after the word last. AS

Perhaps AS will clarify for us herself. I took this post as being pro-decriminalization. The best way to diffuse conflict is at the source.

As usual, I agree. I think the "madness" comment is indicative, if not unambiguous.
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The only drug that I'm leery about legalizing is cocaine, because it sometimes makes people dangerous. Not nearly as much or as often as the alcohol/vehicle combination, but it is an issue.
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Net, the number of people killed by trying to ban it probably exceeds the number of people who would be killed by a deranged cokehead.
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Most of the damage caused by any of these drugs stems from their illegality. Heroin sold in a disposable syringe would be cheap, so the x dollar a day habit that leads to theft would be a much smaller problem, as would disease transmission through shared needles.
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I'd get rid of drug prescriptions as well.

"But it would help if we at least had a new drug czar."
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As soon as you in the media stop using the word "czar." If you want to give total power to people you are ensuring failure.

Well, I don't like the word because what it really means is "coordinator." It's like the "wars" they are always throwing around.

I vote we drop the term "czar," since I can't hear anyone called "czar" without remembering Bill Simon calling for his seal and hot wax in "Doonesbury." If we really need to use an anachronistic monarchical title, may I suggest "Autarch." Say it with me: "Auto Autarch."

Hey, this really works well - "Narc Autarch." Nice handle, eh?

Hah! A Gene Wolfe fan, I suspect.

The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. I've never bought into the gateway drug theory either. I think the people who go on to harder drugs are probably predisposed to follow that path to begin with. They just have to start somewhere. Years ago Great Britian took the stance that drug addiction was a social problem and registered heroin addicts providing them with their fixes. Crime went down and the increase in addicts was negligible. At some point pragmatism has to trump the "lock them away and throw away the key approach". Treatment is much cheaper than incarceration. I hate to single out any individual, but the Amy Winehouse situation seems custom made to serve as a cautionary tale. She's a gifted performer that could serve as the poster child for the dark side of drug addiction. There is nothing glamorous about her tragic decline. Legalization should not be viewed as an endorsement of the drug culture. It should just be looked at as an attempt to face realitiy.

Maybe Obama's choice for czar is having his/her taxes checked.

Yeah, I read through the links, but it seemed to me like AS was in favor of either permanitizing that guy or appointing someone with similar views. I could be wrong though and AS is just sneakily trying to hint that a new approach is correct.
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As far as prescription drugs go... most of them are just toned down versions (heavily cut/safe) of the illegal stuff. Ritalin is surprising close to Cocaine and Meth. Pretty much everything else outside of Viagra just does the same thing as Marijuana but with worse side effects and more priceyness. 'Cause, you know, you can't patent THC.
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The most common "gateway" drugs by far for kids/teens/whatever are the stuff they find in their parents' medicine cabinet.

you can't patent THC
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This is, of course, what is really going on. saying so is in the sphere of deviance.
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As far as gateway drugs go, I've always stuck with the "mother's milk is the ultimate gateway drug."

I don't think it was a coincidence that the interior minister's plane went down in flames in the middle of the Paseo de la Reforma (I don't know what the American equivalent of this would be. Wall Street?), either. This happened on election day and didn't get much attention here. The drug war has failed. The US not only has generated demand for illegal drugs, but by restricting land and sea routes from the Caribbean, the DEA increased the number of locations in Mexico used in drug transshipments from Latin America. We are squeezing the balloon into different shapes, not deflating it.

We won't see an enlightened drug policy as long as unprincipled pols can make hay with the current approach. We've been discussing rational drug policy for decades, all to no purpose in the continuing anti-facts environment fostered by Amy's buds in the religious right.

jarais--
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do note Sean's point. The drug war is actually a success, once you realize that the goal is keep public domain drugs off pharmacy shelves.

@ Sean: You hit the nail on the head about gateway drugs being in the parents' medicine cabinet. We're a culture where over prescribing is far too common. For sufferers of chronic pain, the prescriptions that are necessary to make it through the day are also a temptation for those who just want to get high. I was referring to marijuana being a "gateway" drug. It's easy to forget that the medicine cabinet can contain a drug abusers' playground. My wife was seriously injured in a car accident several years ago and I also have a prescription that is very popular on the street. She can take hers when she needs to, but the nature of my job precludes me from taking my medication until just before I go to bed. We don't think of ourselves as drug users, but even Elvis would have been jealous.

I hadn't thought about the War on Drugs like that before - a war on behalf of Big Pharma, against substances they can't patent. It seems to fit why very few are willing to talk about ending the drug war.
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Hah! A Gene Wolfe fan, I suspect.
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That's exactly what I thought when I saw that comment.

last...what? year? month? week?

Cliff, why do you think the bootleggers were against the end of prohibition? In politics, it's ALWAYS about some old white guys with money who want more of it.
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The drug companies in America quit curing diseases back in the 1980's when they finally figured out there wasn't any money in it. Lifestyle drugs - that's where the cash is at. And a cheap, safe, easy to grow yourself unpatentable alternative like Marijuana is a huge massive scary threat to their profit model.

I hadn't thought about the War on Drugs like that before
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Last week Jay Rosen was talking the sphere of deviance. This is why there is a sphere of deviance, so that if you don't figure stuff out on your own, you won't know about it.
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Not just lifestyle drugs, Sean. Also drugs that people take every day for the rest of their lives.

I mean, I knew it was fishy how no one likes to talk about conditions in Mexico, or if they do (like Lou Dobbs) they don't mention how the driving factor is America's gigantic black market for drugs (AFAICT). I knew there was a reason for it, but I didn't know what.
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And I knew it was fishy how we're so puritan about drug use but yet our populace seems to be over medicated with legal pharmaceutical substances.
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Stupidly, I just hadn't put the two together. And Big Pharma may not be the reason, but lacking any other explanation it will have to do.

It's important to remember that this escalation of the "drug war" in Mexico was a choice made by President Calderon. He is reasserting presidential power eight years after democratization. Calderón has learned that democracy is messy. The legislature won't rubber stamp his budgets and balks at his energy reforms. The governors are increasingly independent, some increasingly authoritarian. His rival in the presidential election of 2006 is still protesting, and because of economic woes, the demonstrations are attracting growing crowds. He's turning to the military to save himself from becoming a lame duck, the fate that his predecessor Vicente Fox suffered.
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To put it simply, Calderón told the drug cartels to "bring it on." And they are. However, the escalation of violence has yet to hurt him politically. In fact, it is a net gain so far.