Apologies to Mexico

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/article/168803/apologies-mexico

Dear Mexico,
?
I apologize. There are so many things I could apologize for, from the way the US biotech corporation Monsanto has contaminated your corn to the way Arizona and Alabama are persecuting your citizens, but right now I’d like to apologize for the drug war, the 10,000 waking nightmares that make the news and the rest that don’t.
?
You’ve heard the stories about the five severed heads rolled onto the floor of a Michoacan nightclub in 2006, the 300 bodies dissolved in acid by a servant of one drug lord, the forty-nine mutilated bodies found in plastic bags by the side of the road in Monterrey in May, the nine bodies found hanging from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo just last month, the Zeta Cartel’s videotaped beheadings just two weeks ago, the carnage that has taken tens of thousands of Mexican lives in the last decade and has terrorized a whole nation. I’ve read them and so many more. I am sorry 50,000 times over.

The drug war is fueled by many things, and maybe the worst drug of all is money, to which so many are so addicted that they can never get enough. It’s a drug for which they will kill, destroying communities and ecologies, even societies, whether for the sake of making drones, Wall Street profits, or massive heroin sales. Then there are the actual drugs, to which so many others turn for numbness.

There is variety in the range of drugs. I know that marijuana mostly just makes you like patio furniture, while heroin renders you ethereally indifferent and a little reptilian, and cocaine pumps you up with your own imaginary fabulousness before throwing you down into your own trashiness. And then there’s meth, which seems to have the same general effect as rabies, except that the victims crave it desperately.

[Warpy]

1. I think we need to apologize to the whole world for the drug war

Mexico isn't the only country scarred by being caught between the black market gangs and paramilitary DEA thugs pushing their police and military to act against them.

The drug war is over, the drugs won. The only thing is to acknowledge that, pull paramilitary drug warriors out of countries around the world, and destroy all the gangs worldwide by underselling them and taking all the profit out of it.

Maybe then we can be honest about opening treatment centers for the few people who run into real trouble with recreational drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, while restoring the Bill of Rights.

By the way, you did mix your drugs up a little. Pot smokers are usually functional but slow. Heroin users are porch furniture, peacefully nodding in corners where they won't be disturbed. I do think society will survive both of those a hell of a lot better than oppression based on a war against human nature.

[ellisonz]

2. America is fucking up. n/t

[malcolmkyle]

3. How long will we let this farce continue?

Mexico's gruesome civil war is clearly a product of the failed policy of Prohibition.

Alcohol Prohibition was a tremendous failure due to the incredible amount of crime and disorder it created. Human nature hasn't changed since the 1920s when the distribution of liquor was turned over to a whole new group of criminal entrepreneurs. Drug Prohibition has turned Mexico into a civil war zone. Dangerous mind altering substances are again being manufactured, smuggled and sold by criminals. Our intentions in prohibiting these substances may well be good but the result of our inability to recognize the futility of such an action will both deepen and prolong the agony caused by this extremely counter-productive and dangerous policy.

The future depends on whether or not enough of us are willing to take a long look at the tragic results of prohibition. If we continue to skirt the primary issue while refusing to address the root problem then we can expect no other result than a worsening of the current dire situation. - Good intentions, wishful thinking and pseudoscience are no match for the immutable realities of human nature.