http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/03/10/is-it-time-to-end-the-war-on-drugs/
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Drug Warrior Gen. Kelly Retires——Now Retire The Failed Drug War, Too, by Jacob G. Hornberger
From Jacob Hornberger at fff.org:
U.S. Marine Gen. John Kelly is retiring from the military, but he isn’t just fading away. He is speaking out on the drug war, which he has been waging in Latin America in his capacity as head of the U.S. Southern Command.
Kelly is telling the news media (see here and here) that the problem with the drug war is that some states are legalizing marijuana, which, he says, makes it more difficult for the military to win the war on drugs. He says the legalization reflects “hypocrisy” because while the U.S. harps on Latin American regimes to crack down in the war on drugs, the Latin Americans respond, “As we look north, the real problem is the demand. So why don’t you do more to stop the demand for drugs…. Why would we do more when you seem to be legalizing this stuff?”
While we are on the subject of hypocrisy, let’s talk a little bit about the hypocrisy of using the U.S. military to wage the war on drugs in Latin America.
Here in the United States, the American people have made it illegal for the military to participate in the war on drugs. Americans have long considered it a really bad idea to have the military engaged in law enforcement. That’s because the military mindset is totally different from the law enforcement mindset. Soldiers think of terms of killing the enemy and winning wars, for example, while policemen think of terms of arresting suspected criminals and bringing them to justice.
Given that Americans consider it a bad idea to have the military engage in drug law enforcement here in the United States, why has the U.S. military been long involved in the drug war in Latin America? Why subject the Latin Americans to U.S. military law enforcement when Americans won’t subject themselves to military law enforcement?
How’s that for a bit of hypocrisy?
With his lament, Kelly implies that if states weren’t legalizing marijuana, his military drug warriors would have an easier time winning the war on drugs.
But wait a minute! The drug war has been going on for decades and the states that have legalized marijuana have done so only in the past few years. So, why didn’t the military win the drug war in the decades before marijuana was legalized? Could it be that Kelly might just be looking for an excuse to justify his failure to win the war on drugs during his period of command?
To continue reading: Drug Warrior Gen. Kelly Retires—Now Retire The Failed Drug War, Too
Let’s Not Kid Ourselves: The Capture of the World’s Most Wanted Businessman Changes Nothing, by Don Quijones
From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:
Who’s benefiting from the war on drugs?
To the immense relief of Mexico’s embattled President Enrique Peña Nieto, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the world’s most wanted businessman, has been caught. The last time Guzmán was detained, in February 2014, Peña Nieto decided to keep him in the custody of Mexico’s penitentiary system. Within 16 months, El Chapo had escaped – a big blow to Nieto’s already deeply tarnished reputation.
This time around, the pressure to extradite Guzmán to the U.S., where he faces trial on a plethora of charges, could be too much to bear. But how much difference will Guzmán’s arrest and extradition to the U.S. actually make to the massive — and growing — trade in illegal drugs between Mexico and the United States? According to El Chapo himself, very little.
If Guzmán is extradited, he will no longer be able to pull the strings of his global business like before. But someone else will, most likely his second in command, Ismael Zambada. Meanwhile, El Chapo’s capture and extradition is likely to unleash even more violence in Mexico as the cartels engage in new turf wars while using whatever means necessary to resist capture and extradition to the U.S.
The last time Guzmán was arrested, his business empire barely skipped a beat. In fact, as El País reports, it grew, expanding its market both at home and abroad. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, a quarter of all drugs consumed in the U.S. are now distributed by Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel. The vast revenues generated by the cartel’s sales of cocaine, marijuana, and meta-amphetamine, both in the U.S. and around the world, are laundered through a complex network of 280 businesses in 10 countries.
At the beginning of the global financial crisis, Antonio María Costa, the former Under-Secretary of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, warned that the European banking system had lowered its security barriers, opening the financial floodgates to drugs money. To this day not a single European government or politician has responded to Costa’s accusation that the European financial system was as good as saved by the global drugs trade — none more so than everybody’s favorite offshore tax haven, the City of London.
Describing the international drug trade, organized crime expert Roberto Saviano recently told the Independent on Sunday that “Mexico is its heart and London is its head.” According to the British government’s own National Crime Agency, “hundreds of billions of US dollars” are laundered through banks in the United Kingdom every year – banks that have flagrantly ignored “know your customer rules,” which are designed to prevent criminals from laundering the profits of their illegal activities.
To continue reading: Let’s Not Kid Ourselves
Update On Another Stupid Washington War—-$1 Trillion Has Been Wasted In The War On Drugs, by Kit O’Connell
From Kit O’Connell at Mint Press News via davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
WASHINGTON — The “war on drugs” costs Americans a staggering amount of money every year that it persists. Despite the billions they receive, federal, state and local law enforcement have a proven inability to stem the flow of drugs on the nation’s streets.
Since Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in June 1971, the cost of that “war” had soared to over $1 trillionby 2010. Over $51 billion is spent annually to fight the drug war in the United States, according to Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting more humane drug policies.
It’s also taken a massive toll on human lives. In 2013, at least 2.2 million people were incarcerated in the U.S., with some estimates reaching 2.4 million, making the U.S. home to the world’s largest prison population. A vast number of those prisoners are victims of the war on drugs, reported Alejandro Crawford in U.S. News and World Report in March:
“Still, we should take comfort in the fact that these are mostly violent criminals and hardened drug kingpins, right? Not so. About half the inmates in the federal prison system are there for nonviolent drug crime – up from 16 percent in 1970 – and the leading druginvolved is marijuana. Of course, none of this seems to have made marijuana remotely difficult to procure for those who want it.”
To continue reading: Update On Another Stupid Washington War
The War on Some Drugs, by Doug Casey
From Doug Casey, at internationalman.com:
Drugs are a charged subject everywhere. Longtime readers know that although I personally abstain from drugs and generally eschew the company of users, I think they should be 100% legal.
Few people consider how arbitrary the current prohibition is; up until the 1920s, heroin and cocaine were both perfectly legal and easily obtainable over the counter. Some people “abused” them, just like some today “abuse” fat and sugar (because they’re enjoyable).
But drugs are no more of a problem than anything else; life is full of problems. In fact, life isn’t just full of problems; life is problems. What is a problem? It’s simply the situation of having to choose between two or more alternatives. Personally, I believe in people being free to choose, and I rigorously shun the company of people who don’t.
Hysteria and propaganda aside, the fact is that most recreational drugs pose less of a health problem than alcohol, nicotine, or simple lack of exercise.
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (of whom I’m a great fan) was an aficionado of opium products. Sigmund Freud enjoyed cocaine. Churchill is supposed to have drunk a quart of whiskey daily. Dr. William Halstead, father of modern surgery and cofounder of Johns Hopkins University, was a regular user throughout his long and illustrious career, which included inventing local anesthesia after injecting cocaine into his skin.
Insofar as recreational drugs present a problem, it arises partly from overuse, which is not only arbitrary, but can be true of absolutely anything. The problem comes, however, mainly from the fact that they’re illegal.
Alcohol provides the classic example. It wasn’t much of a problem in the US before the enactment of Prohibition in 1920, and it hasn’t been one since its repeal in 1933. Making a product illegal artificially and unnecessarily turns both users and suppliers into criminals.
Because illegality makes any product vastly more expensive than it would be in a free market, some users resort to crime to finance their habits. Because of the risks and artificially reduced supply, the profits to the suppliers are necessarily huge – not the simple businessman’s returns to be had from legal products.
Just as Prohibition of the ’20s turned the Mafia from a small underground group of thugs into big business, the War on Drugs has done precisely the same thing for drug dealers. It’s completely insane and totally counterproductive.
To continue reading: The War on Some Drugs
