Global Policy Memo
Commentary and Counterpoint on World Affairs
Posted by Josh Goodman on December 27, 2009 at 7:00 pm
filed under Crime, Latin America
Tagged criminal gangs, legalization, marijuana, Mexico, Organized crime
Last week marked a grisly new chapter in the drug cartel violence wracking Mexico — the brutal murder of the family of a soldier who died during a raid that killed a drug kingpin.
We have written before about the grave national security threats created by (increasingly internationalized) organized crime gangs operating out of Latin America. This problem – which has thus far failed to get the attention it deserves because it often gets treated as a subset of “drug crime,” rather than as a “true” national security issue — has only gotten worse. Mexican border cities have descended into ’lawlessness’ with violence spilling over into the U.S., and cartels are increasingly corrupting U.S. customs agents, creating security risks that extend beyond the predictable entry of drugs and illegal immigrants. Violence related to the drug trade in Mexico has claimed more than 14,000 lives since 2006. That is roughly comparable to the total combined death toll in the past decade of the Israeli-Arab conflict, including all the violence of the Palestinian intifada from 2000-2005, the Lebanon War in 2006, and the Gaza War in 2009.
This week the Wall Street Journal ran a provocative article analyzing the worsening situation in Mexico from the economic perspective of the cartels. According to the article, unnamed top Mexican officials argue that legalization of marijuana is the best way to halt the further destablization of Mexico:
Growing numbers of Mexican and U.S. officials say—at least privately—that the biggest step in hurting the business operations of Mexican cartels would be simply to legalize their main product: marijuana. Long the world’s most popular illegal drug, marijuana accounts for more than half the revenues of Mexican cartels.
“Economically, there is no argument or solution other than legalization, at least of marijuana,” said the top Mexican official matter-of-factly. The official said such a move would likely shift marijuana production entirely to places like California, where the drug can be grown more efficiently and closer to consumers. “Mexico’s objective should be to make the U.S. self-sufficient in marijuana,” he added with a grin.
Short of that, the Mexican officials favor a U.S. policy to allow drugs to flow more freely to the U.S. market via the Caribbean, once the preferred smuggling route that U.S. authorities choked off with relative success during the 1990s:
Some Mexican officials say privately that the U.S. should seriously consider allowing cocaine to pass more easily through the Caribbean again in order to squeeze Mexican gangs. “Would you rather destabilize small countries in the Caribbean or Mexico, which shares a 2,000-mile border with the U.S., is your third-biggest trading partner and has 100 million people?” one official said.
Considering the growing momentum in various U.S. states toward legalization, or at least decriminalization, of marijuana, it may suddenly be a feasible policy option to just legalize it. Is ruthlessly violent instability in Mexico and along the border, along with increased corruption among U.S. law enforcement and border agents, really worth the social benefit of keeping marijuana illegal? Especially when the drug continues to be widely available on the black market across the country despite so many years of interdiction efforts? The better option is to cut the violent Latin American cartels out of the marijuana business, shifting it to domestic producers (green jobs, anyone?), and heavily tax and regulate pot distribution in the interest of public welfare.
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Jing
well~
Your point is showed on the last sentence, isn’t it?
I try to read some policy memo so that I could learn how to wright a policy essay.
I have to say that the article is a little difficult to understand.
Happy New Year:)
Kylie Batt
on May 18, 2010 at 10:26 pm
мда не повезло…
This problem – which […….