LEGALIZATION WOULDN'T END NARCOTICS WARS

It is customary to blame the Mexican drug violence on American
addicts and casual users. The assumption is that if Americans would
either legalize drugs or quit being stupid enough to use them, the
big money would be gone from the Mexican trade, and the criminals
would have no more reason to fight or to kill each other and innocent
bystanders. That assumption and that rosy scenario is almost certainly wrong.

The Mexican drug syndicates are not just people in business who have
no choice but to resort to violence in order to protect their
interests. They are in that business and they torture and kill
people, and sometimes cut off their heads, because they are criminals
of the worst kind.

Suppose we take the money out of marijuana, meth, cocaine and heroin
by stopping the drug war and letting dopers and junkies buy their
stuff at the pharmacy or state liquor store. What are those criminals
most likely to do?

With their business gone, are they going to go back to school to
learn a trade? Nursing? Welding? Are they going to use their
accumulated wealth to go into irrigated farming? Will they open think
tanks to study the sociological effects of drug prohibition? Will
they just retire to the south of France? All their soldiers -- will
they find work in the local economy?

No, the most likely thing, since they are criminals and murderers on
a mass scale, is that they will continue as criminals and murderers.
They'll find some way to keep making masses of money in drugs, and if
that doesn't work they'll find some other line of crime.

So no, legalization does not hold much promise of ending Mexico's
sufferings in the narcowars. The drug gangs will have to be defeated,
taken out or put in prison in order for the killing to end. This is
what the Mexican government is trying to do with its deployment of
military troops.

In the meantime, U.S. dealers, buyers and users of illegal drugs
supplied from or through Mexico bear a heavy responsibility. Without
them, the narco gangs might do other kinds of crime, but for now it
is the U.S. market that keeps the gangs in cash. That's a heavy guilt
they bear. They need to be held to account not just for breaking the
law on controlled substances, but for fueling the deadly violence
down south. (hh)