Everything Seems Fine With My Head in The Sand

The New York Times put out a piece today discussing the horrific amount of murders, torture, and kidnapping that is associated with drug Mexican drug cartels. With atrocious levels of violence, Mexican cartels are attacking the Judges, policeman, and citizens in a campaign terror unseen outside of Baghdad. For once, the drugs were not blamed as the cause of the violence. No story about killers doped on whatever drug it is that government windbags espouse as being linked to violence this generation, but rather a story of how the drug trade is to blame.

As much as I am disparaged that the piece by Mr. McKinley fails to question why no one has thought of looking for a solution to this violence, I applaud it for putting the facts out there plainly for all to see, even if it may have been unintentional. The black market of drugs causes violence and death that would not be associated with a regulated market! How often do you hear about Miller vs. Budweiser battles being fought with automatic weapons? When was the last time that Bayer® tortured Glaxo Smith Klien® employees over rights to sell arthritis medicine to a certain hospital? Why do we support this kind of horrible pain and suffering by keeping all drugs illegal?

The most interesting point in the article was this quote:

Mexico’s law enforcement officials maintain that the violence is a sign that they have made progress dismantling the major organized crime families in the country. The arrests of several drug cartel leaders and their top lieutenants have set off a violent struggle among second-rank mobsters for trade routes, federal prosecutors say. The old order has been fractured, and the remaining drug dealers are killing one another or making new alliances.

“These alliances are happening because none of the organizations can control, on its own, the territory it used to control, and that speaks to the crisis that they are in,” said José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the top federal prosecutor for organized crime.

So what you are telling me is that every time you destabilize a cartel all you are going to do is increase the violence associated with the drug trade, and yet you are going to continue to plod along this poorly planned path? By turning 10 large organizations into 100 smaller organizations, you just made your job more difficult if not impossible. At what point do you raise your head out of the sand and ask yourself, “Is there a better way to solve this problem?”.

Drugs can be bad. The pain and suffering of drug addiction is reaped onto everyone who loves the addict. However, we must never forget that concentrated pain of prohibition does nothing to ease the pain of addiction, and may in fact make it worse by forcing the addict into the criminal justice system instead of treatment.