On Friday, Democrat Terry Goddard, Arizona’s Attorney General, said that while he’s not in favor of legalizing marijuana, he thinks it should be debated as a way of curbing violence in the increasingly deadly clashes between Mexico’s gangs.
“He (Andres Rosenthal, a former deputy foreign minister of Mexico who now works for the Brookings Institution) says, ‘As with the repeal of prohibition, the US must follow a common-sense approach by thinking the unthinkable: The gradual legalization of some drugs. The US must realize that all drugs are not created equal,’” said (Kiran) Chetry (of CNN). “They go on to say that marijuana, maybe some methamphetamines, do not have the same harmful effects and legalization might make a difference. Do you agree?”
“Well, I don’t,” said Goddard. “But I do think the debate needs to go forward. We need to find a better way to handle … Right now, the item that’s fueling the violent cartels, the murders in Mexico, the cartel wars that are going on right now that have resulted in over 1,000 deaths this year, I think we need to take a very aggressive stand on that and marijuana is the number one producer for the cartels. Sixty to 70 percent of their gross profits comes from marijuana. So, I think we need to look very hard at something we haven’t looked at for years.”
via – The Raw Story “Arizona AG: Pot legalization could prevent border violence”
It’s a pretty straight forward equation. Controlling guns flowing into Mexico from the US by enforcing existing gun laws + controlling marijuana flowing into the US from Mexico by legalizing marijuana = no more Mexico drug cartels. Or at least diminished in power to a point where a streamlined DEA focusing on hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, crystal meth) could make a great impact against the remaining threat from Mexico. So easy to see, so hard to implement as a US government policy.
Check out the entire link at The Raw Story which features the video interview from CNN with Arizona’s Attorney General Terry Goddard.
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We need to minimize the underground economy and maximize the above-ground economy.
Legalize responsible adult marijuana consumption. Now the criminals have one less source of revenue–and the tax collectors have one more.
Having public officials support a debate, in ever increasing numbers, is all we need. The facts are on our side. We just need to sustain the debate.
It’s great to contact them privately with our support, but if we could just find a way to publicly support them it’d be even better.
I get that officials need to be careful about what they say. Being an optimist, I think that there are many people holding office of some sort that get it, that believe cannabis should be legal, but have to pretend to be against it for various reasons. I think that with cannabis, drugs and prohibition making the MSM news more and more recently is providing a little safe breathing room for them to start speaking up, however cautiously. We need to let them know we support them, which will hopefully embolden them to speak out more on our behalf.