The city of El Paso buckled to unusually explicit federal government pressure Tuesday and withdrew a call for a national debate on ending drug prohibition.
Last Tuesday, the El Paso city council voted 8-0 to express solidarity with its sister city in Mexico, Juarez, which has seen its murder rate double this year alone as the Mexican government has waged war on powerful drug cartels. To slow that violence, the resolution called for “an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition of narcotics.”
That was enough to get Washington’s attention.
Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution and Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat who represents El Paso in Congress, lobbied each councilmember, making it clear that if the resolution calling for a debate passed, El Paso would risk losing money in the upcoming stimulus legislation. Five Texas House representatives made the same threat.
“Funding for local law enforcement efforts and other important programs to our community are likely being put in jeopardy,” lawmakers warned in a letter to the city, “especially during a time when state resources are scarce.”
Four members of the council switched their votes and supported the veto; three of them publicly cited the funding threat as the reason for backing down.
via El Paso, Texas, Calls On Congress To Debate Drug Legalization: Dems Refuse.
What is the feeling that goes through your mind when you read that our federal government is openly blackmailing local governments to shut up about even discussing legalization of marijuana? In the piece, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who represents the Texas district that contains El Paso in Congress, said, “Please let the mayor’s veto stand and put this behind us. We’ve got huge issues that are facing us as a Congress,” as if the mere mention of trying something different in this escalating drug war is going to completely derail working on the economy, fighting terrorism, fixing health care, and creating new jobs, when in fact marijuana legalization would help solve all those issues!
It’s not like we’re asking you to impeach anybody; God knows we can never again put that on the table because it will supposedly grind the country to a screeching halt. The resolution simply called on the city to call on Congress to take a look at potentially forming a commission to study the possibility that maybe perhaps arresting our way out of a drug problem isn’t working and we ought to examine other scenarios for drug control that might include an investigation of the feasibility of considering the regulation and sale of a non-toxic mood-altering herb.
NO! It’s like our Congress are the Knights Who Say “Ni!” and “legalization” is the one word they cannot bear to hear.
So how do you feel? Me, I’m ecstatic. Thrilled, actually. When one little town in Texas calls for a conversation on the drug war and Congress immediately pulls out all stops to shut it up, that tells me the Berlin Wall of prohibition is about to come tumbling down. Americans aren’t too fond of “Just do what you’re told” as a policy justification. Before, the prohibitionists would engage with their silly little slippery slope arguments and trumped up statistics; now they won’t even engage the dialogue because they know they’ve lost before they open their mouths.
XuBlax, you have it ALL WRONG! This isn’t about walking down the street puffing a doobie…grow up! This is about finding a sensible resolution to a problem that is getting out of hand. Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s illegal, yet you still get high. Lot’s of people in this country get high, the question is where do you get your supply? Is it homegrown in the US or are you helping to put money in the pockets of these dangerous cartels? Even if you aren’t, millions of people are and people are losing their lives over it. Take your head out of the sand, we are human beings…not Ostriches!