Most of the weapons that the Mexican drug cartels have and use are not even available in the US, at least in any quantity. ie. full-auto machine guns and grenades. How many of these do you see in gun stores around the country?

Adding more forces – both US and Mexico – will only make matters worse. Ending prohibition is the only way to stop the violence.

Also think of how the civil rights marchers were attacked with water cannons, vicious dogs, and billy clubs, thrown in jail, denied access to higher education and the peaceful movement did far more for the cause than did the more violence prone sectors of the Black liberation movement. I honestly believe groups such as the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam set the civil rights movement back more than they advanced it. Remember that although MLK was investigated by the government, the public knowledge of his complete non-violence made him completely impossible to smear and the entire movement by association.

We’re winning, but it takes time. Prohibition didn’t happen overnight; it was enacted state by state for about forty years before the feds followed suit. It will be undone the same way, state by state. Oregon decriminalized in 1973. Forty years from that is 2013. Oregon and California (and may Massachusetts) will be knocking on the legalization door strongly in 2010 and 2012.

I’ll say it again, My grandfather used to say, “the only reason alcohol is legal while weed remained illegal is that Pot Heads aren’t violent enough.”