NEW YORK (CNN) — Here’s something to think about:

How many police officers and sheriff’s deputies are involved in investigating and solving crimes involving illegal drugs? And arresting and transporting and interrogating and jailing the suspects?

How many prosecutors and their staffs spend time prosecuting drug cases? How many defense lawyers spend their time defending drug suspects?

How many hours of courtroom time are devoted to drug trials? How many judges, bailiffs, courtroom security officers, stenographers, etc., spend their time on drug trials?

How many prison cells are filled with drug offenders? And how many corrections officers does it take to guard them? How much food do these convicts consume?

And when they get out, how many parole and probation officers does it take to supervise their release? And how many ex-offenders turn right around and do it again?

So how’s this war on drugs going?

Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That’s a perfect description of the war on drugs.

via Commentary: War on drugs is insane – CNN.com.

Even the most mainstream of commentators is unafraid to say The Emperor Wears No Clothes!  So let me prepare you now for what comes next in the rhetoric.  The notion of legalizing sale and use of marijuana is becoming too attractive, so the drug warriors will be trying to tie marijuana to cocaine, meth, and heroin.  Cafferty’s piece describes the cost of the war on drugs as $44 billion a year and legalization reaping $33 billion a year – but that’s if we’re talking about all drugs, and that’s a radical notion to most people who aren’t so afraid of you smoking a doobie, but you snorting a line or shooting up scares the crap out of them.

What they’ll try to portray is the notion that drug legalization means Acapulco Gold, Columbian Flake, Super Speed, and White Horse sold in flashy branded ads and available at a convenience store near you.  Legalize weed and there will be heroin-filled disposable syringes available next to 40-ouncers at the Qwik-E-Mart.

What we need to do is inject common sense into the debate.  NORML doesn’t take a stance on other drugs, we’re about legalizing marijuana and supporting its responsible use by adults.  That said, we’re also pretty staunch anti-prohibitionists: locking people up for drug use clearly doesn’t work.  How I address the issue is to say, “Why can you get aspirin at the grocery store, but you have to see a doctor, get a prescription, and visit a pharmacy to get Oxycontin?  Why can you buy 3.2 beer in most places in America at the store, but you have to go to a liquor store to get Bacardi 151 rum, and then only in some states?  It’s because rational people understand different drugs need different rules.  I support treating marijuana like alcohol because it is clearly safer.  I think rules for cocaine, meth, and heroin would probably need to be much stricter, because I believe those drugs are more dangerous.”

We must maintain separation between marijuana and other drugs.  Marijuana was on the verge of legality in the ’70s until cocaine made such a splash in the latter part of the decade (seasoned Stashers will remember High Times mags with lines of coke on the cover…)  The recent tabloid story of Vice President Joe “Mandatory Minimums” Biden’s daughter’s alleged cocaine video tape just made me shudder.  Maintain focus.  Say things like, “I don’t know about hard drugs, but we certainly need to legalize marijuana.”

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Guy Lawson from Rolling Stone is on with Morning Joe hosts talking about the Mexican cartels and the drugs and guns that are fueling the spiraling violence. Look for a couple key points from Lawson during the interview. The drug war being a fiasco and legalizing marijuana cutting off 70% of the cartels income at around the 5:40 mark and his answer to what the end game of the violence is simple and correct beginning at the 7:59 mark. Lawson’s answer bears repeating as it’s brief, to the point and I’ll paraphrase. “You have three choices: continue violence on violence from the Mexican military and police against the cartels, you can pretend to enforce the laws (corruption), or you can end Prohibition. Those are your choices.”

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Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

After pointing out the evidence of the Drug War’s failure to achieve “A drug free world by 2008″ as the UN’s general assembly crowed in 1998, The Economist points out:

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

The Economist then explains how legalization won’t be a tough sell at all in the producer countries, but it is faced with major political hurdles in the consumer countries:

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

Here at NORML we promote the legalization of cannabis.  Other drugs should require other measures that take into account the addictiveness and socially destructive capabilities of those drugs.  I personally don’t believe those measures should include locking up addicts — prison is a lousy rehab — but I also don’t think a regulatory scheme that treats marijuana similar to alcohol would be appropriate for, say, cocaine, meth, or heroin.

But when you say the word “Legalization”, immediately people conjure visions of “Maui Wowie”, “Colombia Flake”, “Crystal Energy”, and “Super Smack” sold on convenience store shelves next to the 24-oz beers and junk food snack cakes.  “Legalization”, though, can mean marijuana in adults-only stores with IDs checked for age 21 and limits placed on amount purchased while it can also mean much more stringent restrictions on other drugs like prescriptions and pharmacies and tight controls.

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MEXICO CITY — As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.

“The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war,” said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. “We have to move from this approach to another one.”

The commission, headed by Mr. Cardoso and former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, says Latin American governments as well as the U.S. must break what they say is a policy “taboo” and re-examine U.S.-inspired antidrugs efforts. The panel recommends that governments consider measures including decriminalizing the use of marijuana.

This Wall Street Journal article also cites work by the Brookings Institution that confirms that there is as much supply and demand for drugs as ever, despite declaring all-out war on drugs.  Naturally, the prohibition addicts who got us in this mess say that the decapitated dead bodies in the streets of Tijuana and Juarez are just signs that total victory over drugs is just around the corner:

John Walters, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said, “It’s not true that we’ve lost or can’t do anything about the drug problem,” and cited security improvements in Colombia.

Mr. Walters said increased violence in border areas of Mexico was partly a result of criminal organizations compensating for reduced income from the supply of drugs by turning to other activities, such as people-smuggling, and continuing to fight over turf.

U.S. law-enforcement officials — as well as some of their counterparts in Mexico — say the explosion in violence indicates progress in the war on drugs as organizations under pressure are clashing.

“If the drug effort were failing there would be no violence,” a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. There is violence “because these guys are flailing. We’re taking these guys out. The worst thing you could do is stop now.”

Yes, I see.  It’s just a few dead-enders.  We’re in the last throes of the narcotrafficante insurgency, if you will.  The surge is working.  We just have to have patience.  We’re turning a corner in the Drug War.  All we’re missing is a “Mission Accomplished” banner on a boat in the Rio Grande.

Mr. former Drug Czar Walters, how many dead innocent Mexicans do there have to be before we’re sure we’ve finally won?

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KVIA.com El Paso, Las Cruces – Weather, News, Sports – Day before re-vote, mayor’s e-mail says ‘potheads’ have had sayEL PASO, Texas — City Council is poised to re-vote Tuesday on a drug war resolution that includes the controversial request for an open and honest debate on the prohibition of drugs.

Mayor John Cook quickly vetoed the resolution after city Rep. Beto O’Rourke added that request at the last minute.

Monday, an e-mail from the mayor surfaced, urging those who are against the resolution to make sure they are heard, because “the pot heads” have sent their message.

It states: “I can tell you that all the pot heads have sent their e-mails and they are encouraging the reps to stand by their decision. But why does the silent majority remain silent? We have certainly attracted attention to our city, but I don’t think the attention is positive.”

Cook told [reporters] the e-mail was private and not meant to be forwarded to others. “Specifically, I was referring to one individual who happened to write an e-mail to me saying that he’s been smoking pot for over twenty years and he thinks we should legalize marijuana in the United States … So if calling that person a pot head is insulting to him, then I apologize.”

O’Rourke had this to say about Cook’s remarks in the e-mail: “I’m sure the mayor probably didn’t mean for everyone to read this, but I was concerned that anyone who might support having a national open discussion on our best options in the drug war would be described as a pothead.”

The vote to override Mayor Cook’s veto of the resolution on the drug war in Juarez is scheduled for Tuesday.

Mayor Cook, did you ever stop to think that the people who want to at least talk about alternatives to the prohibition of drugs are the majority and aren’t being silent?  

Or is that too difficult to handle when you haven’t even mastered the difference between the plural (”all the pot heads have sent their e-mails”) and the singular (”if calling that person a pot head is insulting to him, then I apologize.”)

It is insulting, Mayor Cook, to me and to all the people who support the El Paso Council’s unanimous vote to begin a new discussion on the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs, to call us “potheads”.  (I call myself a “pothead”, but that’s because I wear a 100% hemp cap with a pot leaf on it.  Literally: pot on head.)  It’s the kind of word we can use amongst ourselves with good friends (think “n-word”) but is automatically offensive when used by outsiders to describe us.

Won’t it be something if later today that council overrides his veto?  The city that started this stupid War on Drugs almost one hundred years ago could be the city that begins to end it.

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Vicious drug turf war turns Mexican border town of Tijuana into a killing zone – Telegraph
The four men in bulletproof vests, Kalashnikovs held casually at their sides, crossed the street to Tijuana’s Crazy Banana pool hall so calmly that onlookers presumed they were undercover police officers – until they heard the gunfire and screams. 

Moments later, the men raced back out of the bar and sped off in a getaway car, leaving the once-popular pool hall with its thatched roof and yellow painted walls a bullet-ridden crime scene.

The five billiards players gunned down there were the some of the latest victims in a brutal drug turf war that has unleashed an orgy of killing along America’s southern frontier.

The attack was one of dozens of recent incidents in the sprawling Mexican border city, where nearly 300 people have been killed since late-September – many mutilated, tortured and beheaded in gruesome terror tactics copied from Iraq’s brutal conflict.

In the past week alone, there has been an attack in a nightclub popular with students that left five young people dead or dying; a hit squad stormed a private hospital and killed a patient who was being treated for gunshot wounds; and armed men opened fire on a car parked outside a popular US-owned discount warehouse, killing a woman and seriously injuring a man.

Mexico’s drug war death tally of more than 4,000 this year – 685 in Tijuana – makes it one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and the extreme violence has intensified since the federal government launched a crackdown against the cartels.

My only venture outside the United States was a run to Tijuana when I was 25.  I remember the streets packed with young American people, from about 16 years old to my age, many escaping the US drinking age of 21 in the Mexican bars.  Now the streets are empty as the violence has scared away all the gringo tourist dollars.  Mexico’s economy is crashing and the narcotraficantes business is booming.  As Mike Gray told me last week, how do you find an honest policeman working for $200 a month when the cartels will offer $150,000 a week to just take the money and look the other way?  Mexico is very quickly destabilizing and we run the risk of having a de facto failed state run by drug lords.  Our drug prohibition is very literally destroying countries and killing people.

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