Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm | By: Radical Russ
Clif from our new NORML of Waco called to tell me I just had to see this new article on the cover of the Texas Monthly magazine. When Texas is calling for legalization, you know we’re winning!
(Texas Monthly) In the early years of the twentieth century, as they poured across the border into Texas, Mexican immigrants brought with them a familiar and cheap intoxicant: cannabis, which they called marihuana (in those days, it was spelled with an h instead of a j). Perhaps because they were young, predominantly male, and away from home—strong correlates of troublesome behavior—they were seen as lacking appropriate inhibition, especially when they came to town on weekends. Cerveza may have been more culpable, but cannabis made an easier target. In 1914, after a melee allegedly involving a marijuana smoker, the El Paso city government passed what is believed to have been the first law banning a drug that had been legally and widely used for at least five thousand years. Other cities and states quickly followed suit. Before long, marijuana was forbidden everywhere, and its use was often harshly punished.
It’s ironic, then, that nearly a century after it fired the first shot in the war on weed, the Sun City has been flirting with a cease-fire. In January, besieged by drug wars in Mexico that killed more than 5,600 people in 2008, almost a third in neighboring Ciudad Juárez alone, the El Paso City Council unanimously approved city representative Beto O’Rourke’s motion that the federal government hold an open and honest debate about legalizing all narcotics in the United States. Mayor John Cook vetoed that recommendation. “We would be the laughingstock of the country for having something like this on the books,” he said.
The incident drew national attention and some criticism, but it sparked the kind of serious conversation O’Rourke was seeking. “No one is laughing about it,” he says. “It’s not funny that sixteen hundred people died in our sister city in the course of one year in the most brutal fashion imaginable. We’ve had waves of violence before, but it took events of this magnitude to convince everyone that something is deeply wrong here, that we are part of the problem and we can do something to fix it. It’s the demand that’s fueling this war. If our drug laws were different, I will absolutely guarantee you that our body count would be different.”
See also the concurrent article, “Weed all about it“, where prominent conservative Texas Republicans are calling for an end to adult marijuana prohibition. Yes, my friends, the tide is turning.
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am | By: Radical Russ
“They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no…”
(Comcast) CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center, lined people against a wall and shot 17 dead in a particularly bloody day in Mexico’s relentless drug war. The brazen attack followed the killing of the No. 2 security official in President Felipe Calderon’s home state.
The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors’ office. At least five people were injured.
Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico’s most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone.
I can’t quite figure out the motivation for gunning down people in rehab. Usually these cartels are targeting police, federal officials, and rival cartels. Maybe some of the people in the rehab were formerly involved with the cartels and trying to “go straight”. It’s a shame – “duck and cover” isn’t usually covered in the Twelve Steps.
Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon’s home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.
Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.
Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.
Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta’s car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.
Sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie, but this is the reality many Mexicans live with every day. Just like Chicagoans in the 1920s.
Calderon first launched his crackdown against drug cartels in Michoacan, sending thousands of federal police and soldiers to his home state after taking office in late 2006. Tens of thousands more have since been deployed to drug hotspots across Mexico.
Drug gang violence has since surged, claiming more than 13,500 lives, including more than 1,000 police officers.
Calderon defended his battle against drug trafficking in a speech to Congress on Wednesday. He said the government has taken on the cartels as no previous Mexican administration has dared to do.
“As never before, we have weakened the logistical and financial structure of crime,” the president told legislators.
You might say we’ve “turned a corner” in battling the cartels and that the insurgency is in “its last throes”, huh, Mr. Cheney… er, Calderon? That’s the problem with putting a medical issue in the hands of warriors – war is their justification, not public health. Is the violence subsiding or are there fewer people using drugs? Great, that means the Drug War is working, let’s keep at it. Is the violence increasing or are there more people using drugs? That must mean we’re not fighting the Drug War hard enough, let’s redouble our efforts. Never can it be uttered that perhaps the Drug War itself is the problem, for it is always drugs that are the problem and war is the only solution.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(AP) EL PASO, Texas — The eight bullets that leveled Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana outside his home just doors from the city’s police chief were fired at close range and left little doubt about their message.
Gonzalez, a Juarez cartel lieutenant shot on his quiet El Paso cul-de-sac this spring, was working for U.S. officials as a confidential informant, sources told The Associated Press, and experts suspect his slaying may be the first time assassins from one of Mexico’s violent drug gangs have killed a ranking cartel member on American soil.
Cartel-affiliated hit men have violently, and fatally, disciplined low-level, American-based drug dealers in the U.S. But El Paso police said Gonzalez was a lieutenant in the Juarez cartel, which traffics in marijuana, cocaine and heroin. The cartel was once among the most dangerous in Mexico, but has recently lost some standing because of arrests, deaths and infighting.
El Paso police don’t yet have an official motive in Gonzalez’s slaying, but chief Allen said detectives are working on the assumption that a cartel colleague discovered he was discussing their illegal activities with federal agents.
How many gangland-style executions will have to take place on American streets before we get serious about legalizing these murderers right out of business? I hear a few people complain about taxing and regulating marijuana as a legal substance because then the big bad ol’ government will have its hands on it, but last I checked the IRS doesn’t send hit men out to quiet residential neighborhoods to deliver a “message” about delinquent tax payments.
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 2:20 pm | By: Radical Russ
Trade with Mexico, via Juárez, is vital to El Paso’s economy. And we are close-knit with family and friends in Juárez; so many of us fear a loved one will be caught in the crossfire of bullets. Some have — and died.
Soldiers haven’t stopped gangland-style murders, now about seven daily right next door.
And not just some soldiers — it’s 7,500 soldiers plus 2,300 federal police officers. That’s 9,800 law enforcers who haven’t ebbed the rampant killings. There have been 130 just this month, and 2,300 in the past 18 months.
Drug-trafficking expert Victor Clark told the Associated Press that the thousands of soldiers and federal police do little intelligence work.
Not only that, but Clark notes:
“I see two wars, the visible and the invisible one. The visible one is the dead that the media reports on every day, but the dead are just cheap labor. The invisible one is … the business class and the politicians who really benefit from the millions that the drug trade generates …”
It has long been suspected that profits from illegal drug trading stream into many walks of Mexican life — and into politics and business. Some take the money. Some look the other way.
It’s a shame to say that drugs are a major part of Mexico’s economy, and that could be why soldiers and police can’t beat the drug cartels.
In our case, nearly 10,000 can’t stop gangsters in our sister city, Juárez.
No amount of soldiers, police, weapons, or money can change the inviolable laws of supply and demand. The harder you try to pinch the suppliers, the more risk and scarcity you add to the supply, the higher the price and the steeper the profits. Those profits translate into six-figure monthly bribes for police and government officials who live on three-figure monthly salaries.
The demand in America for marijuana and drugs is great. In the case of drugs like heroin and cocaine, the sources, opium and coca, do not grow well here, so there will always be some level of drug trafficking that will get heroin from Afghanistan and cocaine from Columbia into the United States. In the case of drugs like ecstacy and meth, the precursor ingredients and manufacturing are tightly controlled in the US, so there will always be some trafficking from places like China, India, and Germany with lesser controls.
But in the case of marijuana, responsible for 60%-75% of the profits of these murderous cartels, there is a foolproof way of nearly eliminating American demand for Mexican trafficked marijuana – let Americans grow the supply domestically! As our nation’s economy tumbles and unemployment nudges toward 10% (already over 12% here in Oregon and over in Michigan – 1 in 8 can’t find work!), we will not have the luxury of spending money fighting marijuana, ignoring the tax revenues we could reap from its legal sales, and forbidding new hemp farming, hemp processing, and cannabis production and retailing jobs that would be generated by a legal marijuana industry.
I just hope it doesn’t take months or years of seven murders per day in Mexico, or those murders coming to American city streets, to get our politicians to see the ultimate folly of marijuana prohibition and wisdom in legalization.
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm | By: Radical Russ
JUAREZ — The newly-formed vigilante group “El Comando Ciudadano Por Juarez” proclaimed its manifesto Tuesday in a news release to Juarez media. It vowed to take over the streets in a matter of months if city, state and federal leaders fail to restore order.
In the manifesto, the group identified Commandante Abraham as its leader and Subcommandante Gabriel “Durito (Hard One)” as second-in-command.
Chihuahua’s Attorney General Patricia Gonzalez-Rodriguez denied the existence of the vigilante group Monday, stating the group was merely a fabrication by drug cartels to instill fear into Juarenses and generate more violence to de-stabilize the city.
In 2008, more than 1,600 people were killed in Juarez. City officials attributed the majority of the violent deaths to an ongoing war between rival drug cartels fighting for drug routes into the U.S.
Making matters worse, the city plunged into an economic abyss which gave rise to a rash of violent crime. Kidnappings for ransom and extortions became the norm and some of the city’s wealthiest families fled to El Paso.
The vigilante group stated its mission was to kill one criminal a day and declared war on burglars, kidnappers, and extortionists that constantly violate the rights of citizens. The group told city leaders they have until July 5, 2009 to re-establish order.
A failure to meet that goal by the deadline will result in the group taking the streets with its “army of men and women” who will battle criminals with whatever tool is available.
The manifesto describes the group as an organization consisting of university students, professors, commercial businessmen, unemployed workers and field workers who are willing to give their lives for their city. The group even revealed it is funded by businessmen who have fled their city due to the escalating violence and is willing to work side-by-side with the Mexican Army.
People here have a hard time understanding that there were more kidnappings, terrorism, and beheadings in Mexico last year than Iraq. This is a serious shooting war going on and 70% of it is funded by the marijuana we are not allowed to grow domestically. With more than 1,600 deaths in a city of 1.4 million, Juarez beat the 2008 murder totals of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington DC combined, cities that equal 15.5 million people, or more than ten times larger than Juarez.
Now the people are so terrified they are turning to vigilantism, a sure sign of the beginnings of a failed state. The politicians are continuing more of the same in-the-box thinking that got them in this situation – more military force through US funding of the Meridia initiative. Nobody in power can accept the fact that marijuana is here to stay, some people will always want to smoke it, there will always be a marijuana market, and it will be controlled by either the murderous criminals or by We The People.
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 5:24 pm | By: Radical Russ
EL PASO – Mexican cartels have taken over most of the drug trade in the United States, and are working with 20 gangs, including the Barrio Aztecas, according to a just-released report by the National Drug Intelligence Center titled “National Drug Threat Assessment 2009.”
It also said the cartels control drug distribution in most U.S. cities (230 cities have reported a presence of the Mexican drug groups), and “are gaining strength in markets that they do not yet control.”
Mexican, Asian, Colombian, Dominican and Colombian drug organizations work with at least 28 gangs in the United States, which insulate the drug cartel cells from law enforcement and act as retail distributors and enforcers. The gangs listed include the Barrio Azteca, Latin Kings, Maras (MS-13), Hells Angels, Mexican Mafia, Bloods, Crips and others.
Upon learning that violent foreign criminal cartels are taking over the US drug trade and extending their control through recruitment of violent local gangs to handle the retail operations, the prohibitionists’ answer is to fight them harder. Never does it occur to the prohibitionist that WE could take over most of the drug trade in the United States and cut 70% off the Mexican drug cartel’s bottom line!
People will always want to smoke marijuana – we have cannabinoid receptors in our freakin’ brains. The money people spend on it could buy schoolbooks for kids, but our prohibition on marijuana guarantees it buys bullets for gangsters. (Maybe if we bought more kids history textbooks, they’d grow up having learned the lessons of prohibition from 1920-1933.)
Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:50 pm | By: Radical Russ
EL PASO — South-West city Rep. Beto O’Rourke has been in the hot seat since he successfully lobbied the rest of City Council to approve a resolution that included an amendment that asked for an open and honest debate on the legalization of narcotics.
The resolution by the Border Relations Committee called for federal intervention to quell the crime wave in Juárez that claimed 1,600 lives in 2008. O’Rourke added the part of a debate on legalizing narcotics, the rest of council agreed with him but Mayor John Cook vetoed it.
After making national headlines, being on the losing end of the veto and taking on a congressman, O’Rourke discussed the interesting week-and-a-half he has had.
Q All city representatives said they received a lot of calls and e-mails on this issue. Can you share some of the feedback you received?
A Right off the bat most of my correspondence was split 50/50 pro and con. Later on, I got more 70 percent pro and 30 percent con. Someone at my Monday morning breakfast meeting said that when they first read the headline he wondered what I and the rest of City Council were doing. But that then, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that we were right. That all options needed to be on the table.
Q Is it your belief that El Paso would have lost federal and state funds if the veto had been reversed on Tuesday?
A The honest answer is I don’t know. And part of why I don’t know is because the congressman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) and his office and the state House delegation offered no specifics or facts. In fact, what they did offer was speculative. It’s speculation. There is no specific threat, no specific dollar amount or no specific project that is in peril.
The American People are ready to talk about legalization. Every call for issues to discuss through Change.gov and Change.org has seen marijuana law reform rise to the top of the list, over concerns with the economy, foreign policy, the environment, and war. It is not because marijuana law reform is more important than those issues, it is because those issues are at least allowed to be talked about.
Americans recognize the fundamental unfairness and unAmericanness of silencing any discussion on this issue. Americans have recognized that not only has the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs failed to stop any American who wants to use drugs from doing so, but that it has wasted billions of dollars, ruined millions of lives, and created the unintended harmful consequences resulting in the erosion of our 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 14th Amendment rights, America as the world’s largest prison state, and the creation of needless violence and despair.
“Reyes, however, told the Huffington Post that he doesn’t oppose a debate on legalization. He only opposed the timing, coming as it did as Obama was meeting with the Mexican president and Congress was debating the stimulus.”
Oh. Well, excuse us. We tried bringing this up before, but we were told the timing was bad because of Vietnam / Watergate / Recession / Rise of Communism / Iran-Contra / Fall of Communism / Fixing Health Care / Dot-Com bubble burst / 9-11 / Afghanistan / Iraq / or Wall Street collapsing. We’ll try to be more polite next time and only bring legalization up when absolutely nothing else of importance is going on in Washington DC.
Sincerely,
The American People
And this extra little nugget of reportage I had forgotten that should make Rep. Silvestre Reyes one of the first people to call for a debate on the drug war:
A woman who reportedly is a relative of Congressman Silvestre Reyes was kidnapped in Juárez, then released with the help of U.S. law enforcement agencies.
The incident comes as kidnappings have become more common in Juárez possibly due to drug trafficking gangs snatching victims targeted for death or marks held for ransom to raise funds for the ongoing war for control of the region’s smuggling corridor.
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 3:37 pm | By: Radical Russ
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.
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.
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
SneakerPimp: and good afternoon
mr reuben: I could do without seeing Rob K. on tv. But Bruce and Eithan get a big thumbs up from me.
SneakerPimp: waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
mr reuben: I don't respect her opinion bluzguy.
Missippi Hippy: Something about the last year in a contract... folks become more ballsey... and Oprah has big ones.
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Texas Monthly: “Texas High Ways” calls for legalization in the Lone Star State
Clif from our new NORML of Waco called to tell me I just had to see this new article on the cover of the Texas Monthly magazine. When Texas is calling for legalization, you know we’re winning!
waitn for NSL and congrast for spofett.
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