Mexico’s drug war

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

More than 28,000 people have died in Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s nearly four-year war against drug cartels. The government of Mexico says a majority of those killed were traffickers, dealers and their associates, including kingpins Arturo Beltran Leyva in 2009 and Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal last month. According to the U.S. State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy report issued in March, removing such important cartel leaders has “narrowed the operating space of criminal gangs, who are now fighting among themselves for diminishing territory and profits.”

That’s one interpretation. But Times correspondents Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood presented another picture this week of cartels continuing to expand their reach with industry earnings estimated at as much as $39 billion, and a growing list of places the State Department says American citizens should avoid: no longer just the border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez but also highways around Mexico’s industrial city of Monterrey and down the Pacific Coast to the central state of Michoacan. In fact, Beltran Leyva was killed at a luxury apartment in downtown Cuernavaca, in the central state of Morelos, and Coronel in the suburbs of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.

Even Calderon has acknowledged that the traffickers pose a threat to Mexico’s national security. As Wilkinson and Ellingwood noted, he called the criminals “a challenge to the state, an attempt to replace the state.” That’s also true in countries such as Guatemala and Jamaica, where the state is smaller and weaker and traffickers no less aggressive. The drug violence is tearing apart these societies, as is the violence used to combat it in Mexico.

Calderon is pressing the judicial system to step up prosecution and convictions of criminals, and is calling for a remaking of myriad state and local police forces that have been infiltrated by the drug mafia. The State Department says Mexico is on the right track with its law enforcement actions and longer-term institutional reforms. Although reforms obviously are necessary and removing drug lords is a good thing, we’re not convinced that the U.S.-backed drug war can succeed. Neither is former Mexican President Vicente Fox, of Calderon’s center-right National Action Party, who last week called for legalization of “production, sales and distribution” of all major drugs in Mexico. This went far beyond an earlier proposal by three former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico for decriminalization of marijuana consumption. Fox said prohibitionist policies were ineffective, while legalization would break the economic power of the cartels.

Sadly, even legalization in Mexico would not solve the problem, because most of the market for illegal drugs is in the United States, and cartels have diversified into other illegal businesses. Where there’s lots of illicit money to be made, the cartels will find a way. Legalization, either in the United States or Mexico, may raise new problems even as it solves old ones. Nevertheless, Fox deserves credit for exploring every solution to a crisis that is ravaging his country.

via Mexico’s drug war – latimes.com.

Legalization of Cannabis in all of North America (Canada, U.S., and Mexico) would mitigate the problem of a single country strategy of legalization. I’d suggest it happen simultaneously. I’d also suggest that all three countries look into creating a viable and productive market for cannabis and hemp products, and a revitalization effort for small agricultural producers (40 acres or less, not corporate-controlled mega-farms).

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California Cannabis Hemp & Health Initiative 2012

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

Help California re-legalize hemp for industrial, medical, nutritional and personal use (for persons 21 or older). The first step is to place the initiative on the November 2012 ballot. This is important because the current proposed initiative (tax and regulate) does not re-legalize Cannabis hemp 100% for all uses including industrial.

The signature drive will begin November 2011 through April 2012! We will have 150 days to gather at least 700,000 signatures from registered California voters.

Click here for more information!

PROPOSED WORDING AS OF 05/13/2010:

California Cannabis Hemp & Health Initiative 2012

AN ACT TO AMEND THE HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE OF CALIFORNIA:

I. Add Section 11362.6 to the Health and Safety Code of California, any laws or policies to the contrary notwithstanding:

1. No person, individual, or corporate entity shall be arrested or prosecuted, be denied any right or privilege, nor be subject to any criminal or civil penalties for the possession, cultivation, transportation, distribution, or consumption of cannabis hemp marijuana, including:

(a) Cannabis hemp industrial products.

(b) Cannabis hemp medicinal preparations.

(c) Cannabis hemp nutritional products.

(c) Cannabis hemp religious and spiritual products.

(d) Cannabis hemp recreational and euphoric use and products.

2. Definition of terms:

(a) The terms “cannabis hemp” and “cannabis hemp marijuana” mean the natural, non-genetically modified plant hemp, cannabis, marihuana, marijuana, cannabis sativa L, cannabis Americana, cannabis chinensis, cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, cannabis sativa, or any variety of cannabis, including any derivative, concentrate, extract, flower, leaf, particle, preparation, resin, root, salt, seed, stalk, stem, or any product thereof.

(b) The term “cannabis hemp industrial products” means all products made from cannabis hemp that are not designed or intended for human consumption, including, but not limited to: clothing, building materials, paper, fiber, fuel, lubricants, plastics, paint, seed for cultivation, animal feed, veterinary medicine, oil, or any other product that is not designed for internal human consumption; as well as cannabis hemp plants used for crop rotation, erosion control, pest control, weed control, or any other horticultural or environmental purposes, for example, the reversal of the Greenhouse Effect and toxic soil reclamation.

(c) The term “cannabis hemp medicinal preparations” means all products made from cannabis hemp that are designed, intended, or used for human consumption for the treatment of any human disease or condition, for pain relief, or for any healing purpose, including but not limited to the treatment or relief of: Alzheimer’s and pre-Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, arthritis, asthma, cramps, epilepsy, glaucoma, migraine, multiple sclerosis, nausea, premenstrual syndrome, side effects of cancer chemotherapy, fibromyalgia, sickle cell anemia, spasticity, spinal injury, stress, easement of post-traumatic stress disorder, Tourette syndrome, attention deficit disorder, immunodeficiency, wasting syndrome from AIDS or anorexia; use as an antibiotic, antibacterial, anti-viral, or anti-emetic; as a healing agent, or as an adjunct to any medical or herbal treatment. Mental conditions not limited to bipolar, depression, attention deficit disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, shall be conditions considered for medical use.

(d) The term “cannabis hemp nutritional products” means cannabis hemp for consumption by humans and animals as food, including but not limited to: seed, seed protein, seed oil, essential fatty acids, seed cake, dietary fiber, or any preparation or extract thereof.

(e) The term “cannabis hemp euphoric products” means cannabis hemp intended for personal recreational or religious use, other than cannabis hemp industrial products, cannabis hemp medicinal preparations, or cannabis hemp nutritional products.

(f) The term “personal use” means the internal consumption of cannabis hemp by people 21 years of age or older for any relaxational, meditative, religious, spiritual, recreational, or other purpose other than sale.

(g) The term “commercial production” means the production of cannabis hemp products for sale or profit under the conditions of these provisions.

3. Industrial cannabis hemp farmers, manufacturers, processors, and distributors shall not be subject to any special zoning requirement, licensing fee, or tax that is excessive, discriminatory, or prohibitive.

4. Cannabis hemp medicinal preparations are hereby restored to the list of available medicines in California. Licensed physicians shall not be penalized for, nor restricted from, prescribing or recommending cannabis hemp for medical purposes to any patient, regardless of age. No tax shall be applied to prescribed cannabis hemp medicinal preparations. Medical research shall be encouraged. No recommending physician shall be subject to any professional licensing review or hearing as a result of recommending or approving medical use of cannabis hemp marijuana.

5. Personal use of cannabis hemp euphoric products.

(a) No permit, license, or tax shall be required for the non-commercial cultivation, transportation, distribution, or consumption of cannabis hemp.

(b) Testing for inactive and/or inert residual cannabis metabolites shall not be required for employment or insurance, nor be considered in determining employment, other impairment, or intoxication.

(c) When a person falls within the conditions of these exceptions, the offense laws do not apply and only the exception laws apply.

6. Use of cannabis hemp products for religious or spiritual purposes shall be considered an inalienable right; and shall be protected by the full force of the State and Federal Constitutions.

7. Commerce in cannabis hemp euphoric products shall be limited to adults, 21 years of age and older, and shall be regulated in a manner analogous to California’s wine industry model. For the purpose of distinguishing personal from commercial production, 99 flowering female plants and 12 pounds of dried, cured cannabis hemp flowers, bud, not leaf, produced per adult, 21 years of age and older, per year shall be considered as being for personal use.

8. The manufacture, marketing, distribution, or sales between adults of equipment or accessories designed to assist in the planting, cultivation, harvesting, curing, processing, packaging, storage, analysis, consumption, or transportation of cannabis hemp plants, industrial cannabis hemp products, cannabis hemp medicinal preparations, cannabis hemp nutritional products, cannabis hemp euphoric products, or any cannabis hemp product shall not be prohibited.

9. No California law enforcement personnel or funds shall be used to assist or aid and abet in the enforcement of Federal cannabis hemp marijuana laws involving acts which are hereby no longer illegal in the State of California.

10. Any person who threatens the enjoyment of these provisions is guilty of a misdemeanor. The maximum penalties and fines of a misdemeanor may be imposed.

II. Repeal, delete, and expunge any and all existing statutory laws that conflict with the provisions of this initiative.

1. Enactment of this initiative shall include: amnesty, immediate release from prison, jail, parole, and probation, and clearing, expungement, and deletion of all criminal records for all persons currently charged with, or convicted of any non-violent cannabis hemp marijuana offenses included in this initiative which are hereby no longer illegal in the State of California. People who fall within this category that triggered an original sentence are included within this provision.

2. Within 60 days of the passage of this Act, the Attorney General shall develop and distribute a one-page application, providing for the destruction of all cannabis hemp marijuana criminal records in California for any such offense covered by this Act. Such forms shall be distributed to district and city attorneys and made available at all police departments in the State to persons hereby affected. Upon filing such form with any Superior Court and a payment of a fee of $10.00, the Court shall liberally construe these provisions to benefit the defendant in furtherance of the amnesty and dismissal provision of this section. Upon the Court’s ruling under this provision the arrest record shall be set aside and be destroyed. Such persons may then truthfully state that they have never been arrested or convicted of any cannabis hemp marijuana related offense which is hereby no longer illegal in the State of California. This shall be deemed to be a finding of factual innocence under California Penal Code Section 851.8 et seq.

III. The legislature is authorized upon thorough investigation, to enact legislation using reasonable standards to:

1. License concessionary establishments to distribute cannabis hemp euphoric products in a manner analogous to California’s wine industry model. Sufficient community outlets shall be licensed to provide reasonable commercial access to persons of legal age, so as to discourage and prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, such products. Any license or permit fee required by the State for commercial production, distribution or use shall not exceed $1,000.00.

2. Place an excise tax on commercial sale of cannabis hemp euphoric products, analogous to California’s wine industry model, so long as no excise tax or combination of excise taxes shall exceed $10.00 per ounce.

3. Determine an acceptable and uniform standard of impairment based on performance testing, to restrict persons impaired by cannabis hemp euphoric products from operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery, or otherwise engaging in conduct that may affect public safety.

4. Regulate the personal use of cannabis hemp euphoric products in enclosed and/or restricted public places.

IV. Pursuant to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the people of California hereby repudiate and challenge Federal cannabis hemp marijuana prohibitions that conflict with this act.

V. Severability: If any provision of this Act, or the application of any such provision to any person or circumstance, shall be held invalid by any court, the remainder of this Act, to the extent it can be given effect, or the application of such provisions to persons or circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, shall not be affected thereby, and to this end the provisions of this Act are severable.

VI. Construction: If any rival or conflicting initiative regulating any matter addressed by this act receives the higher affirmative vote, then all non-conflicting parts shall become operative.

VII. Purpose of Act: This Act is an exercise of the police powers of the State for the protection of the safety, welfare, health, and peace of the people and the environment of the State, to protect the industrial and medicinal uses of cannabis hemp, to eliminate the unlicensed and unlawful cultivation, selling, and dispensing of cannabis hemp; and to encourage temperance in the consumption of cannabis hemp euphoric products. It is hereby declared that the subject matter of this Act involves, in the highest degree, the ecological, economic, social, and moral well-being and safety of the State and of all its people. All provisions of this Act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of these purposes: to respect human rights, to promote tolerance, and to end cannabis hemp prohibition.

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Mexico rethinks drug strategy as death toll soars

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

MEXICO CITY — The drug war in Mexico is at a crossroads. As the death toll climbs above 28,000, President Felipe Calderon confronts growing pressure to try a different strategy — perhaps radically different — to quell the violence unleashed by major drug syndicates.

Even an elder from his own party, former President Vicente Fox, is taking potshots at Calderon, telling him that his policy is seriously off-track.

Many Mexicans don’t know whether their country is winning or losing the war against drug traffickers, but they know they’re fatigued by the brutality that’s sweeping parts of their nation.

Calderon urged his countrymen this week not to gauge the drug war by the relentless rise of the death toll. In early April, newspaper tallies put the toll at around 18,000, but legislators then leaked a higher official estimate: 22,700. Earlier this month, the nation’s intelligence chief said that 28,000 people most likely had been killed since Calderon came to office in late 2006.

“The number of murders or the degree of violence isn’t necessarily the best indicator of progress or retreat, or if the war . . . is won or lost,” the president told opposition party chiefs at a meeting called to pull the nation behind his counter-drug strategy. “It is a sign of the severity of the problem.”

Calderon had called the party bosses — along with academics and civic leaders — into public sessions on how to improve security and get the upper hand against the drug gangs, several of which are engaged in bloody warfare over smuggling routes.

“What I ask, simply, is for clear ideas and precise proposals on how to improve this strategy,” the president said at one session.

What Calderon, a bespectacled economist with a professorial manner, got instead was a barrage of criticism. The government should send soldiers back to their barracks, he was told, and do more to attack money-laundering and to protect judges. Several politicians, including Fox, suggested that Calderon consider legalizing narcotics.

The near-daily brainstorming sessions were interrupted when Calderon flew to Colombia to attend the swearing-in last Saturday of President Juan Manuel Santos, and that nation’s success in battling cocaine cartels has served as a reference point for the discussions.

So have several disclosures and news events that underscore the levels of corruption that are corroding law enforcement efforts. Among them:

  • Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna said last Friday that narcotics cartels paid around $100 million a month in bribes to municipal police officers across Mexico, ensuring that their activities went undisturbed.
  • Some 250 federal police officers abducted a commander briefly last weekend in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, accusing him of being in cahoots with traffickers and forcing the police to extort citizens.

Calderon is seeking support for wholesale police reform in Mexico, where some 33,000 officers belong to a federal police force and another 430,000 belong to disparate state or municipal forces. He’s pointed to Colombia’s unified national police as an example of how to make headway against organized crime.

Calderon wants to abolish the 1,200 or so municipal police departments and strengthen 32 state police forces under some level of federal command.

As it is now, he said, “there is no possibility of setting directives on strategy, logistics or even discipline on this enormous body of police at the municipal level.”

Municipal police earn miserable salaries and are notoriously corrupt in much of Mexico, where they’re subject to a choice by drug gangs — “plomo” or “plata” — either take a “lead” bullet or accept a payoff in “silver” to look the other way.

During Calderon’s government, criminal gangs have killed 915 municipal police officers, 698 state police and 463 federal agents, the Public Safety Secretariat said.

“Probably the most corrupt institutions in Mexico are those municipal police forces,” said Scott Stewart, the vice president for tactical intelligence at Stratfor, a company based in Austin, Texas, that provides global analysis.

“The police officers are kind of seen as some sort of third-class citizens,” Stewart said. “Basically, the privileged … like the fact that they can offer somebody 20 or 50 bucks to get out of a speeding ticket. It’s very convenient to have that level of corruption.”

After coming to office, Calderon turned to the military for help in fighting at least seven drug cartels that hold sway over vast areas of Mexico, rapidly deploying some 45,000 troops.

The deployment coincided with intensified fighting between rival groups, most notably the Gulf Cartel and its former armed wing, known as Los Zetas. The Sinaloa Cartel, perhaps the strongest drug syndicate to emerge since the heyday of Colombian cartels in the 1980s and early 1990s, is battling a weaker cartel based in the border city of Juarez across from El Paso, Texas.

As public discussions about counter-drug strategy unfolded in the past week, a surprising source of some of the harshest criticism was former President Fox of Calderon’s own National Action Party.

“We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs,” Fox wrote on his blog last Saturday, making big newspaper headlines the next day. “Radical prohibition strategies have never worked.”

Fox wrote that legalization would “break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt.” He also called on Calderon to send soldiers back to the barracks.

The broadside from Fox coincided with criticism from opposition party chiefs. Jesus Ortega, the head of the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party, backed Fox’s calls for legalization and said prosecutors should examine the corrupt financial system. The money of the cartels “isn’t stuffed under the mattresses of drug lords,” he said.

Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez acknowledged that legal “stumbling blocks” hindered the confiscation of drug lords’ assets, saying that the government soon would offer reforms.

However, Stewart, the Stratfor analyst, said that entrenched political and business interests would block any reform of law enforcement or money-laundering legislation.

“There are powerful interests in Mexico who benefit from the drug trade and the $40 billion, or whatever it is, that is pumped into the Mexican economy,” Stewart said. “You’re talking bankers. You’re talking businesses that are laundering money, construction companies that are building resorts. People are becoming very rich off the flow of money.”

via mcclatchydc.com.

Gee. What’s better? Unending war, or ending the fraud of marijuana prohibition? And you want to talk about the powerful interests, not only in Mexico but also the United States, who benefit from drug prohibition… then we have to start looking into covert operations by the U.S. intelligence services who have had a heavy hand in black market drug trafficking throughout Mexico, Central and South America, and very likely in South Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world. Ask your legislators why they support the terrorists in the drug cartels (and the intelligence services) by not putting an end to Prohibition.

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Mexico and drugs: Thinking the unthinkable

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

THE nota roja, a section reporting the previous day’s murders and car crashes in all their bloodstained detail, is an established feature of Mexican newspapers. It is also an expanding one, as fighting over the drug trail to the United States inspires ever-greater feats of violence. Last month in the northern state of Durango, a group of prisoners was apparently released from jail for the night to murder 18 partygoers in a next-door state. A few days later, 14 inmates were murdered in a prison in Tamaulipas. In all, since Felipe Calderón sent the army against the drug gangs when he took office as president almost four years ago, some 28,000 people have been killed, the government says. There is no sign of a let-up, on either side.

So it came as a surprise when on August 3rd Mr Calderón called for a debate on whether to legalise drugs. Though several former Latin American leaders have spoken out in favour of legalisation, and many politicians privately support it, Mr Calderón became the first incumbent president to call for open discussion of the merits of legalising a trade he has opposed with such determination. At a round-table on security, he said this was “a fundamental debate in which I think, first of all, you must allow a democratic plurality [of opinions]…You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and the key arguments on both sides.” It was hardly a call to start snorting—and Mr Calderón subsequently made clear that he was opposed to the “absurd” idea of allowing millions more people to become addicted. But it has brought into the open an argument that appears to be gaining currency in Mexico.

Rest the rest at: Mexico and drugs: Thinking the unthinkable | The Economist.

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Sacrifice of the Innocents: Drugs, Money and Murder in Mexico

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Áine MacDermot
End Prohibition

End Prohibition

In Roberto Bolano’s novel 2666, the women of the city of Santa Teresa are being brutally raped and relentlessly killed. The culprits are unknown, but a shadowy alliance of drug dealers, police officers and local government officials is never far from the scene. The discovery of each new corpse is as regular as a martial beat, and the reader needs to summon courage to press on through the unfiltered descriptions of a seemingly never-ending atrocity. Emerging on the other side, one feels as if they have just been released from being held underwater.

Santa Teresa is a literary construction of Hell. Or rather it would be, if it were not in fact nestled next to El Paso, Texas. Santa Teresa is a fictionalised Ciudad Juarez, described by El Notre as “the most violent zone in the world outside of declared war zones.” The battle for the control of the drug trade is tearing the city, and the rest of Mexico, apart. Bolano’s terrifying recitation of gruesome discoveries is made real in an Amnesty report on the murders of an estimated four hundred women of the city of Ciudad Juarez.

Shockingly, we do not even have a full picture of the carnage. Mexican intelligence agency director, Guillermo Valdes, yesterday put the number of Mexico’s drug-war related murders since 2006 at 28,000. In mid-June, official statistics put the number at 24,800. This sudden jump in a little over six weeks is indicative of the difficulties of quantifying the dead whilst the threat of assassination, vanishing morale and all-pervasive corruption paralyze the authorities’ efforts to get their hands around this problem.

When drugs are illegal there are vast profits to be made in their production, transport and sale. In areas of Mexico with high levels of unemployment and drug addiction there is a virtually unbounded supply of labour for the cartels. The vast sums of money needed to bribe large tranches of the police and civil society are considered to be simply the cost of doing business.

The victims of this legal distortion of supply and demand are not just thugs and gangsters, but innocent women and children living in a society where rape, torture and murder are committed with wild impunity. The suffering families of the dead cannot even expect justice. Most of the four hundred murders of women and girls in Ciudad Juarez remain unsolved. Drug money has destroyed the rule of law.

On Wednesday, Felipe Calderon bravely accepted the need to open the debate on legalizing drugs:

“It’s a fundamental debate in which I think, first of all, you must allow a democratic plurality [of opinions]… You have to analyze carefully the pros and cons and the key arguments on both sides.”

In response to President Calderon’s call to open up this debate, we should examine some of the potential benefits of legalization in the Mexican context. Producing a legal commodity is cheaper than producing an illegal one because there is no need to bribe the police and officials to avoid arrest, or keep a standing army to protect the operation. As the cost of producing drugs falls, so does their value and the incentive to use violence to control the trade.

By undermining the profitability of the drug business and giving it a legal status, corruption is both unaffordable and unnecessary. The cartels will cease to be a major employer and the rule of law can be given the chance to re-emerge. Instead of vast revenues flowing to the drug cartels, they can flow into the state coffers to be used for security, education and treatment services.

The cons of legalization are more uncertain, but we should be open-minded and sober about them. The main threat is an increase in the misuse of drugs, and the concomitant social and health problems that can result. Many studies indicate that the consumption of drugs is linked to price, lower prices leading to more consumption.

Since no country has legalized drugs it is impossible to predict the outcomes in Mexico, but a study by The Beckley Foundation which examines the effects of the decriminalization of all drugs in Portugal, concludes that whilst usage rates of marijuana have risen mildly (which may be in part due to increased reporting and rising rates of usage in Europe as a whole), rates of heroin use have fallen sharply as addicts seek treatment, and rates of cocaine use have remained stable.

The debate on legalization needs to happen soon and should be pursued with a spirit of informed inquiry. President Calderon deserves praise for joining former presidents Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Fernando Cardoso of Brazil in acknowledging the value of putting this option on the table.

No-one can say for sure whether legalizing drugs will prove to be the magic bullet that breaks the grip of the drugs cartels on Mexican civil life. What is certain is that at this very second, the profits of illegality are causing dead bodies to rise to the surface like bubbles on a pond.

This sacrifice should not be allowed to continue.

For more information on the work of The Beckley Foundation visit our website.

via Huffington Post

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