*Y'know, I've never been a War-on-Some-Drugs fan. Being an Austinite, I knew plenty of people very into narcotics. Large numbers of these mental adventurers met with ruin: mostly through alcohol and AIDS. They could obtain the narcotics, but it was always an interpersonal adventure fraught with all kinds of trouble from snitches and cops. Scoring heavy dope took a more together form of intelligence than somebody saturated on drugs was likely to manifest. AIDS and alcohol, by contrast, were easy and cheap. So that's what they got, in the long run.
*Normally, I don't like drug alarmist rhetoric. So I wouldn't normally predict that legalizing narcotics in Mexico would transform its border towns into narcotourist boom areas. But as I read this stunning news from THE GUARDIAN – who seem to be the only press outlet covering this aspect of modern reality – I have to wonder. How on earth could that NOT happen?
*So, imagine: the War on Drugs ends. Why? Because narcotics has triumphed. Narcotics is richer, stronger, faster, more feral and better-armed than the cops. The scourge, the weed, the needle, is loose upon the earth, and you can score coke at a lemonade stand.
*Compared to the massive mayhem of climate havoc, financial collapse, and lost wars on terror, maybe people would just... you know... glance at yesterday's moral armageddon and just overlook that?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/sep/06/war-on-drugs-latin-america
(...)
In Tijuana, addicts cannot believe their luck – those arriving at the Narcóticos Anónimos session are amazed that possession of up to four lines of cocaine or 50mg of heroin will be legal. Juan Morales Magana, 17, a windscreen-washer and registered methamphetamine and heroin addict, (((hey, at least he's got steady work, unlike overqualified college graduates))) was working out how many hits the legal limit of 40mg of meth would get him, though his counsellor, an evangelical pastor, was ambivalent: "I wouldn't want anyone to think that, just because it is legal, one should live like this for fun. Drugs are the scourge of our society. All this can do would limit killing between small-time cholos [gangsters] for street-corner turf, allowing the army to go after kingpins and middle men. The danger is that kingpins will accelerate the domestic market if possession is legal and smuggling into the US more difficult."
In barrios such as this, drugs are sold from tienditas controlled by gangs that operate an outsourced tender system for the battling cartels. "It's unsure how the legislation will affect actions against the tienditas," said police officer Elisio Montes, whose two best friends, his former boss and assistant, were murdered by executioners for the cartels.
"Personally, I sometimes wish drugs would be made legal so that the gringos can get high and we can live in peace. Then I say to myself: no – these drugs are addictive after one single hit. They're terrifying – they destroy lives, they destroy our young people. If they are legal, they will buy more."
A further reason for scepticism is the prospect of mass drugs tourism from the US. This is not what Mexican businessmen in the border town of Nogales, Sonora, had in mind last Tuesday when they discussed how to restore the image of cities that until recently enjoyed thriving trade from Americans looking for cheap pharmaceuticals, dental treatment, souvenirs, alcohol and sex. (((You may note that ALL of this Yankee tourism is about American dysfunctionality. None of this cross-border trade involves any of the genuine appealing aspects of life in Mexican cities, such as the music, food (risky, but great), cinema, favela architecture, handicrafts, fotonovelas, botanical weirdness and a tradition of clothing fully suited to the future climate of American cities.)))
The prospect of border towns becoming the equivalent of Amsterdam, only with cocaine and heroin freely on sale, was not discussed. (((I don't see ANY of this huge change being much discussed... it seems to have vanished into a netherland of mass denial, like Creationism, climate change and Iraqi yellowcake. How come wars are never formally declared or formally ended any more? Even the sober and committed people come across like they're on Halcion.))) "It's interesting,' said hotelier Jesus Antonio Pujol Irastorza. "I have seen a lot written about this potential problem in the US media, but almost nothing in the Mexican press."
"For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels," said San Diego police chief William Lansdowne, "it defies logic why they will pass a law that will clearly increase drug use." (((Well, because the use isn't the war. The war is the war and has bullets, while the drug use kills people stealthily. As stealthily as the dysfunctional American health system, except in smaller numbers.)))
The counter-voices will continue to make themselves heard. But even in the US, the discourse on drugs is changing. The prosecutor general in Baja California, Rommel Moreno, said months ago that he found it "very hard" to talk to his American counterparts "about fighting drugs with any means other than interdiction", but senses "an important shift". Officials in the border states talk about legalising marijuana for personal use, while Professor David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute in San Diego, said: "I think it is inevitable that possession of marijuana will be legal in the US within a decade." (((That means you can watch Los Angeles burning, while unemployed, and also while really stoned.)))
Powerful voices against prohibition will create the underlying theme at the major conference in El Paso this month and there is even a movement of police officers and law enforcement agents urging decriminalisation, unthinkable until recently. "Today, drugs are illegal, they are out of control, and they are everywhere", said Kristin Daley, projects director for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "If they were managed in the way that alcohol is, they would be under control. Instead of criminals getting richer, violence escalating and drug-related deaths on the rise, we would live under a system of established pricing, peaceful purchase and a regulated labelling system."
(((I'm wondering if we're not heading for a global system where NO form of regulated labelling can work any more. Narcotics prohibition, handguns, product forgeries, currency flows, intellectual property barriers, alcohol tobacco firearms patents copyrights: they all fail across the board at the same time, because states have failed, the planet is on fire and everybody is stoned, unemployed and living out of their car trunks. It's the black globalization favela chic scenario, plus LSD. Does this idea seem plausible to you? It's at least as plausible as casually dropping by Matamoros on spring break to shoot up some heroin, isn't it?)))
But they remain wary in Tijuana. Before the drug war, this border city was a capital of vice tourism, which has now disappeared. Tijuana lies opposite San Diego, from where most of those seeking prostitutes and other distractions came, and where a letter recently appeared in the local Union Tribune newspaper from Omar Firestone, principal cellist in the Orquesta de Baja California. He warned that the last thing the city needs is "offering sanctuary to American druggies" who will "draw the worst of our society to the streets of Tijuana and increase the flight of those seeking a better life. I guess the cartels needed a government bailout."
