Cancún, 2011, where a half dozen bloody cartels are duking it out to capture the tourist drug market and northbound cocaine routes. Marijuana is always a hot item, so Mexican traffickers will be thrilled to learn the U.S. may soon allow retail pot sales. Thank you, Mr. Shively, and former president Fox, for your $100 million investment in Mexico. Ex-Microsoft exec wants to "open pot trade with Mexico." These children thank you, too.
June 5 - Vicente Fox: "I'd raise marijuana, were it legal"
Dec. 28 - Two cartels unite to declare war on Los Zetas in Cancún, foreshadowing a "bloodbath"
Dec. 28 - Mexico pays enormous price for domestic insecurity
Aug. 12 - On Playa del Carmen's Fifth Avenue, drug market openly flourishes and "anarchy prevails"
Jun. 2 - More dope comes ashore in Quintana Roo
Feb. 7, 2012 - Mexico's Caribbean Riviera Maya in the hands of drug cartels and extortionists
Oct. 22, 2011 - Who's buying the drugs in Quintana Roo's Riviera Maya?
© MGRR 2013. All rights reserved. This article may be cited or briefly quoted with proper attribution or a hyperlink, but not reproduced without permission.
Cartels through proxies lobby Washington to keep weed illegal as does the prison industrial complex not to mention the beer/wine/liquor lobbies. Strange bedfellows, all.
ReplyDeleteCartels don't care whether marijuana is legal or illegal; they're going to be major players in the industry one way or another. So if a former Microsoft exec who likes to toke up wants to be one of their U.S. partners, and make a buck on his end, they'll have no problem with that. They already distribute their products through tens of thousands of gangs on American soil, and one more U.S. trafficker won't change the game much. See: http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2013/01/mexican-drug-cartels-operate-in-1286-us.html.
DeleteBut it's absolute naivete is to believe that legalizing marijuana, or any other drug, will bring peace to Mexico, Central America and other regions which pay the price for America's insatiable lust for narcotics. With no more cops or soldiers to worry about, the cartels will turn on each other with such vengeance that it will make Meixco's current drug war look like a Saturday night street brawl. The only people who don't understand that - or don't care - are the stoners. By his own admission, James Shively is one of them.
What's naive is thinking Singapore style laws will accomplish anything. Demonizing rational drug policy as being the agenda of "stoners" is even more childish. Enjoy your cold cerveza, do you buy it from a bootlegger or the Oxxo down the block?
ReplyDeleteThe grand difference between beer and marijuana is that the cartels aren't hauling thousands of tons of the former north into the United States, and killing each other in the process (perhaps 70,000 in the past six years).
DeleteNeither Mexico nor the United States have Singapore-style laws -- an automatic death penalty when the quantity of drugs exceeds a very small amount -- so your hyperbolic analysis goes nowhere. But actually, for traffickers and dealers, the gallows might be a good idea. Maybe we should give it a try.
Chill out and light up some more weed. You'll feel better. But before you do, make an Oxxo run yourself, and stock up on Cheetos. You and your smoking buddies are sure to get the munchies before the night's over.