US 'Pot Shops' Might Do More to Stop the Mexican Cartels Than Any Law Enforcement David Usborne - The Independent
go to original January 10, 2014

I was in Mexico on ‘Green Wednesday’ last week when those pot shops opened in Colorado, making it the first jurisdiction in the world to allow the legal sale of recreational marijuana. The reaction there was partly one of puzzlement. The war on drugs was born of American pressure. What the heck is going on?

The cost of that policy has been horrible for Mexico, where 70,000 have died since former president Felipe Calderon made crushing the cartels his top priority in 2006. While his successor, Enrique Pena Nieto, is focusing less on the cartels and more on restoring public security, blood is still being spilled every day.

Yet America is suddenly projecting muddle. The Justice Department says it still considers marijuana an illegal psychotropic substance but in the same breath promises not stand in the way of states moving to legalise it. Such is the miracle of federalism. But if marijuana is now deemed OK in Colorado – and dispensaries will open soon in Washington as well, the other state that approved legal marijuana at the end of 2012 – what message does that send to Mexico and others fighting the war on drugs largely on America’s behalf?

“It looks hypocritical that we are allowing this experiment to go forward while Mexico is waging a life-and-death war to prevent people from consuming these drugs in the United States,” remarks David Shirk, a fellow with the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center who also teaches at San Diego University.

“Imagine you’re a Mexican soldier about to raid a major marijuana plantation. He has to be asking himself, ‘Why am I risking my life for a bunch of gringos who are going to smoke this stuff freely in Colorado?’”

Yet there are those in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America who see hope in the Colorado ganja rush. These are the voices that contend that only by legalising can governments weaken the cartels that have so direly poisoned society with violence and by corrupting civic institutions.

Read the rest at The Independent

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