Alfredo Corchado: Legalizing Marijuana in US Will Not End Violence in Mexico Alfredo Corchado - The Seattle Times
go to original August 16, 2013

If only it was so easy — legalize pot and Mexico’s bloody nightmare would end. It won’t.

As a correspondent for The Dallas Morning News I’ve had a front-row seat to the massacre in my homeland, Mexico. Like many other colleagues, I’ve witnessed Mexico’s descent into darkness as brutal cartels continue to fight each other for plazas — parlance for illicit corridors that lead north with, among other products, tons of marijuana for the insatiable, biggest market in the world: my adopted homeland, the United States.

As I’ve witnessed the collapse of institutions in a blood-soaked nation, and seen so many in my own profession forced into censorship, threatened or killed by powerful cartels, I too have asked the same question: Why doesn’t the U.S. just legalize this stuff, just like the states of Washington and Colorado, so we can put the nightmare behind us?

Lately, I’ve read how the South American country of Uruguay became the first nation to legalize the production, distribution and use of marijuana for its people. Even here in Mexico City, I’ve seen how the issue has become a topic of debate in Congress and among business and academic leaders who suddenly view the issue through a different prism.

Read the rest at The Seattle Times

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