Legalize It!

Laws prohibiting drugs have been a spectacular failure all around the world. A good example of that is Mexico, where the drug mafia just destroyed an entire city. As such, Mexico could provide an argument for abandoning a policy based on prohibition.

Mexicans hear every day in their news reports that the war on drugs has been lost. Recently, a border tunnel was discovered that was packed with several tons of marijuana. The tunnel was six meters deep, nearly 500 meters long and better ventilated than the basements of many homes.

It ran from California to the Mexican border city of Tijuana, in a nation that last year saw some 15,000 deaths in a bloody war that the Mexican police and military declared on the drug cartels. Corpses have turned up along country roads and sometimes have been found dangling from bridges.

There’s Only One Solution

The fact that the government has lost the war on drugs is evidenced by the 26 policemen of the little city of Ascensión, who resigned en masse while a few kilometers away, a 20-year old female took the job of police chief simply because no one else wanted it. Even when police are on the job, hardly anyone believes the corrupt security forces are capable of getting a handle on the problem.

Whispers of drug legalization have been heard there for years; the whispers are slowly becoming a desperate cry partially supported even by conservative President Vicente Fox. But he is unlikely to do so because he is, at heart, still a hippie. Fox knows that ending the prohibition is the only way to drain the swamp hiding the crimes and rescue a country that exists to produce marijuana and cocaine for the United States — the biggest narcotics market in the world.

If the trade isn’t legalized, trying to control it would be about as effective as Chancellor Merkel banning the German automobile industry as a way to limit CO2 emissions.

In Truth, Drugs Will Never Go Away

If, on the other hand, there were a legal and tightly controlled market for drugs, it would be more lucrative for drug kingpins to pay taxes on a legal product than to take the risks involved in illegal production and distribution. The revenue raised could be used by governments on social programs to win back the generation already lost to the cartels. Naturally, the United States would never legalize drugs, not only because of moral objections, but also because most of the victims murdered in the war are on the Mexican side of the border.

But there is an uncomfortable truth known in the United States as it is in the rest of the Western world: Drugs will not only always be available, they will mostly be available at affordable prices.

Marijuana sells for just a few dollars a gram in New York as well as in Frankfurt. Whoever finds cocaine too expensive will buy cheaper methamphetamines or legally available substitutes. They’ll get high one way or another.

You might say my argument is cynical, but then unpopular truths often are. One example: After NATO finally abandoned its vehement objection to negotiating with the Taliban, they’re finally sitting around the negotiating table with the holy warriors. That’s not exactly joyful news, but it is most likely the best solution that can be achieved.

The First Step

As with the Taliban, changes in the drug policy must be slowly and carefully thought out and enacted. If the United States and Mexico could agree to legalizing marijuana as the Netherlands did, it would be a gigantic first step. It would deprive the drug cartels of their primary source of income and ensure that the government — and not the criminals — could afford to be better armed.

And by the way, millions of people would feel a bit less patronized, especially in the United States, where freedom is treasured the most. A supposedly free country where anyone can buy a gun but no one can buy a joint? Absurd!

It’s been nearly 40 years since Bob Marley sang, “Legalize It.” He was never more right than he is today.