If Progress in the Drug War is Measured in Dead Bodies, It's Going Well
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has drawn praise from U.S. drug warriors for his commitment to fighting back against the drug cartels. Unfortunately, current strategies for reducing drug trade violence tend to have the opposite of their intended effect. Via New York Times, this is what you get when you really crack down on the drug traffickers:
"a hand-scrawled list of 22 officers, 5 of whom had already been gunned down in the street.""A turf war among drug cartels has claimed more than 210 lives in the first three months of this year."
"The number of homicides this year is more than twice the total number of homicides for the same period last year."
"Several mass graves hiding 36 bodies in all have been discovered in the backyards of two houses owned by drug dealers."
"At the height of the violence, around Easter, bodies were turning up every morning, at a rate of almost 12 a week."
"'Neither the municipal government, nor the state government, is capable of taking on organized crime,' Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said in an interview."
"The local police are outgunned, underpaid, prone to corruption and lack the authority to investigate drug dealers…"
"The first batch of 150 new recruits came out of the academy in January, but they entered a force where most officers either feared drug dealers too much to move against them or lived on their payroll."
After decades of full-scale international drug war, the central fronts in this great crusade appear before us today literally smoldering, littered with shell-casings and stained in blood. That is drug prohibition's legacy and it will not change or improve. Violence will fluctuate between frequent and perpetual. Illicit drug markets will fluctuate between high availability and totally saturation. That is just the way it is and the way it will always be so long as the people currently in charge of addressing the drug problem are permitted to continue trying their ideas.
Thus, any realistic debate over our drug laws shouldn't be spiked with fictitious references to future victories or meaningful progress. An honest defense of the drug war, if such a thing could exist, would have to defend our current conditions and claim that it would be best if things stayed this way forever.
digg
reddit
saturation
Comment posted by sicntired on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 5:19amsicntired When I started using in the early seventies we used to have what were called panics in town every several months.Every one knew when the dope ran out in town because every junkie was on the corner looking and throwing up.Sometimes it would go on for days and when it broke everybody just melted away.There hasn't been a panic in this city for as long as I can remember.There's just too much drug activity and there are so many organizations doing business that a panic is virtually impossible.Methadone used to sell for $1 per mg and now it goes for 20 cents if anyone will buy it.I can remember offering to give someone a thousand dollars for six hundred milligrams during a panic.The guy refused because he said it would be worth more in a few hours.The panic broke that night and I have no idea if he ever got his bonanza.Our city just became number one in the country for bank robbery.We always thought we were number one any way.The point is that the drug war has been going on for almost 40 years and every year it gets a little more violent,a little sicker and a whole lot more money is being made by ever more powerful criminal organizations.It's kinda like America in the twenties.What was that called again?