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Opponents of legalizing drugs often argue that you can’t really eliminate the cartels because they'll just move on to other crimes. Here's the drug czar's version of that argument:

"Some think legalization will reduce the violence," Kerlikowske said. "It will not. If drugs were to become legal, I doubt very seriously that (the criminals) would take up jobs at Microsoft or Intel. Criminals are not going to change." [El Paso Times]

It's an interesting debate in light of today's news that Mexican drug cartels have been tapping into oil pipelines, stealing astronomical amounts of oil, and then selling it to corrupt American businessmen. It's easy enough to assume that many of these diabolical criminal masterminds will look for ways to stay in business even if we take away their drug profits through legalization and regulation. There's some truth to this and it's pretty creepy to think about what these horrible thugs will do when their primary funding source suddenly vanishes. But that's not an argument against legalization.

Making drugs illegal is what created these maniacs in the first place. Selling drugs is what made them greedy and evil. It's how they learned to launder money. It's how they paid for their weapons and armies. It's where they got the capital to fund other criminal enterprises like stealing oil from the Mexican government. All their power comes from selling drugs, and anyone who supports the drug war shares responsibility for what the cartels do next.

Maybe legalization won't crush them overnight, but it will close down the massive criminal college that the drug war has become. It will stop future generations of potential super-criminals from ever becoming indoctrinated into a life of crime, because there will be far fewer jobs in the crime industry. In the meantime, those criminals that remain won't have any more drug money to line the pockets of public servants and pervert justice at every turn.

They can attempt other criminal endeavors, but it will never be the same because selling drugs is the easiest most-profitable crime on the planet and it can never be replaced. More than a few drug war idiots have suggested that the drug lords will simply switch to human trafficking, as though you could just start selling slaves to the people who used to buy marijuana and cocaine. One could write a very long book about how stupid that is, but it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

What would really happen to the cartels if drugs were legal? There's only one way to find out.

I thought I'd heard it all, but the latest news from Mexico is so ridiculously over-the-top, I was genuinely shocked:

MEXICO CITY – U.S. refineries bought millions of dollars worth of oil stolen from Mexican government pipelines and smuggled across the border, the U.S. Justice Department told The Associated Press — illegal operations now led by Mexican drug cartels expanding their reach.

Criminals — mostly drug gangs — tap remote pipelines, sometimes building pipelines of their own, to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil each year, the Mexican oil monopoly said. At least one U.S. oil executive has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in such a deal. [AP]

What the hell is going on here!? It's been clear for a while now that these people should never be underestimated, but this seriously sounds more like the plot of a James Bond movie than something that could be pulled off in real life. Once again, the situation in Mexico has managed to reach new heights of out-of-control absurdity and it seems to be doing so with increased frequency as of late.

Does anyone honestly believe that pouring more money and lives down the drug war drain is the solution to this?

I've had a creeping feeling for a while now that the cartels might try to take things to the next level:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has captured a drug smuggler believed to have been plotting to assassinate President Felipe Calderon in revenge for the army's crackdown on trafficking, a senior police official said on Monday.

Dimas Diaz, a mid-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel in northwestern Mexico, was arrested on Sunday in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan with four other traffickers, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug wing.

"Government intelligence reports led us to find out the threat was from the Sinaloa cartel, with Dimas Diaz entrusted with the details of a possible attack," he told reporters. [Reuters]

The magnitude of all this is quite incredible to behold. We've reached a point where anything is possible in Mexico (anything, that is, except victory in the bloody war on drugs). The prospect of a Presidential assassination is a deeply unnerving reminder that the situation in Mexico could actually become considerably uglier than it already is.

I shudder to think what effect such an event would have on the already problematic level of U.S. involvement in Mexico's disastrous war on drugs. Please, let's just stop this now before it literally destroys everything there is to destroy.

One of the most pernicious lies in the marijuana debate is that police aren't aggressively working to arrest people for small amounts of pot. They are. Although there are parts of the country where marijuana is a low priority for police, there are also places like New York City, where police have developed finely tuned mechanisms for arresting and convicting as many minor marijuana offenders as humanly possible.

What makes New York City's epic war on marijuana so remarkable is not just the staggering number of arrests (more than any other city on earth), but the despicable methods that are used to achieve that result. First, police must work their way around the fact that 1) possession of small amounts of marijuana is decriminalized in New York and 2) the 4th Amendment forbids searching people against their will without evidence of a crime.

Basically, the program consists of stopping large numbers of people (primarily young black and Hispanic men) for no reason and then saying this:

"We're going to have to search you. If you have anything illegal you should show it to us now. If we find something when we search you, you'll have to spend the night in jail. But if you show us what you have now, maybe we can just give you a ticket. And if it’s nothing but a little weed, maybe we can let you go. So if you’ve got anything you’re not supposed to have, take it out and show it now.”

When police say this, the young people usually take out their small amount of marijuana and hand it over. Their marijuana is now "open to public view." And that – having a bit of pot out and open to be seen – technically makes it a crime, a fingerprintable offense. And for cooperating with the police, the young people are handcuffed and jailed. [Alternet]

Amazingly, you're not actually guilty of a crime until you attempt to cooperate with police. It is literally the act of showing them your stash that is a violation of the law and everything they say up until that point is designed to trick you into doing that. As is so often the case, policing in the war on drugs consists of tricking people into breaking the law so that the law can then be enforced.

Don't let anybody tell you we're not waging a war on marijuana users in America. That's exactly what we're doing and that's why marijuana policy reform has nothing do with people wanting to get high. This is about justice, human rights, and common sense. To jettison these principles because of marijuana is an act of unfathomable lunacy.