No, Mexico’s Not Winning the ‘Drug War’

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/no-mexicos-not-winning-drug-war



Six years after President Felipe Calderón first declared war on the country’s drug cartels, U.S. and Mexican media are heralding the alleged killing of Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano by Mexican marines as an important triumph for the country's government. The AP called it , “one of the most significant victories in Mexico's militarized battle with organized crime.”

Lazcano was a leader in Los Zetas, one of Mexico's most powerful and brutal cartels. Zetas pioneered the now-standard cartel practice of displaying their beheaded victims’ bodies in public, and Lazcano is personally credited with expanding the cartel’s influence, as well as with orchestrating the 2004 murder of Tijuana newspaper editor Francisco Ortiz Franco, who reported on the drug war.

But the narrative of "victory" was immediately undercut when armed paramilitaries stole Lazcano’s corpse from a funeral parlor. And though the U.S. now says it identified the body as that of Lazcano before it was taken, marines maintain they had no knowledge of the body's identity, the Mexican people remain unconvinced Lazcano is gone for good. "In Mexico, we can believe in chupacabras, in UFOs and even in Saint Death. But we will never believe what the authorities tell us,” Mexican Maria Olmos told the Los Angeles Times .

The theft illustrates yet again the government's inability to rein in the cartels, despite millions spent on the drug war.

[Warpy]

1. Every time they plug "El Jefe," another member rises to take his place

and it's not going to end until the senseless war against human nature does.

Yes, it's in our nature to want to send our brains on vacation once in a while, or to relieve the pain of everyday life. This is the extent of drug use for most people. Within a day or two, they crave getting back to normal, to think clearly.

I saw that a lot in the hospital. People who were still in serious pain after extensive surgery would turn down pain medication after the third day because they just wanted their brains to work right again. Most people are built like this.

The per capita number of hard core drug abusers has remained constant while hard drugs were over the counter, after prohibition, and now at the height of the drug war.

The whole thing is backwards, wasteful and stupid. Only an authoritarian moralist could have come up with such a nonsensical "war."

Legalize it, regulate it away from kids, undersell the Zetas and other gangs, and watch those gangs wither and die. Slow down the pipeline to kids and keep users healthier than street drugs cut with who knows what do.

Prohibition simply does not work, has not worked, will not work. It's an insane waste of lives and wealth. It needs to stop.