Please understand that this drug war has absolutely nothing to do with the eternal war on terror, our #1 on the planet (and still growing) prison caste, the ongoing depression, loss of civil liberties, unemployment, increased surveillance, and your own personal health and well-being.

To suggest as much clearly delineates you as a foilhat-wearing, spittle-flecked, rabid, radical, extreme lunatic who has no place whatsoever in a rational and sane society.

Be so kind as to remove yourself to a neutral location where we do not have to endure your loathsome hallucinations. Failing that, endure our scornful snark. It is our number one export at present.

Best always,
America

Horse hockey!

And why are the same Americans that are always railing against big government and the nanny state all for letting the government mandate what chemicals we can put into our own bodies, or the ways in which it’s legal to alter our own consciousness? I know, I know, the answer involves more politics than logic.

I lol’d

You have my word on it.

Ever yours in Christ,
America

I mean, it’s not like the cartel violence ever gets to a border state, right? The AZ crime rate hasn’t gone up at all and it doesn’t cost the state a several hundred million dollars to keep them there (e.g. hospitalization, schooling, etc…)

It’s just a way for those dirty police mens to be racist, right? ;)

That said Calderon’s war on the drugs is a huge failure. His now infamous speech where he defends his mission is now widely misquotes by mexicans as: We are killing your children so that the drugs won’t get to them.

“First, that is a false choice. There are dozens of toxic materials in military hardware. There are also hundreds of toxic substances in all those buildings that were bombed flat.”

So, to address your earlier assertation, I’d like to refer you to a conflict in which many more munitions were expended, and a majority of these made of lead – namely the First World War. Indeed,many of these same munitions are discovered in farmers’ fields every year, nearly a century later. Farmers’ fields where they grow FOOD. So, where is the century’s worth of French birth defects that should have resulted from all that lead? Or trinitro-tolulene? Or PETN? Or any of the “dozens of toxic materials” that would have been expended? And that’s just WWI. WW2 should have been comparable, yes?

So, to sum up, you’re just being willfully ignorant, or a troll. No problem. Troll away.

So you’re saying that pot is a good “gateway” for legalizing other, harder drugs.

The US has a presence in the biggest opium producing country and friendly relations with coca producing countries. Why are we letting our cocaine and heroin users buy drugs that from these violent gangs when we could provide an alternate supply?

In addition, I sincerely doubt he’d feel as ambivalent if 1,000 tons of depleted uranium was disintegrated near the school of his children.

Considering that the dust from depleted uranium will settle within minutes, I would have no issues with covering a school with the level of depleted uranium with the level found at a typical firing range which will be far higher than any battlefield per square ft.

The danger from inhaling/ingesting depleted uranium is really because it is chemically toxic. In order to get enough in your system to exceed safety standards for even uranium workers, you’d have to get shot.

Really, the reports of cancer related to DU are questionable. There are a whole host of other diseases you’d see before cancer and frankly, there are far more toxic things we leave on the battlefield.

This isn’t flippant. I just believe in Chemistry.

At least that part of our promised future has materialised: even if we never did get the blasters or jet-packs.

Thank Heavens that, although the trade is run by giant cartels in Mexico with tentacles in every branch of government, the Convenience Fairy makes sure that once the drugs cross the border that only Mom-and-Pop operations are involved. Otherwise there would be American Kingpins with enough power to make sure that no one ever even mentions them – let alone arrests them.

Latin American poor people risk a chance at death to cross the border because to stay home is to face an even more certain, albeit slower, death by starvation. Boost the economy in the south, stop using Latin America as a resource extraction pit and waste dump, and the most massive migration of humans in history would drastically slow.

You’ve been Guatemala, Xeni. I’ve followed your posts there. You know that something like 40%-60% of Guatemala’s GNP is based on Guatemalans living and working in LA and sending the cash back.

Check out this blogger, he has some interesting viewpoints.

http://marccooper.com/record-arizona-border-death-count/

good article on unmanned drones http://www.slate.com/id/2265655/

A sovereign nation, with at least a functional military, with which we share a 2,000 mile porous border.

Please disagree.

Yeah… that racism. Just because the majority of a redneck population thinks something racist is right, doesn’t render them non-racist. AZ is full o’ xenophobic jerks, and all you have to look at is the boycott of AZ by a multitude of US companies to see that. Not to mention it is the home of everyone’s “favourite” ignorant bumbling fool McCain.

Regarding the potential effects of ganja legalisation: I think it is undoubted that violence would decrease, though I don’t think the crime rate will drop as it did with the end of prohibition. The reason is that in the case of drugs trafficing, it is an international issue. Purely domestic problems are WAY easier to tidy up. The other factor is, as others have mentioned, that there are other alternative products to be sold which means that crushing the profitability of one product will just shift production to another.

If the US gubmint really cared about decreasing trefficing-related violence both inside and outside the US, they would crack down on the unregulated sales of firearms at gun shows. Weapon sales in Mexico are WAY more tightly controlled than in the US and the weapons used by the big cartels have time and time again been shown to have been sourced in the US.

C’mon Americans: it’s time to dig up Heston’s grave, take the gun from his cold, dead hands, shit in his casket and then re-bury. Don’t continue to let country bumpkins and their idiotic passion for the 2nd amendment rule your country, taint your international image and most of all – put the lives of you and the people you love at risk.

Que illogical pro-gun response in 3… 2… 1…

I suppose this is inevitable anyway, and I’d rather have the government doing it than outsourcing to Blackwater mercenaries.

I was off by multiple continents!

The problem is that most of their drug money is coming from “hard” drugs that even Amsterdam still outlaws.

Actually not true (about half their money comes from marijuana, more than any other single drug) but it doesn’t really matter. As I’ve said, even a modest reduction in violence would make legalization worthwhile.

That doesn’t mean that legalization will be sufficient, but you never know- it might make the difference between a world where conventional law enforcement can handle the job and one where we send killer military robots to patrol airspace over our own country.

That may be, but apparently, the Netherlands’ liberal drug policies have acted as a magnet for bad actors around Europe. Legal pot (and the drug tourists looking for it) brings in drug traffickers offering much heavier, nastier shit, backed by muscle. When I went to Netherlands, I was surprised how *ambivalent* the Dutch I talked to were about their own policies. I go there praising their liberalized drug policies like a dumb San Francisco hippie, and consistently, the reaction from the Dutch was, “Well…”