Want to Make Ethical Purchases? Stop Buying Illegal Drugs

[burfman]

We (the USA) need to be part of the solution, not the problem.

A really thought provoking op-ed piece in today's NY TImes:

burfman......................




http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/want-to-make-ethical-purchases-stop-buying-illegal-drugs.html?ref=opinion&_r=0


Many of my friends and classmates here in the United States care about making the world a better place, and they try to make purchases that reflect their values. Some have become vegetarians to save animals or fight climate change. Others buy cruelty-free cosmetics, fair-trade coffee or conflict-free diamonds.

Yet I’ve noticed at parties and festivals that some of these same people pop Ecstasy or snort cocaine. They think this drug use is a victimless crime. It’s not. Follow the supply chain and you’ll find a trail of horrific violence.

In Mexico, the official death toll from the past decade’s drug trade stands at over 185,000, with many of the dead innocent bystanders. And these tallies don’t include the thousands of people who have disappeared, including four members of my family who were kidnapped and never seen again. We were deprived of our loved ones without explanation, without even their bodies to cry over.

I was born and raised in a midsize town in northern Mexico. As a child, I biked and skated in the streets. But these days, kids aren’t allowed to play outside. Everyone has a heartbreaking story of how the drug trade has damaged his life.

Violence — whether among cartels, or between cartels and government forces — plagues cities along drug trafficking routes. Shops and restaurants shut their doors, employees are laid off. Cartel members routinely steal cars at gunpoint. They take over houses and factories for shelter and fire automatic weapons in public spaces. My relatives have been forced to drop to the ground at home and at the supermarket to avoid being shot.

While studying at Stanford University and living in California, I realized that most Americans — even those who consider themselves worldly and social-justice-oriented — remain unaware of their role in this violence.

The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, constitutes more than 30 percent of the global demand for illegal drugs, according to my calculations. Yes, there are addicts, but experts estimate that eight in 10 users — more than 20 million people in this country — take drugs recreationally. They come from all walks of life — artists, bankers, engineers, and high school, college and graduate students.
Most of these users know little of the Mexican cartels that produce the marijuana, cocaine, MDMA, meth, fentanyl, heroin and other drugs in Mexico, or import them from Asia or South America. But the biggest money in the drug business comes not from producing drugs but from smuggling them across the border and getting them to users, which requires cartels to control every step along the trafficking routes. To maintain that control, they fight over highways, ports, border crossings and political influence.

To prevent smaller criminal groups from growing and eventually competing with them, cartels also control other activities like human trafficking, kidnapping, music and software piracy, extortion and prostitution.

And to protect their huge profits, they kill competitors, journalists, policemen and innocents. My friend Maria, mother of a 14-year-old son, temporarily fled her low-income neighborhood in the city of Monterrey with her family when she realized a cartel was forcing boys to join the business. Two nights after their return, armed men entered her house and killed her son in front of her in retaliation.

While Mexico endures these atrocities, Americans are spending billions of dollars on illegal drugs. Exact figures for an illicit market are hard to obtain but estimates put the number at over $150 billion per year — more than the federal government spends on education, and four times as much as it spends on law enforcement. And Mexican cartels control virtually all of the American market, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

If cartels continue to have an incentive of that magnitude, our governments will never be able to put an end to the violence.

That’s why Americans must recognize that every time they buy illegal drugs they reward the cartels. If you think one person’s consumption is too small to make a difference, consider that $100 — what a recreational cocaine user might spend on a single weekend — buys the cartels 500 rounds of ammunition; $500 buys a new AR-15 rifle; $700 covers the monthly salary of one of their gunmen.

Without the vast profits from the drug trade, cartels would be infinitely less powerful, and our governments could neutralize them.

If you use illegal drugs, even just occasionally, please reconsider. Lives are at stake. Go for legal vices if you must. Even if you never use illegal drugs, you probably know people who do. Tell them about the trail of blood that led to their night of partying. If they had seen it firsthand, as I have, they wouldn’t buy those drugs.

We can shatter the misconception that recreational drug use is a victimless crime. We must put an end to the hypocrisy that allows people to make purchases based on their concerns about the environment, workers’ rights or animals — but not about killing people in Mexico.

[ghostsinthemachine]

1. It was that realization that led to the CA sinsemilla economy

Mountain Girl (Merry Prankster and at the time, Jerry Garcia's wife) said she got tired of dealing with criminals, so she started to grow her own. Then discovered that if you didn't fertilize the male's you had higher quality, seedless pot. And the CA pot growing economy was born. At Jerry Garcia's backyard in Mill Valley.

[Major Nikon]

2. The first step to problem solving should always be to identify the actual problem

That way you are focusing your efforts on trying to solve the actual problem rather than simply symptoms of the problem.

Trying to shame people into not buying drugs is a pretty piss poor strategy. A better strategy is to shame the people who insist on waging a drug war that has never worked and never will.

[IVoteDFL]

3. Does anyone remember the commercials after 9/11 that claimed weed smokers were finding terrorism?

Heavy drug users aren't going to care. Someone with a coke habit can't effectively control it. It's not like they are unaware. They need rehab, and we as a society aren't prepare to give that to the less fortunate.

This isn't really a problem with marijuana anymore. The good stuff comes out of the legal states or Canada.

[Major Nikon]

5. Most of the drugs coming from Mexico is cannabis and it's not even close

Legalize cannabis and you destroy the drug war and the problems that come with it.

[IVoteDFL]

11. In my experience the Mexican mj that makes it up here is ditch weed

Most of the time. People try not to buy it if they can.

I agree though, legalize and many, many problems are solved.

[safeinOhio]

4. Buy American

[alarimer]

6. Illegal drug trade is destructive on many levels.

Pot is grown in remote areas of national parks, which is certainly contrary to the park philosophy because the farms are destructive to the environment.

The illegal drug trade also promotes human trafficking.

https://www.revealnews.org/article/in-secretive-marijuana-industry-whispers-of-abuse-and-trafficking/

All of this, though, is good argument why it should be legal and controlled.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. well, "Control" is what it's really about

mainly, controlling what other people do with their own bodies and consciousness, that's the bottom line.

And as an aside, keeping the gravy train rolling for authoritarians who have built their careers on kicking in the doors of pot smokers and dragging otherwise non-violent people off to prison for ingesting the "wrong" chemical.

I'd like to see the NY Times publish an OP-ED exhorting people not to enable these acts of violence anymore:

http://justiceforbabyboubou.com/

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dea-chong-20150505-story.html

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Funny, I don't see a single word in there about ending life-destroying prohibitionary policies.

It wasn't drinkers who were responsible for Al Capone, it was prohibition.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. It's the drug war that's killing people.

That's what creates this enormous criminal underclass, along with the need to fight it. Ending the drug war is what will end the violence.

Lecturing people to stop has never, and will never, be an effective way to end this, though it may make the lecturer feel a little righteous

[Iggo]

9. Legalize it. (n/t)

[Calculating]

12. Who even buys mexican cannabis these days?

Seems like most of the stuff is grown domestically in the legal/medical states or grown by outdoor growers up in the hills.