Eugene Robinson: Drugs, Guns and Reality

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Drugs, Guns and Reality

Posted on Mar 26, 2009
By Eugene Robinson


It’s an indictment of our fact-averse political culture that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so revolutionary. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane Wednesday as she flew to Mexico for an official visit. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border ... causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians.”

Amazingly, U.S. officials have avoided facing these facts for decades. This is not just an intellectual blind spot but a moral failure, one that has had horrific consequences for Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and other Latin American and Caribbean nations. Clinton deserves high praise for acknowledging that the United States bears “shared responsibility” for the drug-fueled violence sweeping Mexico, which has claimed more than 7,000 lives since the beginning of 2008. But that means we will also share responsibility for the next 7,000 killings as well.

Our long-running “war on drugs,” focusing on the supply side of the equation, has been an utter disaster. Domestically, we’ve locked up hundreds of thousands of street-level dealers, some of whom genuinely deserve to be in prison and some of whom don’t. It made no difference. According to a 2007 University of Michigan study, 84 percent of high school seniors nationwide said they could obtain marijuana “fairly easily” or “very easily.” The figure for amphetamines was 50 percent; for cocaine, 47 percent; for heroin, 30 percent.

At the same time, we’ve persisted in a Sisyphean attempt to cut off the drug supply at or near the source. When I was The Washington Post’s correspondent in South America, I once took a nerve-racking helicopter ride to visit a U.S.-funded military base in the Upper Huallaga Valley of Peru. It was the place where most of the country’s coca—the plant from which cocaine is processed—was being grown, and the valley was crawling with Maoist guerrillas who funded their insurgency with money they extorted from the coca growers and traffickers. Eventually, the coca business was eliminated in the Upper Huallaga. But now it’s flourishing in other parts of Peru, and last year authorities there seized a record 30 tons of cocaine—meaning, by rule of thumb, that at least 10 times that much was probably produced and shipped. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090326_drugs_guns_and_reality/

[ixion]

1. End the so-called 'war' on drugs now

and stop the madness.

[MarjorieG]

2. Supposedly we can't take on weapons ban, so difficult. O and HRC speak daily, we're told, so this

admin is doing what's right.

[spin]

3. Despite the constant media and government babble...

the drug cartels don't get their weapons from the states.

In the article linked in the OP we hear:

In the case of Mexico, there’s a complicating factor: This is a two-way problem. While drugs are being moved north across the border, powerful assault weapons—purchased in the United States—are being moved south to arm the cartels’ foot soldiers. Clinton’s statement about “shared responsibility” recognizes that if we expect Mexico to do something about the flow of drugs, we’re obliged to do something about the counterflow of guns.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090326_drugs_guns_and_reality

But occasionally a newspaper like the Los Angeles Times publishes the truth:

Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City -- It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.

The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.

Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations, which are evolving into a more militarized force prepared to take on Mexican army troops, deployed by the thousands, as well as to attack each other.

These groups appear to be taking advantage of a robust global black market and porous borders, especially between Mexico and Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America, U.S. officials said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-arms-race15-2009mar15,0,229992.story

You can always trust your government and your mainstream media to tell you the truth as they have your best interests at heart.

[jody]

4. What is emerging is an orchestrated effort to renew the assault weapons ban and revise its

definition to ban all semiautomatic firearms.

The effort will fail but it will cause the Dem party to lose seats in the House and Senate.

FACTS:

65 Dem congresspersons say they oppose renewing AWB. Add them to most of the 178 Republican congresspersons gives about 243 opposed to AWB v. 189 max Dems who might vote to renew the AWB.

Senators Baucus And Tester oppose renewing AWB.

Pelosi and Reid oppose renewing AWB

Why is Obama starting a fight he is guaranteed to lose?

[endless october]

5. end the drug war, then.

[benEzra]

6. Automatic weapons, RPG's, and hand grenades are not available on the U.S. civilian market.

Contrary to the implication of the article, the military weapons the cartels are using (full-auto assault rifles, RPG's, and hand grenades) are not available on the U.S. civilian market.

Because it is so difficult for civilians to legally buy a gun in Mexico, there is a thriving black market through which both criminals *and* mostly-law-abiding people purchase guns for personal use (just like the market for cannabis in this country). Many of the guns that end up in the hands of Mexican citizens, and probably the average criminal in Mexico, do come from the States, although there are also Brazilian and Argentine handguns in large numbers. Most of the illegal imports from the U.S. civilian market would be ordinary handguns, with a few non-automatic rifles and shotguns thrown in.

The recent cartel turf wars, however, have involved machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, and other military arms and ordnance that are NOT available on the U.S. civilian market.

If the cartels are indeed using any US-market machineguns and grenades, they are either obtaining them from the U.S. military or law enforcement agencies, via diversion from the largely-U.S.-supplied Mexican military, or from Central American stockpiles of Cold War guerrilla weapons, because those weapons are NOT available on the U.S. civilian market.

Personally, I believe we need to FINALLY put into practice the lessons of alcohol prohibition and its repeal. If cannabis were legalized, I believe (1) the entire illicit supply chain for cannabinoids (and the accompanying cartel profit) would collapse, and (2) there would be far less demand for the hard drugs.