Of course legalizing pot and cocaine, even opium wouldn't kill the cartels outright, but it would cut off their single biggest cash supply. Like the Italian mafia after prohibition, they will continue to exist but they will simply not be nearly as lucrative as before. Sure, they will go into other trades, but the reason that they are in the drug trade now is because costs are low and profits are huge.

Community policing would, as the article suggests, help too, but the problem is also economic. More opportunities for the poor and working classes must exist in Mexico-this would not only lure them away from the drug trade, but make the American working class happy by reducing the incentive to immigrate. And these opportunities cannot be low-wage mass assembly plants for the US market, they need to be good jobs.

Either way, the locals have never been empowered in Mexico, and this has been one of the long struggles of Mexican history-trying to empower the campesinos and weaken the latifundistas and militarists. This was what drove peasants to join Zapata's armies, support Cardenas and push for the Ejido program, but their interests have been ignored for decades now and their supporters have been marginalized as dangerous.

You only really address a study on marijuana legalization in California, which claims (no doubt correctly) that the state's legalization of Marijuana would have almost no effect on the cartels' profits. The reason this is the case, though, is that California is the world's leading producer of marijuana (both in terms of quantity and quality), and only a tiny fraction of the state's users purchase marijuana from illicit dealers supplied by the cartels. The cartels' considerable profits on marijuana sales most likely come from states with much stricter policies on its use, and where citizens don't have the option of purchasing higher quality, legal "medicinal" marijuana grown in state. Even though Proposition 19 failed in the last election, the low to nonexistent barriers to access to medicinal pot means that the de facto state of affairs here in California is legalization.

I don't think you really address what the actual effects of widespread drug legalization in Mexico would be. I doubt it would lead to the dissolution of the cartels in and of itself, but I would imagine that alleviating the militarized conditions in which drug groups operate might have some effect on the level of violence in the North. The integration (or usurpation, even) of these criminal groups into the mainstream economy of Mexico has the potential to destabilize the country either way, but I think you dismiss a program of legalization too easily.

Ridiculous article with silly arguments. Taking away the cartels biggest source of funds by legalizing drugs in their biggest market would definitely hurt the cartels badly. It would also give Mexico new Federal funds to fight the territorial mafia that charge everyone for protection. The reasoning that by the US Federal governments always incredibly accurate measurement (of anything really, but in this case the estimate of cocaine) that legalizing all drugs wouldn't end the cartels is ludicrous. First, no one other than the cartels has any real grasp on how much money they made by shipping cocaine. Second, the demand for any current illicit drug would be first supplied from US sources if it was legalized in all the states. Third, Mexico has created its own problems by making firearms illegal to own unless you are part of the security forces, the corrupt security forces or a criminal. So ordinary citizens have no means to protect themselves against criminal elements. Maybe not such a large problem if your nation is pretty good about following law and order but for a country like Mexico it's a huge problem. Government can not protect its citizens from every day criminal activity only citizens can do that.

Ridiculous article with silly arguments. Taking away the cartels biggest source of funds by legalizing drugs in their biggest market would definitely hurt the cartels badly. It would also give Mexico new Federal funds to fight the territorial mafia that charge everyone for protection. The reasoning that by the US Federal governments always incredibly accurate measurement (of anything really, but in this case the estimate of cocaine) that legalizing all drugs wouldn't end the cartels is ludicrous. First, no one other than the cartels has any real grasp on how much money they made by shipping cocaine. Second, the demand for any current illicit drug would be first supplied from US sources if it was legalized in all the states. Third, Mexico has created its own problems by making firearms illegal to own unless you are part of the security forces, the corrupt security forces or a criminal. So ordinary citizens have no means to protect themselves against criminal elements. Maybe not such a large problem if your nation is pretty good about following law and order but for a country like Mexico it's a huge problem. Government can not protect its citizens from every day criminal activity only citizens can do that.

As others have noted, it's obvious that removing the massive ongoing injection of funds from organised crime won't mean that organised crime will disappear overnight, but it does mean that, over time, it will reduce back towards the "background" level that it had before drugs prohibition put it on steroids.

What is it with Americans and prohibition? They learned their lesson, supposedly, the hard way with alcohol (other nations seemed not to need to learn the hard way, but never mind that), and then proceeded to ignore what they ought to have learned by slapping prohibition onto whatever other recreational substances they could find.

Now they seem incapable of getting the political momentum together to start to undo the damage they've done to themselves and around the world.

This only mentions cocaine... Most of the money is made from cannabis and a lot of coke users have probably moved onto meth...

Legalization would not stop organized crime but it would probably help a lot just as it did when the first prohibition ended.

It obviously doesn't work and just allows cartels to flourish because of the astronomical profits of growing a plant

If we were to apply Ms. Dickinson's argument to the era of Prohibition of alcohol we would then continue with the fight against "Demon Rum" while Al Capone rejoiced. WE made the mafia what it is today by giving illegal alcohol a price magnitudes greater that what it before Prohibition and what it sank to after Prohibition. Using Ms. Dickinson's logic we should not have legalized alcohol because it would have already been too late to affect the criminal gangs that Prohibition spawned in the first place. If we continued our "war on alcohol" as we have done for the last 40 years against drugs then Mr.Capone and friends would be the world's biggest financial and industrial enterprise today. Maybe second only to crude oil.

Have you ever heard of turf wars for alcohol today? Have we experienced a St.Valentine's Day Massacre sine the end of Prohibition? Do we see daily massacres in Mexico and around the world for drugs?

Stop this lethal absurdity and come to grips with the reality and problems that legalized drugs will bring--- just as we have done with legalized alcohol --- to our society today.

The War on Drugs failed $1 Trillion ago! This money could have been used for outreach programs to clean up the bad end of drug abuse by providing free HIV testing, free rehab, and clean needles. Harmless drugs like marijuana could be legalized to help boost our damaged economy. Cannabis can provide hemp for countless natural recourses and the tax revenue from sales alone would pull every state in our country out of the red! Vote Teapot, PASS IT, and legalize it. Voice you opinion with the movement and read more on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/01/vote-teapot-2011.html

Legalization will take away another business from the shadows. There will be one less thing to worry about. Put weed in official status, it will work better... I do not see any other relevant way of addressing it.

It might be uncomfortable, especially due to its ethical component. But I do not see any other way of addressing drug trade than legalizing weed.

Of course, there have to be other measures put in place as well, see Sam from California's comments.

I can't fathom why is the "War on drugs" still called that. Its current status is closer to a miserable failure and resource sink, than a successful program. I would rather address weapons trade or hard drugs, than put people to chase teenagers.

I don't smoke weed not because I can't find it... it is as easy to find as anything else. But I saw how some of my friends smoked too much and are doing miserable now.

Once again. It might be uncomfortable to legalize weed at first, especially due to its ethical component. But I do not see how not-legalizing it does anything worthwhile. I do not see any other way of addressing drug trade than legalizing weed.

Of course, legalizing drugs won't end Mexico's brutal criminal enterprises. Did legalizing alcohol put the Mafia out of business? These cartel-scum are a permanent artifact of a century of ill-concieved American drug policy. They won't disband because we eliminate their primary source of income.

As someone who lived in California and in Mexico in the 1960s, I have witnessed the Mexican drug suppliers evolve from family enterprises, that turned simple agricultural products and primitive chemical operations info family fortunes, into the deranged products of competition and corruption that we see today. In order to pursue "drug war," since 1970, California has built more prisons than universities — the state's future is a reflection of that decision to collaborate in madness.

As someone who directed a syringe exchange program in California for over 20 years (1989 - 2010), I have seen the drugs and the dealers get progressively worse while the social damage that they do spread across the country, according to the simple calculus of poverty and opportunity.

As someone who lives in Europe and has on-and-off over a long period, I know that countries with more intelligent drug policies (eg. NL, CH, Portugal) have more manageable drug problems. America has the worst drug problem in the world, BECAUSE America has the worst drug policy in the world. The malignant arrogance and lack of realism of US drug-policies have degraded the Western hemisphere, as they are set to infect Africa as we speak.

In my opinion, no one who has witnessed or intellectually examined this half-century of bad policy, could support drug prohibition unless they profited from repression or from the corruption that it the inevitable consequence of repression in places without social controls — which includes the entire third-world and most of the United States.

Drug War empowers the worst — i.e. the most repressive, intrusive and anti-democratic — elements in society. As such, it is a permanent fixture of degenerate American culture. Any society, that truly desires liberty, must learn to resist this neo-fascist force. Sadly, it is easier to accept the false security of an obviously failed policy that it is to demonstrate the courage to examine the consequence of a lie.

Washington D.C. is famous for mass-producing laughable justifications for its latest (or longest-standing) kleptoclatura scams After all, D.C. suburbs boast some of the richest counties in a nation otherwise on the brink of ruin. At least a well-laundered minimum of that institutionalized rip-off had to wind up somewhere, and professionals had to be well paid to come up with justifications and excuses for it in ever-renewed profusion.

But I think yours is in a class of mind-boggling meathead all by itself.

Let me see if I understand you correctly. After generations of failure to do the right thing for stupid and/or covetous and/or totalitarian reasons, acting intelligently wouldn't really pay off all that well? Really? "We have been idiots for so long that it is too late to start acting smart?"

Congratulations for dreaming up this idiots' dream of a justification. Yours is bound to turn into a thriving cottage industry inside the Beltway, where idiot dreams take weekly flight into permanent policy.

Kindly overdub John Black's apoplectic growl, Quasimodo hunch and lyrical timing: "HAVE you LOST your (...) MIND?"

otherwise it is drug company lobby.
just one of many strategies to keep underclass where they are.
many prison/'criminal justice' expanding jobs for uncle Louie people. lock people up. produce much paperwork. write many grants. invent more fines. fool the public.

member of LEAP

Have you ever heard of turf wars for alcohol today? Have we experienced a St.Valentine's Day Massacre BrainwaveEntrainment sine the end of Prohibition? Do we see daily massacres in Mexico and around the world for drugs?

What is it with Americans and prohibition? They learned their lesson, supposedly, the hard way with alcohol BrainwaveEntrainment (other nations seemed not to need to learn the hard way, but never mind that), and then proceeded to ignore what they ought to have learned by slapping prohibition onto whatever other recreational substances they could find.

Mrs Dickinson, you're lack of basic knowledge on this subject is beyond credibility; who on earth is paying you to write such utter garbage? Prohibition engendered black market profits are obscenely huge. Remove this and you remove the ability to bribe or threaten any government official or even whole governments. The argument that legalized regulation won't severely cripple organized crime is truly bizarre. Of course, the bad guys won't just disappear, but if you severely diminish their income, you also severely diminish their power. The proceeds from theft, extortion, pirated goods etc. are a drop in the ocean compared to what can be earned by selling prohibited/unregulated drugs in a black market estimated to be worth 400,000 million dollars. Without the lure and power of so much easy capital, it's also very unlikely that new criminal enterprises will ever fill the void left by those you then can successfully disrupt or entirely eradicate.

When we legally regulate something, (as opposed to when we foolishly attempt to prohibit something) we do NOT automatically condone it's use; the legal regulations concerning the sale and manufacture of alcohol and tobacco are there to protect us from the vast increase in criminality and mayhem that would otherwise surely exist if we were foolish enough to prohibit them.

Nicotine is the biggest killer of all known drugs, but it's sale is legally regulated. Now why is that? Alcohol Prohibition in the United States made cigarette smoking a national habit. High on the evangelicals' hit list, second only to alcohol as a substance that had to be prohibited. In 1921, cigarettes were illegal in fourteen states, and anti-cigarette bills were pending in twenty-eight others. The prohibition of cigarettes, promoted by the very people who gave us the prohibition of alcohol, made cigarette smoking almost irresistible. As the experiment of Prohibition failed, the anti-cigarette laws fell. By 1930, they were legal almost everywhere; during Prohibition, the consumption of tobacco had nearly tripled.

An important aspect of Individual freedom is the right to self-medicate, or to do with yourself as you please as long as your actions cause no unnecessary suffering or direct harm to others. Some among us may disagree with this, and they should be free to believe what they wish. But the moment they are willing to use force (paid for with our own hard-earned taxes) to impose their will on the rest of us, is the exact same moment that the petty criminals/dealers, the Mafia, drug barons, terrorists and corrupt government officials/agencies enter the equation. The problems created by any possible self-harm then rapidly pale into insignificance as society spirals downwards into a dark abyss, while the most shady characters and black-market corporate entities exponentially enrich themselves in a feeding frenzy likened to that of piranhas on 'prohibition engendered' bath-tub meth.

Every-time the ghastly consequences of prohibition are falsely blamed on the users, it diminishes the culpability of those who are truly responsible for maintaining the status quo. Prohibition is an absolute scourge -the end! The use of drugs is NOT the real problem, the system that grants exclusive distribution rights to violent cartels and terrorists IS.

When governments prohibit drugs they effectively and knowingly hand a monopoly on their sale to dangerous criminals and terrorists. Without a legal framework in which to operate, these black-market entities can always be expected to settle their disputes violently, while terrorizing many peaceful and innocent citizens in the process. Were the users of alcohol to blame for the St Valentines massacre in 1929? Of course not! It is just as naive to assume that one can compel all the users of Marijuana or Cocaine to simply quit, as it is to assume that all the users of Alcohol should have stopped drinking after the introduction of alcohol prohibition in 1919.

Nobody can be expected to obey bad laws, like ones that infringe on logic as well as the fundamental right to decide on what medicine or poison an individual adult may, or may not, ingest. The corruption, violence and death ultimately arising from such bad public policy should always rest squarely on the shoulders of those ignorant imbeciles who are responsible for implementing and supporting such foolishness.

Prohibition is nothing less than a grotesque dystopian nightmare; if you support it you must be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.

“The greater the number of laws, the more corrupt the republic.” Tacitus

From my point of view , drug traffic will never end because very often it's the high profile people in the society who are somehow associated with the criminals .here in my country , we can hear almost every year politicians getting caught in cases of drug ,weapon traffic etc .
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Like all good multinational businesses, they've diversified. Ridiculous article with silly arguments. Taking away the cartels biggest source of funds by legalizing drugs in their biggest market would definitely hurt the cartels badly. It would also give Mexico new Federal funds to fight the territorial mafia that charge everyone for protection. The reasoning that by the US Federal governments always incredibly accurate measurement (of anything really, but i crm Legalizing drugs is not a personal choice, but consuming them indeed is. When a government legalizes drugs, its gives its citizens freedom to decide whether they want to consume them or not, without the risk and fear of ending in prison. Most importantly, legalization brings order and accountability for all those participating and involved in the activity, and thus reduces criminal behaviors..