Language

It took ending prohibition...

Submitted June 16, 2005 - 5:00 pm by Benjamin Melançon
Yes Fox, let's recall Chicago in the early '20s.  It took ending Prohibition, not just "years" or repeated crackdowns, to end the "explosion of organized crime killing," and with new prohibited drugs to distribute the mafias and institutionalized crime was in fact never gotten rid of.

We apparently have to restate a theme common on the pages of Narco News, that the violence of the drug war will only stop with the end of the drug war and drug consumption will never be eliminated by violent prohibition.  More from the article Don Henry quoted:

Law enforcement officials trace the current violence to the Fox administration's arrests of 15 leaders of billion-dollar criminal organizations. Rivals have tried to move in and violently take over their territory. There have also been bloody battles within cartels, as lieutenants fight to move up the ladder because of new vacancies at the top, Mexican officials said.

Officials in Washington have continually praised the efforts of Fox, noting he has jailed more top cartel leaders than any Mexican president in history.  Since he took office, the Mexican government has arrested more than 46,000 people on drug charges, destroyed numerous clandestine landing strips and wiped out thousands of acres of poppy and marijuana fields.

And while no one quoted in the article is calling for the end of drug prohibition, some are connecting the dots:

A number of analysts have begun pointing out that Fox's much-applauded effort against drug traffickers has not reduced the supply of drugs reaching U.S. streets from Mexico. Instead, they said, all Mexico has gotten for its effort is more violence and a rapidly rising drug consumption problem.

"The good news is that there are more capos in jail; the bad news is that it doesn't change anything," said Jorge Chabat, an academic who studies justice issues. "There's no change in the amount of drugs available on the street, and you have more violence. The logical question is, 'What are we doing this for?'"

And the final reason sustained militarized police state attack on drug production and distribution "doesn't change anything" in Mexico OR the United States (where the violence from the drug war is worse and more indiscriminate if less showy at the moment) is almost impossible to ignore once lame-duck Presidente Vicente Fox says it: the illegal drug industry controls "millions and millions and millions of dollars," and politicians and authorities on both sides of the border undoubtedly get a piece.

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