The Star has been running a series of articles about the violence in Ciudad Juarez:
http://tinyurl.com/2flvdxm
The stories are horrific -- especially when the Mexican city is compared to El Paso just across the river.
But why the violence?
It is the literal part of the War on Drugs. And it's a war that clearly is going badly for the people of Mexico -- and it doesn't seem to be cutting the flow of drugs north.
The profits from the illegal drug trade poison the Mexican justice system. And those profits come from the crime tariff attached to the drug trade.
Look at Portugal -- they legalised all drugs and drug use dropped and the crime rate fell.
http://www.opioids.com/legal/index.html
The Economist, hardly a leftist rag, has called for legalisation, albeit without joy, saying it was the "least bad" alternative.
Drug addiction is a dreadful thing -- I deal with drug addicts (and alcoholics and many other troubled people) daily. It's time to treat addicts; if drugs are still to be criminalised let's shift the focus and emphasise the health aspects and cut back on the punitive.
2 comments:
There's no reason why drugs must be criminalized.
A courageous Liberal party would recognize this, and decriminalize them.
Drugs have been decriminalized in Portugal.They are not legal.The situation in Portugal is far from perfect as well.
There are realities in Canada that make a dramatic shift in drug policy unfeasible.The US under Obama are still not going "soft" on those who by/sell/use street drugs. Canada's borders with the US would become a magnet for organized crime. We would all suffer.
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