Mexican drug wars and their consequences

Legalization of Marijuana in the United States Would Ease the Drug War Violence in Mexico

In 2006 the Mexican President Filipe Calderon unleashed a military offensive against the country's drug cartels, partly to stop the flow of illegal drugs to the United States. The campaign also known as the "Mexican Drug Wars" has since taken a heavy death toll -- not to mention financial and social costs. In the eyes of the Mexican government and the public, the war costs have reached startling proportions. Since 2006, 28,000 people have been killed and around $10 billion spent by the Mexican government. Additionally, Mexico's image has been damaged, while the crime rate in Mexico has skyrocketed, the government security forces also joining the egregious campaign of human rights violations. In a poll conducted by the Mexico City daily Reforma, 67% of Mexican citizens said that the drug war costs were unacceptably high and 59% said that the drug war being lost to drug cartels (Camin and Castenada). Meanwhile, the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico to the United States has not abated. In the face of these negative consequences of the drug war both to Mexico and the United States, the only way to ease it is to legalize Marijuana in the United States, especially in California, which will strike a severe blow to the business of underground drug cartels.

California's Prop 19, a ballot measure debated in late 2010 which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational purposes, did not pass. However, a growing number of Mexican and American current and former officials say that marijuana should be legalized and that it would lessen or even end the Mexican drug wars. These include former Mexican presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox; Carlos Fuentes and Angeles Mastretta, distinguished novelists; Mario Molina, a Nobel-prize winner; and Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico (Camin and Castenada; Forsyth; Johnson). Johnson argues that criminalization of marijuana led to the emergence of a "thriving black market." Instead of regulating and taxing it, he argues, the United States is fuelling the illicit market, while the war is clearly being lost. Johnson explains: "America's policy for nearly 70 years has been to keep marijuana -- arguably no more harmful than alcohol and used by 15 million Americans every month -- confined to the illicit market, meaning we've given criminals a virtual monopoly on something that U.S. researcher John Gettman estimates is a $36 billion a year industry, greater than corn and wheat combined."

While the question of whether legalizing marijuana will decrease the personal use of the drug remains debatable, there are good reasons to think that legalization of marijuana would lessen the violence and crime associated with Mexico's drug war. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Mexican drug cartel's profits coming from the sale of marijuana constitute 60%. Such a high profit allows the drug cartels to purchase weapons, bribe and intimidate the officials, and hire mercenaries and murderers to terrorize the population. "Legalization would make a significant chunk of that business vanish," Camin and Castenada argue. "As their immense profits shrank, the drug kingpins would be deprived of the almost unlimited money they now use to fund recruitment, arms purchases and bribes." Moreover, instead of spending billions of dollars on fighting the war, the Mexican government could channel this money -- which is significant for the Mexican economy -- into meeting the population's social needs, thus decreasing the incentives for Mexico's youth to resort to crime.

Prohibition of marijuana, one might even argue, is the lead cause of violence in Mexico. It is the prohibition that drives the drug market to the underground. In the underground world, the disputes between buyers and sellers cannot be resolved through legal means such as lawsuits and arbitration. So, they are often resolved through violence. When the United States banned alcohol during Prohibition in 1930s, the level of violence increased but as soon as the ban was lifted, the level of crime and violence dropped to the pre-Prohibition levels. As Miron points out, [v]iolence is the norm in illicit gambling but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question." It is no surprise then that the unleashing of military offensive by the Mexican government in 2006 drastically increased the crime rates in the country.