{"id":1139,"date":"2012-01-30T15:33:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T20:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/the-relatives-of-those-people-dont-care-who-is-winning-the-drug-war-carlos-fuentes.html"},"modified":"2012-01-30T15:33:27","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T20:33:27","slug":"the-relatives-of-those-people-dont-care-who-is-winning-the-drug-war-carlos-fuentes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/the-relatives-of-those-people-dont-care-who-is-winning-the-drug-war-carlos-fuentes.html","title":{"rendered":"the relatives of those people don&#8217;t care who is winning (the drug war) &mdash;Carlos Fuentes"},"content":{"rendered":"A writer of fiction tells the truth about the failed war on drugs. We&#8217;re way past the beginning and middle of this story: time to end it.\nWhich makes this a very bad time\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/01\/how-to-end-the-epidemic-of-incarceration.html\">\nto build a private prison that depends on the war on drugs.<\/a>\n<p>Anita Singh wrote for the Telegraph today,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/books\/9049006\/Carlos-Fuentes-legalise-drugs-to-save-Mexico.html\">\nCarlos Fuentes: legalise drugs to save Mexico<\/a>,\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/books\/9049006\/Carlos-Fuentes-legalise-drugs-to-save-Mexico.html\">\n<img style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"206\" height=\"129\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/i.telegraph.co.uk\/multimedia\/archive\/02123\/fuentes1_2123743b.jpg\"><\/a>\nFuentes, Mexico&#8217;s greatest writer and a former diplomat, addressed\nthe contemporary problems of Latin American &mdash; in particular,\nMexico&#8217;s drug problem.\n<p>\nHe said: &ldquo;The drug traffickers are in Mexico, they send the\ndrugs to the US and once they get across the border what happens? We\ndon&#8217;t know who consumes them. We can&#8217;t prosecute, we can&#8217;t defend.\nIt&#8217;s a very difficult situation for us Mexicans. The governments of\nthe US and Mexico have to fight drug trafficking together.&rdquo;\n<p>\nFuentes believes that decriminalising drugs is the only way to end\nthe violence that in the past five years has claimed nearly 50,000\nlives of gang members, security forces and innocent bystanders.\n<p>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/to-the-armed-forces-of-mexico-javier-sicilia.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i2.ytimg.com\/vi\/I-SNhyzViy4\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\n&ldquo;It is a confrontation. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win.\nBut there are 50,000 killed and\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/to-the-armed-forces-of-mexico-javier-sicilia.html\">\nthe relatives of those people<\/a>\ndon&#8217;t care who is winning.\n<\/blockquote>\nNobody is winning except the profiteers in arms and\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/05\/us-drug-war-afflicts-latin-america-and-rebounds-on-us.html\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"100\" height=\"75\" src=\"http:\/\/inlinethumb33.webshots.com\/416\/2228419670077111213S200x200Q85.jpg\"><\/a>\npesticides, such as\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/05\/us-drug-war-afflicts-latin-america-and-rebounds-on-us.html\">Monsanto.<\/a>\nAnd even mighty MON is losing to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/drug-war-backfires-on-roundup.html\">\nBoliviana negra<\/a>.\nAlcohol prohibition produced Al Capone and other gangsters;\nthe failed War on Drugs produced drug gangs and ever more\nvicious militarization of police forces,\nright up to the Mexican failed &#8220;solution&#8221; of calling out the Army\ninto the streets.\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/usbgatx.wordpress.com\/2010\/11\/24\/repeal-day-party\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/usbgatx.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/11\/image.png?w=300&#038;h=264\"><\/a>\nWe&#8217;re all losing through lack of money for education and militarization of our own police.\nWe can&#8217;t afford this costly failed experiment.\nThe real solution is the same today as in 1933:\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/05\/a-radical-plan-to-stop-many-police-deaths-legalize-drugs.html\">\nlegalize, regulate, and tax.<\/a>\nThat will also drop the U.S. prison population way down,\nsaving a lot of money that can be used for education.\nIt&#8217;s going to happen eventually, so building more prisons that will end up being closed is\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority-stop-the-cca-private-prison-aka-project-excel\">\na bad idea.<\/a>\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A writer of fiction tells the truth about the failed war on drugs. We&#8217;re way past the beginning and middle of this story: time to end it. Which makes this a very bad time to build a private prison that depends on the war on drugs. Anita Singh wrote for the Telegraph today, Carlos Fuentes: [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,14,19,1381,72,20,178],"tags":[3121,3118,77,3120,8730,2650,1296,2705,75,79,2651,60,82,3119],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-economy","category-history","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-law","category-vlcia","tag-al-capone","tag-carlos-fuentes","tag-drugs","tag-failed","tag-incarceration","tag-legalize","tag-mexico","tag-monsanto","tag-prison","tag-prohibition","tag-regulate","tag-tax","tag-war-on-drugs","tag-writer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-in","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}