{"id":308,"date":"2012-11-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/us-has-moral-responsibility-to-reduce-the-flow-of-money-towards-mexico-felipe-calderon-president-of-mexico.html"},"modified":"2012-11-25T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-25T13:00:00","slug":"us-has-moral-responsibility-to-reduce-the-flow-of-money-towards-mexico-felipe-calderon-president-of-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/us-has-moral-responsibility-to-reduce-the-flow-of-money-towards-mexico-felipe-calderon-president-of-mexico.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. has “moral responsibility to reduce the flow of [drug] money towards Mexico” —Felipe Calder\u00f3n, President of Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Mexican president who put the Mexican Army onto the streets
\nto stop the drug war, resulting in 40,000+ deaths, many
\ncollateral damage like
\n
\nthe son of writer Carlos Fuentes<\/a>,
\nthe Mexican president who
\n
\na year ago started hinting that that didn’t work and something else should be done<\/a>,
\nis already following the path of his predecessors
\nErnesto Zedillo and
\n
\nVicente Fox,<\/a> in calling for the U.S.
\nto end the war on drugs.
\nGeorgia can’t afford to continue spending a billion dollars a year to lock people up, especially while cutting education.
\nIf we listen to the Mexican presidents, we can save much of that billion and spend much of the savings on education.\n<\/p>\n

\nT.W. wrote for the Economist 23 November 2012,
\n
\n“Impossible” to end drug trade, says Calder\u00f3n,<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nIn an interview recorded last month for this week’s special report
\n
\n\"Felipe<\/a>
\non Mexico, Mr Calder\u00f3n said: “Are there still drugs in Ju\u00e1rez [a
\nviolent northern border city]? Well of course, but it has never been
\nthe objective…of the public-security strategy to end something
\nthat it is impossible to end, namely the consumption of drugs or
\ntheir trafficking…\n<\/p>\n

\n“[E]ither the United States and its society, its government and its
\ncongress decide to drastically reduce their consumption of drugs, or
\nif they are not going to reduce it they at least have the moral
\nresponsibility to reduce the flow of money towards Mexico, which
\ngoes into the hands of criminals. They have to explore even market
\nmechanisms to see if that can allow the flow of money to reduce.\n<\/p>\n

\n“If they want to take all the drugs they want, as far as I’m
\nconcerned let them take them. I don’t agree with it but it’s their
\ndecision, as consumers and as a society. What I do not accept is
\nthat they continue passing their money to the hands of killers.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe Economist article spelled out what Calder\u00f3n still doesn’t quite say:\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe next step is to explore legal ways of managing the supply side,
\nas Colorado and Washington have recently voted to do.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nIn case you missed it,
\nthis month
\n
\nColorado and Washington became the first governments in the world<\/a>
\nto fully legalize marijuana use.
\nEven Portugal
\n
\nthe forerunner for Washington State<\/a>, didn’t actually legalize:
\nit decriminalized, with lesser penalties, many involving drug counselling.
\nOn the other hand,
\nPortugal went for all drugs, not just marijuana<\/a>,
\nand addiction declined.
\nPlus it wasn’t necessary to spend nearly as much anymore on locking people up.
\nNow there’s an investment in
\n
\nhuman security!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe War on Drugs doesn’t just affect Mexico.
\nBack in the U.S., it is the primary cause of
\n
\nmilitarization of police and the world’s record U.S. prison population,
\nplus privatization of prisons.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"No<\/a>
\nThe time has come.
\n
\nNo mas Guerra de las Drogas<\/a>.
\nTime to end the failed war on drugs.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mexican president who put the Mexican Army onto the streets to stop the drug war, resulting in 40,000+ deaths, many collateral damage like the son of writer Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican president who a year ago started hinting that that didn’t work and something else should be done, is already following the path of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,14,49,70,19,72,1292,20,22,73],"tags":[8736,1298,8704,8721,1295,8728,1293,8701,84,8709,8730,8823,8702,8710,12,7,1296,1299,1270,8712,75,1297,8731,6,1294,82],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-economy","category-elections","category-ethics","category-history","category-incarceration","category-indigenous","category-law","category-politics","category-safety","tag-activism","tag-crime","tag-economy","tag-elections","tag-ernesto-zedillo","tag-ethics","tag-felipe-calderon","tag-georgia","tag-guerra-de-las-drogas","tag-history","tag-incarceration","tag-indigenous","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mexico","tag-militarization","tag-police","tag-politics","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-safety","tag-valdosta","tag-vicente-fox","tag-war-on-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","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=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}