Mexico eyes legalization of marijuana in two U.S. states warily

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
11/12/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Economic and social impact on one of world's largest suppliers of marijuana will be enormous

In the recent presidential election, the two U.S. states of Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use to adults over the age of 21. While the wording of these new laws will come under federal scrutiny - it is still a federal offense to grow, sell and use marijuana in the U.S., the nation of Mexico is eying the latest developments with great interest. Among the world's biggest supplier of marijuana, will the U.S.A.'s southern neighbor gain - or lose with the easy availability of pot?

According to the IMCO report, the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. would lead to an entirely different set of problems - one where marijuana, along with other drugs, are shipped FROM the U.S. INTO Mexico.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Under Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Mexico embarked on a disastrous "war on drugs" that used its military to stem the flow of marijuana and cocaine into the United States. Thousands of people - many of them unarmed, uninvolved civilians being killed in a deadly crossfire engaged between agents and dealers. On the other hand - with profits from marijuana pumping illicit money into the Mexican economy, will there also be an economic backlash as well?

"Legalization doesn't solve the problem, because cocaine generates the biggest profits," Jorge Javier Romero, a professor at the department of politics and culture in the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City says. "It has to be approached as a foreign policy issue, because Mexico doesn't have a drug use problem - it's the United States that has a drug abuse problem."

According to the report, "Si los vecinos legalizan" (If the neighbors legalize), produced by Alejandro Hope and Eduardo Clark of the non-governmental Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, approximately 30 million of the United States' 312 million inhabitants use a total of 3,700 tons of marijuana a year, which has a retail value of $15 to $30 billion,.

Of the marijuana consumed in the U.S., 40 to 67 per cent comes from Mexico, where drug cartels take in some $2 billion a year from trafficking the drug, which is mainly grown in western and southern states.

During President Calderon's deadly war on drugs, at least 90,000 people were killed, 10,000 went missing and 250,000 were forced to flee their homes, according to the estimates of human rights groups.

The legalization of drugs in the United States "would be the most significant structural clash that drug trafficking has experienced in a generation . and would transform the terms of the debate on drugs," the IMCO study says.

John Walsh, the drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, states the issue plainly in his article, "Taking the Initiative." "Even if only one U.S. state were to approve legalization, the decision would reverberate throughout the hemisphere, where the drug policy debate has opened up dramatically."

Mexican president-elect Enrique Pe�a, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party has talked about a change in law enforcement strategies, but has not given any details.

According to the IMCO report, the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. would lead to an entirely different set of problems - one where marijuana, along with other drugs, are shipped FROM the U.S. into Mexico.

The IMCO report also adds that the Mexican government should not legalize the production and sale of marijuana until US federal laws on the matter have been clearly defined.

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

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Keywords: Marijuana, legalization, Mexico, U.S., drug war

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1 - 4 of 4 Comments

Jose79845
6 months ago
If the government steps up the criminalization of marijuana in Mexico, poor American children living in poverty along the border will be able to make money smuggling pot into Mexico.
Jose48
6 months ago
To anyone whom may read this article. I only ask you consider the very facts about marijuana, I know in the bible it talks about not being intoxicated and how we should only live through the ways of Jesus. But when we have thousands of people being murdered and drug cartel that is so powerful, we need to rethink the our strategy. Just like most wars we must take the enemies resources if we want to start taking down the cartel. Marijuana alone accounts for about 40-60% of their operations that basically fund there other drug tracking such cocaine, meth, and heroine. It is inconceivable to believe that everything is going to be okay if we keep it illegal in this country. I believe this plant is not good nor evil for God created this Earth and responded Genesis 1:29-30: Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. Of course people are smoking this plant but my main point is that God created this planet and everything on it with its own purpose, maybe people are using it wrong; nonetheless, cartels are causing more evil and even though say legalizing marijuana may not bring the cartel down this can take a lot away from them if we just legalize and cultivate the plant and tax it for the benefit of the country. I understand that marijuana can possibly lead to addiction, but compared to alcohol it is rarely as severe and most can usually break the addicted habit in about 2-4 weeks.

God Bless
BillG
6 months ago
Estimates vary on how much Mexican cartels make fro0m marijuana. The US government has estimated before that cartels make 60% or better of their income from marijuana sold in the US. The drug czar under George W. Bush, John Walters, said marijuana is the "bread and butter," the "center of gravity," for Mexican cartels.

No telling exactly how much money they make from selling pot to Americans. The money cartels make from selling marijuana is only one way marijuana benefits them though. Marijuana is by far and away the most popular illegal drug. Over half of all American adults under 65 have smoked it, according to federal numbers. This article talks about cocaine too. According to federal government estimates, Americans consume hundreds of tons of cocaine every year. But they consume tens of thousands of tons of marijuana, and only a tiny few use cocaine relative to the number who use marijuana. Most activity in the black market for drugs is marijuna activity, production, smuggling, sales, etc. The black market for illegal drugs is mostly a black market for marijuana.

Think about this. Most drug producers produce marijuana. Most drug dealers sell marijuana. Most drug smugglers smuggle marijuana. Much of it is smuggled in 60 lb packs carried on the backs of smugglers. Tens of thousands of tons amounts to hundreds if not thousands of tractor trailer loads worth of marijuana every year, compared to less than ten tractor trailer loads worth of cocaine. There is an enormous amount of activity in marijuana. Armies of people work in the industry producing it, smuggling it and distributing it. The distribution networks are massive and they reach every corner of America, and cartels use these networks to reach millions and millions of consumers not only with their marijuana, but also with their cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. These networks make perfect conduits through which to run their other drugs. Proven pot smugglers are tapped to smuggle cocaine. Proven mid level pot dealers are tapped to move cocaine and/or methamphetamine, and they in turn offer it to lower level dealers down the line who do a good job with their pot. At the retail level, dealers have existing marijuana customers they can offer all these other drugs to without worrying that they will go to the police and say, "my pot dealer offered me cocaine." These are people who like to party who are already breaking the law. Who better to offer other illegal drugs to?

Take marijuana from cartels and not only will we deprive them of huge portion of their income, but we will also make it harder for them to get their far more dangerous and addictive and drugs to end consumers and much harder for them to reach new people who haven't tried these drugs yet. We'd shrink the black market for illegal drugs to a tiny portion of its current size and it would be much more manageable for us. There would be several million fewer buyers and a whole lot less sellers who would be easier to target. They have to recruit from somewhere and If they can't use proven pot dealers they know they'll be reduced to using hard drug addicts not only at the retail levels but on up the chain, and these people are inherently unreliable. That's just the way the black market for drugs work.

I've handled thousands of pounds worth of drug cases as an attorney, have prosecuted and defended, have been in the trenches of the drug war for going on two decades. I don't think marijuana is a good thing, but the prohibition against it is worse. It causes us every problem caused by alcohol prohibition and then some. We need to regulating marijuana similar to alcohol, production, sales and so on. Not only will the sky not fall in, but we will be better off as a nation. Most people who want to smoke pot already smoke. That cat is out of the bag and it is not worth it to keep trying in vain to put it back in the bag. We are accomplishing nothing good. In fact, we're doing far more harm than good. It is time to legalize and regulate marijuana nationwide.
Jose
6 months ago
Don't let the drug cartel representative President Nieto of Mexico and his paid professor fool you. There is plenty of profit in selling weeds. Cocaine may have a higher profit margin, but marijuana is the staple of the drug trade. Marijuana is used as bait to sell cocaine. If marijuana is available legally, there is no need to do business with the cartel that has the incentive to sell the higher margin cocaine.

Drug cartel leader Nieto will soon visit Obama and pressure him to enforce federal law against Colorado and Washington in order to maintain the high price of a weed.

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