The drug lord is correct and wrong at the same time. We could defeat them with the stroke of a pen and the resolve to undo decades of wrongheaded behaviour and wasteful spending. If the US were to re-legalise drugs the power of the markets would force the Mexican drug lords out of business. As it is they are selling unsafe and inferior products. Could they seriously compete with Eli Lilly, Roche or Phillip Morris? Nope. They couldn't even come close, as we've seen with the operations in California and British Columbia. It's long past the time that we shifted the paradigm and took the criminal element out of the issue.
via The Washington Post
More at the source.
via The Washington Post
- Mexico's war on the drug trade is futile even if cartel bosses are caught or killed as millions of people are involved in the illicit business, a senior drug chief said in an interview published on Sunday. Ismael "el Mayo" Zambada, the right hand man of Mexico's most notorious drug lord, Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, blamed the government for surging drug violence and said President Felipe Calderon was being duped by his advisors into thinking he was making progress.
"One day I will decide to turn myself in to the government so they can shoot me. ... They will shoot me and euphoria will break out. But at the end of days we'll all know that nothing changed," Zambada told the investigative newsmagazine Proceso.
"Millions of people are wrapped up in the narco problem. How can they be overcome? For all the bosses jailed, dead or extradited their replacements are already there."
More at the source.