cannabisnews.com: Hypocrisy of Drug Policy!





Hypocrisy of Drug Policy!
Posted by FoM on March 06, 1999 at 10:40:53 PT
Letter to the Editor!
Each year at this time American newspapers are filled with articles bemoaning the hypocrisy of certifying Mexico and 30 or so other nations as "reliable partners" in our global crusade against drugs. 
We know that whatever success is claimed for American drug prohibition, it has stuffed our prisons to the bursting point, is bankrupting public education, spreading AIDS and turning law enforcers into criminals through reliance on perjured testimony, bribes and "forfeiture." Sam Quinones' article, "Sinaloa: Mexico's capital of drug crime" (Feb. 28), is a useful reminder that this intellectually bankrupt and dishonest policy is also doing fearsome social damage abroad, most severely to the unfortunate countries whose climate or location (both in the case of Mexico) makes them major players in the international criminal drug market. That market is purely an American creation. To expect people of impoverished nations to resist its lure is lunacy. To expect their governments to successfully combat a market we have proven incapable of controlling is the ultimate hypocrisy. One wonders just what social disaster it will take for the public to realize how the self-righteous high priests of prohibition have been betraying their public trust for decades. Tom O'Connell San Mateo Rather than "certifying" Mexico as an anti-drug partner, we should list her as a casualty of the United States' war on drugs. The degradation of social and civil order in Sinaloa and the border states is a direct consequence of our drug prohibition laws. That policy creates obscene profits for the ruthless. The drug traffickers' budget far exceeds Mexico's law enforcement budget. The more we and Mexico "crack down" on trafficking the greater the profits. Will we learn before it is too late? Gerald M. Sutliff Emeryville http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/cnews/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/03/05/EDITORIAL14268.dtl
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