"There are powerful interests in Mexico who benefit from the drug trade and the $40 billion, or whatever it is, that is pumped into the Mexican economy," Stewart said. "You're talking bankers. You're talking businesses that are laundering money, construction companies that are building resorts. People are becoming very rich off the flow of money."
You can extrapolate a lot from that quote. For starters, that pretty much sums up why 2/3 of Americans despise Washington DC lobbyists and their lackey politicians with a vengeance, not to mention the puppet master corporate rich fucks who utterly corrupt democracy in America.
But this diary isn't about that, it's about former president Vicente Fox calling for the legalization of narcotics. As much as I'd like to rant on about the neverending despicable display of corruption coming out of DC, and for that matter capitols around the world, I wanted to pass along this news about Mexico. Mexico is at a cross-roads. With estimates of around 20,000 dead since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office, it's a long time in coming.
As public discussions about counter-drug strategy unfolded in the past week, a surprising source of some of the harshest criticism was former President Fox of Calderon's own National Action Party.
"We should consider legalizing the production, sale and distribution of drugs," Fox wrote on his blog last Saturday, making big newspaper headlines the next day. "Radical prohibition strategies have never worked."
Fox wrote that legalization would "break the economic system that allows cartels to make huge profits, which in turn increases their power and capacity to corrupt."
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Credit where credit is due, President Obama stopped the medical marijuana raids (for the most part) but the idiotic arrests for marijuana have continued unabated since he took office. So we know that Democrats won't do the right thing unless it happens from the grassroots level, like what's happening this November in California: if California legalizes marijuana, the madness and violence of the drug war will itself be at a cross-roads. Mexico certainly knows what California is considering... here's hoping Mexico and California do the right thing.
Harm reduction is the way to go with drug policy. Any other policy just lines the pockets of depraved rich assholes who are readily assisted by corrupt bankers (as discussed in the McClatchy article).