Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000
Subject: Stop The Violence By Stopping The Drug War
DrugSense FOCUS Alert # 166 Thursday March 23, 2000
Stop The Violence By Stopping The Drug War
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert # 166 Thursday March 23, 2000
The horrors of the drug war don’t seem to have much impact on
reporters on the business beat. They often seem to assume that the
drug war represents “business as usual,” but this week a business
columnist at the Dallas Morning News decided otherwise.
After visiting San Diego, Scott Burns (in a column below) determined
that the terrible violence plaguing Mexican towns on the U.S.-Mexico
border is caused by drug prohibition. He also arrived at the obvious
solution that seems so difficult for elected officials to understand:
End the drug war.
“Have the guts, as a nation, to realize that we are awash in substance
abuse and that the legality or illegality of substances ranging from
alcohol and prescription tranquilizers to cocaine and heroin are
transitory social conventions that allow criminals to make fortunes,
cost the lives of substance abusers and inflict agony on their loved
ones. Do that and we can enjoy a magnificent decline in the domestic
crime rate,” Burns wrote.
Please write a letter to the Dallas Morning News to let editors and
readers know that Burns is on the right track.
Thanks for your effort and support.
WRITE A LETTER TODAY
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do
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CONTACT INFO
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
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ARTICLE
Pubdate: Tue, 21 Mar 2000
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Address: P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265
Fax: (972) 263-0456
Feedback: http://dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com:81/webx
Author: Scott Burns, DMN Business Columnist
Drugs Cast Shadow On Border Cities
SAN DIEGO — It’s easy to think of San Diego as a sports dreamland.
On the ride from Yuma, I passed huge sand dunes where dune buggies
were cavorting, a mountain peak circled by strangely out-of-scale
hawks that turned out to be hang gliders and parasails, a gigantic
skating park and finally San Diego Bay itself, stately with sails,
busy with small fishing boats. If you want to be active and outdoors,
this city has got to be one of the great places in America to live.
But a dark shadow looms over San Diego and reaches into every corner
of America. It is from Tijuana and drugs. In the first two months of
the year, according to news reports, 70 people have been killed in
Tijuana, presumed victims in drug turf battles.
TV news is interrupted on the day of my arrival by an announcement
that Tijuana Police Chief Alfredo de la Torre Marquez was shot to
death on his way to work. Ambushed by assassins with automatic
weapons, his vehicle was hit by at least 100 shots. Fifty-three
bullets were found in his body.
Murder isn’t unique to Tijuana. It is increasing along the entire
border. In Juarez, Mayor Gustavo Elizondo has successfully petitioned
the government of Mexico to rename the major drug cartels after their
leaders instead of the city in which they operate. Overnight, the
“Juarez Cartel,” disappears from public reporting.
Not surprisingly, the mayor was concerned with the image of his city
after November’s highly publicized search for mass graves. While 100
to 300 bodies were sought, “only” nine were found. Since 1993, over
200 people have disappeared in Juarez. Why is this happening?
Drugs. Only the incredible money in illegal drugs can explain the
rising level of violence along the border.
Skeptical?
Then consider this. Just west of Del Rio, after riding over the
Amistad Reservoir Bridge, a single Border Patrol agent, Alex Lopez,
stopped me. Mr. Lopez is part of a Special Response Team in the area.
Officer Lopez was alone in a region that resembles the surface of the
moon.
I commented that he had a tough job.
“Not so bad.” He answered. “It gets exciting sometimes.”
I asked how it was exciting.
“This is a major area for drug smuggling. A lot of stuff comes
through here, and we’re here to stop it.”
It’s a tough job. You can understand by looking at a map. The
U.S.-Mexico border is 2,000 miles long. Large areas of Texas, New
Mexico and Arizona — like the area between Del Rio and Langtry — are
virtually devoid of population. It is easy to cross the river and
meet waiting transportation. And if you want to operate big time,
you’ve got thousands of square miles of empty land in Texas to scrape
out a airstrip.
Now consider the economics of heroin in the Sierra Madre. According
to Edwin Bustillos and Alan Weisman in The Late Great Mexican Border,
an acre of land can support about 44,000 poppy bulbs, which can
produce at least 13,200 grams of opium gum. That, in turn, will
refine down about 1,320 grams of pure heroin that is valued at $80 to
$500 a gram in the United States.
So do the math.
Depending on productivity and price, an acre of dirt in the Sierra
Madre can produce a heroin crop worth from $105,600 to $2.2 million.
That’s a lot more than can be earned from raising cattle, hunting
exotic game, farming pecan groves, citrus groves — or even renting RV
spaces. What we’re talking about here is the ultimate crop, the crop
that displaces (or corrupts) everything.
While most of the border area struggles to leapfrog from a subsistence
agricultural and mining economy to an industrial economy — one where
manufactured homes displace farmland in McAllen and RVs replace orange
groves in Yuma — the crop that beats industrialization cold is
heroin. It is an irresistible force.
Our “war on drugs” is a Vietnam: Whatever we spend to turn the entire
2,000-mile border into an American version of the Great Wall of China, it
will not be enough to stop the movement of drugs across the border or
reduce the carnage on both sides.
What to do?
Something radical: eliminate the profit in illegal drug
traffic.
Decriminalize the production, distribution and use of drugs.
Disembowel criminal levels of profitability. Have normal levels of
profitability by conventional companies that produce and distribute
high-quality, low-cost drugs. Use taxes on drugs to support drug
treatment programs for people who want to recover.
Have the guts, as a nation, to realize that we are awash in substance
abuse and that the legality or illegality of substances ranging from
alcohol and prescription tranquilizers to cocaine and heroin are
transitory social conventions that allow criminals to make fortunes,
cost the lives of substance abusers and inflict agony on their loved
ones. Do that and we can enjoy a magnificent decline in the domestic
crime rate. We can build treatment centers instead of prisons. We
might even restore millions of Americans who live in the shadow world
of drugs.
I did not think this way when I left Dallas and headed for Brownsville
on Feb. 5. I was convinced it was the only solution by the time I
left San Diego.
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SAMPLE LETTER
To the editor:
I applaud Scott Burns for looking at the facts about drug prohibition
(“Drugs Cast Shadow On Border Cities,” March 21). Like anyone who
attempts to analyze the realities of the drug war honestly, Burns came
to an obvious conclusion: The only way to stop the violence
surrounding the illegal drug market is to eliminate the astonishing
profits made possible by prohibition.
It is well past time to end the current version of prohibition.
Alcohol prohibition was lifted in the 1930s in part because people got
sick of the black market violence. The same thing will happen
eventually with drug prohibition. The question is how many more bodies
are we going to allow to pile up before a majority demands that this
madness stop? As the recent assassination of the Tijuana chief of
police illustrates, anyone can become a fatality in the drug war.
Stephen Young
IMPORTANT: Always include your address and telephone
number
Please note: If you choose to use this letter as a model please modify it
at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of the
same letter and so that the original author receives credit for his/her work.
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