Maxandfacts: Mexican Drug War

Mexican Drug War:

Sample resolutions:

THBT the US should do more to help fight the drug war in Mexico.

THW legalize Marijuana.

THBT Mexico should not be abandoned.

THBT the war on Drugs is a lost cause.

Background:

Taken from Wikipedia

The Mexican Drug War is an armed conflict taking place among rival drug cartels who fight for regional control, and between the drug cartels and the Mexican government, which seeks to reduce drug trafficking. Although Mexican drug cartels have existed for a few decades, they have become more powerful since the demise of Colombia's Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States.^[13] Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.^[14]^[15]^[16]

Mexico, a major drug producing and transit country, is the main foreign supplier of cannabis and a major supplier of methamphetamine to the United States.^[13]Although Mexico accounts for only a small share of worldwide heroin production, it supplies a large share of the heroin distributed in the United States.^[13]^[17]Drug cartels in Mexico control approximately 70% of the foreign narcotics that flow into the United States.^[18]

The US State Department estimates that 90% of cocaine entering the United States transits Mexico, with Colombia being the main cocaine producer^[19]—and that wholesale of illicit drug sale earnings estimates range from $13.6 billion to $48.4 billion annually.^[13]^[20] Mexican drug traffickers increasingly smuggle money back into Mexico in cars and trucks, likely due to the effectiveness of U.S. efforts at monitoring electronic money transfers.

Pro and Cons with a sample model:

NOTE: Feel free to adjust these models as you see fit, they are just sample ideas with which you may run a gov/opp case.

Send more troops to US border, finish building the fence, and increase border protection so the drugrunners no longer have a market. Send 10k troops to border.

Legalize Marijuana in the US (Mexico too, if you want to take on the extra burden… I would suggest just the US).

THW legalize Marijuana

THBT the war on Drugs has failed

THW free the reefer

Sample model:

House= United States Congress

Fully legalize the growth, processing, sale, and consumption of marijuana. There would be a regulatory committee establishing levels of purity necessary for sale and establishing a tax on it. There would be a cap on the maximum amount a person can have in possession, being 3g, following the model of Denmark. The age limit would be 21 years old, and there would be restrictions on operation of motor vehicles while intoxicated with marijuana.

PROS	CONS
Help in the fight against the Drug cartels in Mexico. The legalization would cause farmers to be able to grow pot legally, therefore effectively eliminating the need to buy marijuana from Mexican cartels (see the points about the study done by RAND). **This is a huge point, obviously, and would need to be very much developed. The speaking points/evidence for this point is the main point of the brief.	Legalizing pot would actually put more money into the cartel’s pockets. Because of the wholesale legalization of pot, more people will be willing to try it, and therefore demand will go up, furthering the drug cartel’s business. This view is espoused by the two leaders who are hardest hit by the drug war, Fillipe Calderon (President of Mexico) and Juan Carlos (President of Colombia).
Legalizing would decriminalize the sale and consumption of marijuana, therefore freeing up the Police force and the Prison system from imprisoning otherwise law-abiding citizens.	Legalizing marijuana would lead to many social harms currently seen by Denmark, such as increased youth use of marijuana, declining school participation, and an increase in drug Tourism. This Drug tourism is an inevitable side effect which has brought about many problems for Denmark, as illustrated by a study shown in this brief.
Legalizing would allow the Government to regulate the sale of marijuana, and tax it, adding extra revenue, making the drug more safe, and helping to create new agricultural industry. **This point can, and should be backed up with a case study of Prohibition. Further evidence from this brief regarding total revenue gained through taxation could also be used.	We shouldn’t be legalizing a substance which has been proven in many different scientific studies to be harmful for humans. The social effects caused by marijuana are far reaching, and the government shouldn’t be endorsing such a socially problematic substance. Even if we could make money from it, we shouldn’t because it would be wrong for the government to take advantage of such a harmful product.
This would allow for freedom of Choice, that is, one’s right to choose autonomously whether or not they want to use a substance. Tobacco and Alcohol are both legal, and have been shown to actually be more harmful than marijuana. We are a free society that values the ability to pursue happiness anyway one so chooses, regardless of whether or not it is bad for you. Furthermore, criminalizing pot has brought about far worse harms, such as the 28,000 dead in Mexico, and the huge toll to our prison/court systems, than the nominal “social harms” presented by legal pot.	Legalizing could look weak in the international community. It would show that America and Mexico have admitted defeat in the face of adversity. Given up on a battle simply because it got too difficult. America, as the leader of the free world, has an obligation to democratic values and traditions to stand for what’s right in the world.

Important Facts about Drug War:

· 28,000 Deaths since Fillipe Calderon took office in 2006. This is more than the Iraq and Afghanistan war combined.

· It can cost as little as $35 to have an opponent murdered. There were more than 300 beheadings in 2009, becoming so commonplace most don’t even get mentioned in the news.

· On January 1^st, a 36 year old gang member was captured, dismembered, and his face was skinned off his skull, and sewn onto a soccer ball, kicked onto the lawn of a rival gangmember’s home with a message written on the other side, “Happy New Year, it’ll be your last.”

October 1– 2 2010, 34 lives were claimed in a shootout in Juarez Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, TX.

· A man who goes by the name, ‘The Stewmaker’ confessed to dissolving more than 300 bodies in caustic acid, just in 2009!

· Joaquin Guzman is the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest cartel in Mexico. The US currently has a bounty of $5m on his head, yet have been unsuccessful at capturing him. The Sinaloa cartel operates in the Juarez valley, directly south of El Paso, and he has become quite wealthy. Forbes put him on their billionaires list, as well as ranking him the 41^st most powerful man on the planet. He’s responsible for thousands of deaths, including many mayors of Juarez.

· On October 16, 2010 the Mexican army seized a huge haul of Marijuana packed for sale in Tijuana. They seized 134.2 tons of packaged marijuana, making it the largest seizure of packaged, for sale, marijuana. This marijuana has a street value over $336 million

· A report into the results of the first four months of Caldern's presidency showed the capture of 1,102 drug dealers, the seizure of about $500m, 556kg of marijuana, 1,419 military grade weapons, two airplanes, 630 automobiles, and 15 sea ships that transported drugs. This stopped the distribution of 17,728,000 doses of cocaine, 193,922,000 doses of heroin, and 6,996,000 toxic pills, stopping the intoxication of 647,771,000 people.

· Fillipe Calderon has deployed 50,000 armed troops the help contain the violence of the cartels. Many feel this exacerbates the violence, This was demonstrated in the massive protests of hundreds of people at the US/Mexican border in February of 2009, because many citizens of Mexico feel that the armed forces are actually committing human rights violations against the civilians.

· Cartels often “buy” police officers, according to an article posted by Wales on Sunday, roughly around $6m has been spent to buy police officers off. This is because police officers are considered 2^nd class citizens, not afforded the same rights to minimum wage, nor are they given protections against more than a 40 hour work week.

· Fillipe Calderon of Mexico and Juan Carlos of Colombia both urged against California Prop 19, saying that it would only increase the profits of the cartels, however former President of Mexico, Vincente Fox has given hourly twitter updates espousing the benefits of California legalizing. Analysts argue that the discrepancy is a result of politics, since the US gives both Presidents $9B in funds, they don’t want to jeopardize that cash flow. Calderon is quoted as saying, “drugs kill in production, drugs kill in distribution, and drugs kill in consumption.”

· California only makes up 1/7 of the marijuana market in the U.S., according to a study done by RAND, they found that the only way California legalizing marijuana could significantly undercut the cartel’s profits would be if drug runners began smuggling marijuana grown in California to other states.

· RAND found that even if sinsemilla marijuana (the most potent type of marijuana with a THC concentration of 10-18%, vs normal marijuana imported from Mexico at around 4-6%) was taxed heavily, at $25 dollars per ounce, the wholesale price would still be comparable to Mexican marijuana prices… so legal, twice as powerful, and taxed marijuana would still be about the same price as weaker, bloodstained marijuana.

· RAND also found, however, that through their transparent study (meaning their methods could be analyzed by any reader of the study) Marijuana sales only comprised 15-26% of Drug Cartel’s profits. They do concede the point that the government may have access to classified information, and government organizations have released the often quoted figure that marijuana sales comprise 60% of Drug Cartel’s profits.

· A little over 30% of marijuana users 18 and older are either dependent or abuse the drug, according to a 2004 study done in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They found serious correlations between marijuana use and cognitive impairment such as ability to think, reason and process information, it decreases motor functions, and has been shown to cause respiratory (lung cancer) and mental illnesses.

· A study done by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport which is a Dutch organization caused the Dutch government to reduce the size limits on “coffee houses” which are essentially weed bars, because of the negative effects of drug tourism, and the societal harms associated with drug use/abuse. They found that the ease of access to marijuana led to underage students being able to easily obtain the drug, which affected their school performance, caused mass truancy issues, and in many cases caused permanent brain damage to their underdeveloped brains.

· According to the Economist, in 2007, 1/3 of Mexicans thought the death toll was a reasonable price to pay, whereas now, only 1/4 believe so. The death toll has been increasing rapidly, with twice as many deaths in the first half of this year as opposed to the first half of last year.

The high-profile cartels:

SINALOA CARTEL The Sinaloa Cartel is the largest drug trafficking cartel in Mexico. Its leader, Joaqun Shorty Guzmn, has become one of the richest men in the world and Mexico's most wanted. Since 2003, the cartel has waged war with its main rivals - the Gulf Cartel, Jurez Cartel and Tijuana Cartel - to control the coveted southwest Texas corridor. Also known as Federation or Golden Triangle, the cartel is responsible for importing nearly 200 tonnes of cocaine into the United States between 1990 and 2008.

GULF CARTEL Based in the city of Matamoros, the Gulf Cartel has been one of Mexico's two dominant cartels in recent years. In the late 1990s, it hired a private mercenary army called Los Zetas, which in 2006 stepped up as a partner. In February 2010, their partnership was dissolved and both gangs engaged in widespread violence across several cities of Tamaulipas state, turning several border towns into "ghost towns".

JUREZ CARTEL The Jurez Cartel controls one of the main transportation routes for illegal drug shipments entering the US. Its power has weakened, however, since it become locked in a vicious battle with its former partner, the Sinaloa Cartel, for control of the city of Ciudad Jurez. Headed by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the ruthless organisation has been known to decapitate rivals, mutilate their corpses and dump them in public and has an enforcement gang of former Chihuahua police officers.

TIJUANA CARTEL Featured in the Hollywood film Traffic, the Tijuana Cartel has been the least powerful of northern Mexico's gangs since its leader, Javier Arellano Felix, was arrested by the US Coast Guard on a boat off the coast of southern California four years ago. But in one of the bloodiest shoot-outs of the drugs war, 14 gang members were killed and eight others injured in a gun battle in Tijuana near the US border in April 2008.

The U.S. and the Mexican Drug war:

A brief History of Marijuana in the US:

In 1619, the Jamestown Colony actually had a law requiring farmers to grow cannabis. However, it was more for the other purposes of hemp, such as textile making, rope, paper, etc. In the US Census of 1850 there were 8,327 plantations growing marijuana.

Due to the previous Mexican war, and the Mexican revolution in 1910 which caused a spill over of violence when the Mexican army chased the bandit Pancho Villa (as a side note, my great-grandpa ran him off of our family dairy in Duncan, AZ) into US territory. Propaganda seized the “differences” between Mexicans and Americans, one of which was that they smoked “loco” (crazy) weed… or marijuana, which made them crazy. California, ironically enough, was the first state to pass a ban on smoking marijuana, merely based upon the fact that Mexicans smoked it. A few other states began to follow suit because Mormons also brought back marijuana from Mexico, and as Mormons were another persecuted group, this worked well for the propaganda machine (This source comes from Dr. Charles Whitebread, USC law professor). Examples of such rhetoric and propaganda come from the Butte Montana Standard, when it reported a legislator’s comment: “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff… he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.” In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.”

Other propaganda began to target Black Jazz musicians (Cab Calloway’s ‘That Funny Reefer Man’ is a quick example of a song title bearing a reference to marijuana), with propaganda saying such things as, “Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.” –Taken from an editorial in 1934. Then politicians and propagators connected Hasheesh, a form of marijuana, with the story of the “hasheesh-eaters” or ‘hashashin’ the root of the English word, ‘Assassin.’ They told stories of how the assassins would “rush at their enemies and ruthlessly massacre everyone in the area” because of the hasheesh (Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote this in 1931 for the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal), but the original stories say that they would eat hasheesh in the garden to get a glimpse of paradise, and then after the effects wore off, they could serve Marco Polo better.

Then in 1930 Harry J. Anslinger took the newly created position of director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was a phenomenally racist man who took advantage of his position to impose regulations based upon ideals such as:

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”

“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”

“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”

“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”

“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

He employed the work of William Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers. Hearst had many good reasons (detect the sarcasm here) to help Anslinger… he hated Mexicans… a lot. He invested heavily into timber companies to support his newspaper chain, and so Hemp threatened the timber industry because it was so cheap. He lost 800,000 acres of timber to Pancho Villa, which was valuable land to grow trees on. And he could sell more newspapers when he published lies about the Satanic Mexicans who smoked their Devil weed before murdering people.

So, in all reality, marijuana was made illegal on the grounds of racism and greed of timber corporations. So the burden that one who wishes to legalize marijuana is the health and productivity argument. There is a mild ‘religious’ morality

A look at Prohibition:

Prohibition in the United States, also known asThe Noble Experiment, was the period from 1920 to 1933, during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol were banned nationally^[1]as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Under substantial pressure from the temperance movement, the United States Senate proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 16, 1920. Some state legislatures had already enacted statewide prohibition prior to the ratification of the 18th Amendment.

The "Volstead Act", the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, passed through Congressover President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it.^[2] Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.^[3]

While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it tended to destroy society by other means, as it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity.^[4] Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities. The bulk of America became disenchanted after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in 1929. Until then, they felt that, even with setbacks, Prohibition was working.

On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment.

Many social problems have been attributed to the Prohibition era. Mafia groups limited their activities to gambling and theft until 1920, when organized bootlegging manifested in response to the effect of Prohibition.^[20] A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies, leading to racketeering. Stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle.

To prevent bootleggers from using industrial ethyl alcohol to produce illegal beverages, the government ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols. In response, bootleggers hired chemists who successfully renatured the alcohol to make it drinkable. As a response, the Treasury Department required manufacturers to add more deadly poisons, including the particularly deadlymethyl alcohol. New York City medical examiners prominently opposed these policies because of the danger to human life. As many as 10,000 people died from drinking denatured alcohol before Prohibition ended.^[21]

Making alcohol at home was very common during Prohibition. Stores sold grape concentrate with warning labels that listed the steps that should be avoided to prevent the juice from fermenting into wine. Home-distilled hard liquor was referred to as “bathtub gin” in northern cities, and moonshine in the rural areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. Since selling privately distilled alcohol was illegal and bypassed taxation by the government, the law relentlessly pursued manufacturers.^[22] In response, the bootleggers in southern states started creating their ownsouped-up, stock-looking cars by enhancing their cars’ engines and suspensions to create a faster vehicle. Having a faster vehicle during Prohibition, they presumed, would improve their chances of outrunning and escaping agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), commonly called "revenue agents' or "revenooers". These cars became known as “moonshine runners” or "'shine runners"

Prohibition created a black market that competed with the formal economy, which already was under pressure. Roosevelt was elected based on the New Deal, which promised improvement to the economy that was only possible if the formal economy competed successfully against various economic forces, including the effects of prohibition's black market. This influenced his support for ratifying the 21st amendment, which repealed the 18th amendment that had established prohibition.^[18]