In today's (7/30/08) Washington Post, yet another article [no link, Washington Post requires an account to view the article on their website] on the violence in Sinaloa, a Mexican state allegedly buried in drug trafficking.
This time, civilians in the way of alleged narco-traffickers were slaughtered.
I'm tired of reading about these atrocities. I don't excuse the behavior of the murderers. Totally unacceptable. Equally unacceptable is the fact that this is a logical outcome of our drug policy, one that creates black markets.
In the talk of legalization, decriminalization, regulation, there isn't a lot of attention paid to this aspect: these civilians, a majority kids, died as a result of our policies which allegedly are supposed to protect the public. Our policies do not protect the public. Our policies create dangerous markets, unregulated products, violent dispute resolution, and do not stop drug production, distribution, or use whatsoever.
One day, when people look back, they'll wonder how we, as a whole, could be so blind to what is staring at us in the face: our prohibition policy in the United States is perhaps the greatest failure of public policy to ever be implemented for such a large period of time.
When I see the pictures of the dead in Mexico, I am reminded that one way or another, the entire world is connected in various capacities. Our drug policy here creates massacres abroad. We shrug it off, pretend like it has nothing to do with us. In reality, we're not individually responsible for what the particular murderers do. We do, however, carry the weight of why the conditions exist that encourage brutal people to act out against innocent civilians.
With a legal, regulated market for the various substances flowing through Mexico, gangsters would be replaced with farmers and businessmen, and domestically, dirty needles, HIV epidemics, and drugs on every corner and in every school would be replaced with treatment centers, tax bases, and disease control.
My fellow 500,000+ drug war prisoners keep me motivated towards reform. The dead in Culiacan remind me of the urgency of our mission to move towards sensible drug policy.
Posted by Malakkar Vohryzek