[P2P-F] cartels are winning, prohibition must end

[Michel Bauwens]

*Former Cops: The Drug Cartels Are
Winning*<http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/16/former-cops-the-drug-cartels-are-winning/>
STEPHEN C. WEBSTER - The Raw Story
*Everybody knows the War on Drugs has done almost no good, but has caused
vast and continuing harm to the country. However, hypocrisy and greed are so
powerful that we seem unable to turn away even as the evidence piles up
detailing what we have done. We just don't seem to be able to organize our
society around life-affirming principles. Even honest Republican law
enforcement people get it. Terry Nelson, whose three-decades in law e!
nforcement saw him serving the U.S. Border Patrol, the Department of
Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs Service say this, with which I
completely agree -- as anyone dealing with facts must similarly conclude:

"If you legalize it, you take the violence and the obscene profits out of
[drugs]," he added. "Legalization does not help your drug problem, it helps
your crime problem. Over the years in this war, we've made no progress.
Legalization, education and treatment is the best way." *
"[Look] at Phoenix, Arizona," Neill Franklin, a former undercover police
officer in Maryland, told Raw Story recently. "That is the number two
kidnapping capital in the world. A couple years back they were averaging one
drug-related kidnapping every day. We do already have these [cartels] in the
United States, but you just don't hear about them very often. And when we
do, it's not the 'undocumented workers' as people are often led to believe,
it's the result of our drug policies."

Suggesting Phoenix has the second most number of kidnappings out of any city
in the world is not new: for instance, that very claim was immediately
disputed after Sen. John McCain said it in 2010. However, a review of
kidnapping statistics by a team of judges and criminologists earlier this
year nearly doubled the official 2008 numbers, lending at least some
credibility to the statement.

No matter what statistic it is that's examined, be it the kidnapping ranking
of Phoenix, shootings in El Paso, marijuana arrests in Brownsville or the
number of new gang members in San Diego, the reality of today's America is
that drug violence has become a pervasive and pressing threat to most
citizens.

"We have got to fix this problem, or else it's going to get a lot worse for
us here at home," explained Terry Nelson, whose three-decades in law
enforcement saw him serving the U.S. Border Patrol, the Department of
Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs Service. "We talk a lot about the
40,000 people who've died in the last five years in Mexico's drug war, but
we don't talk a lot about Central and South America. The drug deaths down
there per 100,000 are just as great as Mexico. Guatemala, El Salvador ...
These countries are just wiped out by drug cartels, and it's not even in the
news."

Just last week, people on both sides of the border were shocked when
authorities discovered a chilling scene where two bodies were hanging from a
bridge, mutilated beyond recognition, next to a handwritten poster warning
to avoid publishing about the cartels on social media or blogs. The
situation has become so extreme that today more Mexican youths die from
murder than vehicle accidents.

But what does this mean for American citizens? In short: the drug cartels
have won, but it doesn't have to be this way.

Both Nelson and Franklin are members of the non-profit advocacy group Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, which aims to win the hearts and minds of
law enforcement and conservative lawmakers, who've largely stood in the way
of any significant changes to the nation's drug policies.

Franklin, LEAP's director whose time as an undercover officer came amid the
height of the cocaine craze in the 1980s, explained that what used to be a
large bust to him -- a kilo or two of cocaine -- is now little more than a
few handfuls of powder. "They're bringing it in with giant shipping
containers now," he said. "Boats. 18-wheelers. Submarines even."

"These are businessmen," Nelson said. "These are people who own shopping
malls and service businesses. By all appearances, these appear to be
legitimate businessmen. Their money is in the banks. Law enforcement and
busts have just become the cost of doing business for them. There's really
no stopping them anymore."

Nelson also said that even in Colombia, where U.S. authorities have spent
billions strengthening the Colombian military, going so far as to send U.S.
troops and drone aircraft to patrol for smugglers, it has not deterred the
cocaine producers, and the costs to the U.S. taxpayer have skyrocketed, to
little effect.

Both men agreed that the dramatic escalation in the sheer volume of drug
shipments is indicative of a growing business savvy among the cartels, which
the Department of Justice says are now the major distributors of illicit
substances in every large U.S. population center.

"As you're trying to find out who all these people are in these networks, we
felt like we were being effective in interrupting the drug supply," Franklin
said. "But a significant seizure today is a container-load, we're talking
tons of cocaine, tons of heroin. And when we intercept those today, the
streets don't even hiccup. The availability doesn't change. The cartels
build their losses into what they ship. They know, percentage-wise, how much
to write off."

For any business that exists outside the law, the consequences for mistakes
are much greater than in the private sector: and for the lower-level cartel
members, or their opponents, that consequence is often death.

"The worst thing I saw quite often in South America is people being stuffed
into barrels and soaked with diesel fuel, then set on fire," Nelson said.
"That's got to be the worst kind of death, even worse than all the beheading
we've seen in Mexico lately."

"We still have violence associated to the cartels in our country," Franklin
added. "Most of it is probably on members of the cartels themselves. When
their workers don't do what they're supposed to do, they suffer the
consequences."

Nelson, a life-long Republican, said that he believes many conservative
lawmakers are beginning to come around to their view of drug policy as
counter-productive to the overall goals of the drug war. "They're just
waiting for when it becomes politically viable to take action," he said. "I
hope that happens. It needs to."

"If you legalize it, you take the violence and the obscene profits out of
[drugs]," he added. "Legalization does not help your drug problem, it helps
your crime problem. Over the years in this war, we've made no progress.
Legalization, education and treatment is the best way."

-- 
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