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With the total failure of the drug war causing many Latin American political leaders to publicly question the wisdom of prohibition, President Obama was forced to repeatedly address the issue this weekend at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. Unfortunately, Obama did his best to quickly dismiss the topic with incoherent excuses. From the LA Times:
Facing calls at a regional summit to consider decriminalization, Obama said he is open to a debate about drug policy, but he believes that legalization could lead to greater problems in countries hardest hit by drug-fueled violence.
“Legalization is not the answer,” Obama told other hemispheric leaders at the two-day Summit of the Americas.
“The capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo,” he said.
This is simply an absurd defense of prohibition. If drugs were legalized and regulated like any other product, the business running them would be operate like any other legal business such as beer breweries, pharmaceutical makers, car manufacturers, alcohol distillers, dairies, etc. While corporations can and sometimes do have a corrupting influence over a nation’s politics, the idea that the level of corruption and violence from a legal business would ever be on the scale that we see with the cartels in the illicit drug trade doesn’t pass the laugh test.
I’ve never seen stories about Grupo Medelo, the brewer of Corona, offering local politicians the choice of the “silver or the lead.” Legal breweries simply don’t assassinate dozens of local politicians, police officers and reporters to get their way. Rival Tequila distillers compete with each other for market share using advertising and sometimes lobbying to get a tax or regulatory advantage, but they don’t use armed gangs to fight for market control in a bloody war that cost 50,000 Mexicans their lives. Legal car manufacturers don’t employ criminals to dissolve hundreds of their enemies in acid.
Just as the end of alcohol prohibition in America caused legal and law abiding businesses to replace the deeply corrupt and violent mafia in the American alcohol trade, ending the prohibition against other drugs, like marijuana, would result in law abiding businesses replacing the cartels.
If this pathetic defense is the best President Obama can offer to justify the continuation of a policy that is literally killing thousand of people a year, that is truly sad.
The one positive note is that the growing push for ending the failed “war on . . .” approach, both domestically and internationally, is forcing the federal government to continue to confront and address calls for reform.
25 Comments
Follow the money. If some journalist is feeling brave, ie wishing to martyr themself, I’m sure it would take you right to the seats of power. The billions of dollars in drugs as well as law enforcement wind up in the hands of a relative few. I’m sure these few have instructed obama on what his policy should be.
Let’s declare a War on the War on Drugs!
It’s time to dismiss Obama. Wall St. is waiting for him.
Obama is speaking from experience, as Big Pharma owns him.
Yep and it involves the govt and many three letter agenicies. Read some information about clinton and his time as governor. The airport in his state was being used for CIA drug runs. I can’t remember name of airport but sure you can google, at least for now. locals were witness and even one of those hired by cia came forward. all died strange and odd deaths.
As much as I love FDL in way it is probably acting as a tool of those in control. Day after day we read story after story of corruption, end of the rule of law, guys being co-opted by FBI as terrorist and thrown into jail, laws that mean you can now be stripped and forced to bend over and so. It starts to make you numb and maybe that is what they want. Our food is poisoned, they are passing laws daily telling us what we can eat. Did you know in NZ under a new law if you drink herbal tea at home that is not on approved list you can be fined $50,000. This is happening in countries all over the world. They are closing in on us and turning on the grid
Honestly, what can we do. Petitions etc, only go so far. Protests not much better and run the added risk of arrest and even a friendly strip search. Get x elected is too slow a process will take to long to have enough x’s for real change, and add to the fact the money issue and voter fraud by those counting the votes.
What can we do? Jon, can we get some articles devoted to this. And maybe we can all start crowdsourcing ideas. If we let this go on 1984 will very soon look like a walk in the park. Yep they will pick off just a few to begin with, but we know where it all goes.
“The capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting, than the status quo,” he said.(Obama)
Obama must not consider Big Pharma and the Health Insurance industry as corrupting influences.
I like that one. American leaders do love a war on something
I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again:
Ain’t nobody cuttin’ in on Obama’s drug profits!
I did love the irony of Obama talking about how business might corrupt other politicans
While corporations can and sometimes do have a corrupting influence over a nation’s politics, the idea that the level of corruption and violence from a legal business would ever be on the scale that we see with the cartels in the illicit drug trade doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Maybe the President is a fan of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Its astonishing how many whistleblowers, business rivals and/or pesky muckrackers would end up floating in the East River simply because Manhattan businessmen (at least the ones on that show) prefer to resolve problems by hiring hitmen instead of lawyers.
would more money be made if it was legalized?
Obama has the ability to say anything at all, no matter how nonsensical, as if he was reading it straight out of the bible.
The politicians must have some good laughs in private, at some of the nonsense they spew, and the rubes and suckers that take repeatedly take the bait.
wikipedia has a great article on prohibition:
and so on. I doubt that much if anything has changed.
This goes to the heart of the drug problem, which is the sanity of our policy makers.
It points to a pathogenic break with reality, and a tragically maladaptive response to a delusionary misperception of the policy dynamics of Prohibition.
And worse, it validates and legitimizes totally Bat Crap Crazy talk as the way we deal with political issues in general.
We have a right and a responsibility to insist on realistic and reasonable behavior in our society.
Even (Especially!) From our elected officials..
Yah…right…
Obama is becoming like Romney (to me). The more he says, the less I like him.
Is it just me?
They know full well that we can grow a couple plants in our back yard to last all year. No need for the BIG corps to start farms so all the city folk can have some weed. Then what about cocaine and heroin. There legalization would mean we end prescriptions.
Yep. The big guys would find it easier to sell legally. The folks that couldn’t afford whatever licensing or registration (or the accompanying taxes) would be the ones who would corrupt (primarily local and rural) authorities. Moonshining persists in the US despite the legalization of alcohol (except in some local option counties).
Drug use is not a problem in and of itself. And drug abuse is a medical problem, not a criminal problem and was seen as such until the reformers of a century ago tried to force people to behave morally. And the War on Drugs was a hysterical response to the drug use in the 1960s that was part of the counterculture; the intent was to criminalize the entire counterculture.
Just checking in here with the obligatory notation of disgust at our craven, two faced, cowardly, transparent, no nothing, regressive, anti-economics, policy neanderthal excuse for change we can believe in, and the President who thinks we can all be fooled twice.
Not.
There is no issue Obama is going to pursue against the political winds from drugs, to LGBT, to Iran. Feh.
Don, so you’re sayig that perhaps Obama was not properly experienced nor prepared to be president and that if he thinks we will vote for him again he may likely be mistaken????
I suppose that could be a fair surmise.
Good question. If it was legalized there would be agencies however that would lose money because there would be no need for law enforcment, at least nowhere near the level that is now spent.
Also in the case of marijuana, some would grow their own.
C’mon Guys, How am I supposed to fund the CIA black budget without the WOD?
Put the CIA Spook brand on the merchandise and sell it legally /s
o the incoherent president on so many levels.
It’s like we hired o’s opposite from the guy running for president and he’s campaigning against legalization this time maybe he’ll legalize it as soon as he’s sworn and proclaim amnesty for anyone in jail for possessing a scent in a bag , like Trayvon Martin, to transporting a planeload , of course he’s a;; ready given a blanket CIA pardon for any past, present or future crimes so they don’t need a pardon.
“It’s like we hired o’s opposite from the guy running for president and he’s campaigning against legalization this time maybe he’ll legalize it as soon as he’s sworn” (I realize your statement is more tongue in cheek than sincere, I think)
This is the argument some make — wait till he doesn’t have another election ahead; then the real progressive will come forward.
That kind of hope is pathetic to me. Not just because it postpones the day when one must acknowledge to oneself that we’ve been had.
In a more concrete sense, O has spent his time creating a track record of basically conservative, corporatist, conciliatory actions. He is not going to be doing any radical about faces and be called every kind of hypocrite from a historical legacy pov, even if the fatuous idea that he really is a progressive just waiting topop out of his box had merit.
If drugs were decriminalized, how would the CIA or the drug cartels it colludes with obtain their spending cash? And how would we be able to convince our client states to buy all that military hardware and “expert” consulting needed to conduct their local “war on drugs”? And what excuse would we use when we invade those client states or start attacking them with weaponized drones (a la Pakistan)? C’mon people, get real! You can’t just legalize drugs, there’s big money at stake!