Ill-informed ex-presidents and other free drug supporters
JIMMY CARTER has written that the U.S should “call off the global drug war.” In an extraordinary statement announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, Mr. Carter is a leading member, has made some unusual recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade.
The report describes the total failure of the present global anti drug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders. They want to legalize marijuana because, they say, of it’s a major use in the U.S.
Marijuana is not the big money maker for the Mexican cartels. “Legalizing” it would neither cure nor solve anything. Both Mexican and ”official sources” have repeatedly claimed that MJ makes up less than 20% of the profits for the cartels - and make up only 25% of the drugs coming north. The big money comes from the hard drugs.
A truck load or even a backpack of MJ is a pittance in street value compared to the same amount of hard drugs in the same containers. Plus it is much more difficult and labor intensive to transport due to its bulk. MJ shipments are often used as “feints” when shipping cocaine, heroin or meth across the border. Losing a MJ shipment, even a truckload full, is not a major hit in the pocketbook for the cartels. While Customs or the Border Patrol praises a major MJ recovery, the hard drugs are being shipped past them to their affiliates in the U.S.
Another point to make is that of the over 300 “open investigations” of corruption on our side of the border, most point directly to illegal hard drug smuggling!
Therefore, one can easily conclude that the cartels are bribing our federal and local LEA with big money to overlook, or aid and abet, because it is the hard drug smuggling that brings in the big profits!
Now the cartels are branching out into other criminal enterprises. This is the normal chain of events for all organized crime groups.