The best part of US elections are ballot measures. We don’t have that in France and damn, it would be great as it really feels like you have an impact on your life and decide for things, directly.
So Washington, Colorado and Oregon legalized pot through a democratic vote and simple propositions. It fills my heart with joy. In France there’s no debate, no vote, citizens are kids who have to follow the rules.
Anyway.
I’d like to focus on the drug war because to me, it almost looks suspicious: after more than a decade of war against drug lords in Mexico, legalization starts to spread in the USA. Really? I guess weapon manufacturers saturated the market and can’t sell no more.
People think pot legalization is going to finally hit drug cartels where the DEA couldn’t hit them? Wrong.
Mexico cartels have been busy diversifying their money, they didn’t wait for pot legalization to act. They have been busy taking over the entire country, politically, economically, slowly, violently. They have been taking over the population with “you give us 30% of your income or we get 3 fingers” kind of deals. The corruption is endemic.
Mexican cartels don’t need pot anymore. Cartels don’t care about the merchandise, they sell what is in demand.
And of course now that pot is legal they’ll sell cocaine, heroine, meth, which are much easier to ship, with far bigger margins.
That’s why if we legalize, we need to legalize every-thing.
It boggles my mind that presidential candidates debate on Syria but don’t say ONE word about the state of Mexico and its 60,000 deaths related to drug wars for dominance of the US market since 2006. 60,000 violent deaths, in a country sharing borders with the US and no one freaks out? I kind of do.