Former border state governor advocates ending drug prohibition.
Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, wrote in the Washington Times 5 August 2011,
JOHNSON: Hitting the cartels where it hurts:
Legalization of marijuana would end drug profiteering and violence
Imagine you are a drug lord in Mexico, making unfathomable profits
sending your illegal product to the United States. What is the headline
you fear the most? “U.S. to build bigger fence”? “U.S. to send
troops to the border”? “U.S. to deploy tanks in El Paso”? No. None
of those would give you much pause. They would simply raise the level of
difficulty and perhaps cause you to escalate the violence that already
has turned the border region into a war zone. But would they stop you
or ultimately hurt your bottom line? Probably not.
But what if that drug lord opened his newspaper and read this: “U.S. to
legalize and regulate marijuana”? That would ruin his day, and ruin
it in a way that could not be fixed with more and bigger guns, higher
prices or more murder.
As a Republican, he manages to say legalize and regulate but forget
to mention tax, and he didn’t mention
Jimmy Carter
or
Javier Sicilia
calling for an end to the drug war,
but he did mention (I added the links):
Continue reading → Mexican President Felipe Calderón seems to be experiencing a dramatic change of mind regarding his war against drug cartels. Soon after a drug gang set fire to a casino in Monterrey a few weeks ago killing 52 people, Calderón told the media that ”If [the Americans] are determined and resigned to consuming drugs, they should look for market alternatives that annul the stratospheric profits of the criminals, or establish clear points of access that are not the border with Mexico.” Many people interpreted that as a veiled reference to drug legalization.