September 16th is Mexican Independence Day. Please celebrate by buying your illegal drugs locally.

As long as the US insists on outsourcing the production and traffic of illegal drugs, Independence Day is an illusion

Or

What do Egyptian bombs, black American prisoners and 100,000 dead Mexicans have to do with one another?

Today Mexicans will gather in public squares throughout the country for the Grito de Independencia, Mexican Independence Day.  All of Mexico will be out to celebrate over 200 years of (almost uninterrupted) self-rule after throwing off the Spanish yoke as so many other Latin American countries did after Napoleon decided he would invade the Iberian Peninsula way back in 1807.  Taking advantage of Spain’s compromised ability to hold on, Mexico declared independence in 1810.  So, Viva México!  

It’s an interesting time to love Mexico and its people.  Just yesterday Egyptian military forces blew up a tour bus looking for refreshments in the desert.  The Egyptians were apparently using Apache Helicopters, probably donated by the USA in its never ending effort to bring "stability" to that country by any means necessary.  It brings to light some of the darker ways in which globalization connects us all.  It happened to be Mexican tourists but it could have been anyone from anywhere.  Who is responsible?  Is it a simple case of criminal negligence from an army commander who can’t read a map, understand an intelligence report or follow an order?  Is a certain amount of collateral damage inevitable sooner or later in the quest for a regional balance of power?  Or is it the fault of terrorists and extremist groups for pushing our security efforts to the limit as a result of continually violating the basic norms of trust that are the glue of our global society?  After all, what is terrorism but an exploitation of the spaces we mostly take (or used to take) for granted as safe—the office, the plane, the train, the market, the church, etc.?  It’s all of them of course and on Mexican Independence Day it reminds me that independence is an illusion unless we are all working constructively together on making peace with one another.  The apparently endless appetite for targeted killing and repression of groups who feel differently than their governments seems only to create more dissent, extremism and senseless death.  

But I digress, last year around this time, we were all incredulous at the news of the disappearance of 40 young, rural educators in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico.  There is no public certainty around what happened to these young idealists but it seems to be related to some kind of collusion between local government and narco traffickers.  We’ve grown used to atrocities in Mexico.  Since 2000, there have been over 100,000 Mexican deaths in the war over drugs and drug trafficking.  But the events in Iguala got our attention as the deaths we’ve grown most used to are from the warring armies of the drug lords and the Mexican government, police, journalists, government officials and the occasional innocent bystander, not the young idealists out to bring hope and knowledge to the forgotten parts of Mexico. 

Which brings me back to the issue of Independence.  Why are so many Mexicans dying?  They are dying because of the endless and looping turf wars among the drug manufacturers and distributors.  And here’s the kicker, while we have a thriving demand for drugs in Mexico, we are neighbors to the biggest drug addicts in the world, the inhabitants of the United States of America.  So in Mexico we are dying by the thousands because in the US we need our fix.  Our fix of anything and everything we can get our hands on.  And similar to our response to the security threats posed by certain groups around the world, rather than take an approach to that seeks to understand people’s needs and demands, we choose to punish and punish hard in order to deter the activity we fear and detest.  But it’s not working.  There are more drugs than ever available in the market today and our prisons are full and they are mostly full of black people and other people of color (60% of those imprisoned are people of color according to the NAACP).  But who is using the drugs for which Mexicans are dying and people of color in this country are going to prison?  Here are a couple of startling facts from the NAACP:

·       Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites. 

·       African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense. 

So what we have is a deep ambivalence towards our drugs.  We want them, we demand them and we crave them.  We can’t stop using them (though truthfully, have we ever tried?  Have we ever invested in prevention and treatment the way we invest in bombs, surveillance and armaments of all kinds?).  Because we don’t like the social fall out of drug dealing and drug use, we’ve decided to imprison people of color in this country (because as whites it’s harder to imprison our friends, family and neighbors—the ones most likely to use drugs) and we’ve decided to let the Mexicans kill themselves over who can provide us with our precious product.  

So while we are walking around trying to find the best local, organically produced fruit and vegetables and meat, may I ask you all to take the same care with your drugs?  Do whatever you like in your homes, but please, buy local.  Otherwise that joint you light up or that MDMA you take to the party might be the death of someone far, far away or lead to the imprisonment of someone you'll never meet.

I was once opposed to the notion of legalizing drugs in the United States, thinking that it would create more demand from users who might have previously abstained for fear of legal consequences.  I thought this demand would cause an increase in production and trafficking in Mexico which would in turn cause more death and social destruction.  The legalization of pot in Colorado and Washington has proven me both right and wrong.  For one thing, usage has increased among teens in Colorado, gang-related crimes have increased and trafficking to neighboring states has increased and Nebraska and Oklahoma are irritated.  But interestingly, there has been a drop in imports of marijuana from Mexico.  There are varying numbers and the precise amounts are never known since what is captured is always a percentage of what is trafficked but it seems that imports of Mexican pot have fallen by 20% to 40%.  That’s a lot less money in the pockets of Mexican cartels, less money to buy American weapons, less money to buy American trained Mexican soldiers and less money to invest in things like human trafficking and other nasty business.  So yes, let's take ownership of the drug problem, let's legalize drugs and be smarter about how we're going to deal with the consequences.  Let's invest in prevention and treatment, in proper regulation and taxation and make law enforcement smarter with what we know about who uses, when and where.  

Anyone who says we're too stupid to notice that the Mexican government is cleverly sending us their rapists and murderers misses the subject (and just about everything else but let's focus on the subject): it's us, we bankroll them every day through our bad habits.  You don't want them here?  Stop funding their business.



So at the stroke of midnight between September 15th and 16th when Mexicans are celebrating their independence from Spain as a result of French greed, I’m looking forward to a day when the US can be free from its dependence on Mexican drugs which will be the day Mexicans can truly get to work on their own drug problem and we in the US can too.

http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

http://time.com/3801889/us-legalization-marijuana-trade/

http://www.newsweek.com/unexpected-side-effects-legalizing-weed-339931