{"id":11297,"date":"2011-09-23T12:54:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T16:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11297"},"modified":"2011-09-23T12:54:29","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T16:54:29","slug":"mexico-to-try-market-solution-to-drug-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/09\/23\/mexico-to-try-market-solution-to-drug-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico to try market solution to drug wars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2011\/09\/23\/jesse-kline-mexico-opens-to-door-to-a-market-solution-to-drug-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jesse Kline<\/a> reports on the sudden conversion to drug legalization on the part of the Mexican government:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The United States imports a majority of it\u2019s cocaine from Mexico, which has been embroiled in a brutal war among rival gangs for control of the lucrative trade.<\/p>\n<p>Over 42,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a result of gang violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. Not a moment too soon, it appears the President is starting to recognize that the current approach to dealing with illicit drugs is not working.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must do everything to reduce demand for drugs. But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions &mdash; including market alternatives &mdash; in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations,\u201d Calderon said in a speech in New York.<\/p>\n<p>Using the term \u201cmarket alternatives\u201d is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.<\/p>\n<p>The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze:  legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they\u2019re peddling. And we don\u2019t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jesse Kline reports on the sudden conversion to drug legalization on the part of the Mexican government: The United States imports a majority of it\u2019s cocaine from Mexico, which has been embroiled in a brutal war among rival gangs for control of the lucrative trade. Over 42,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,25,84,9],"tags":[119,516,199],"class_list":["post-11297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-economics","category-government","category-law","tag-drugs","tag-mexico","tag-prohibition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Wd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11298,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297\/revisions\/11298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}