Is it time for all sane people to conclude that the “war on drugs” is a failed, self-destructive enterprise? With Mexico descending into drug-fueled anarchy, columnist Jorge Carrillo Olea of Mexico’s La Jornada writes that it’s time for the Mexican people to rise up and reject U.S. involvement, President Calderon, and the notion that drugs can be eradicated by military force. With no small measure of desperation in his voice, Olea calls for the only sensible way forward: drug legalization.
For La Jornada, Jorge Carrillo Olea writes in part:
We have reached the limit – the very borders of reason and tolerance. Calderon and his government are finished and the country has been placed at historically unprecedented risk. We can no longer remain silent, inert and frightened. The end of history, according to Frances Fukuyama, would mean the end of war and bloody revolution, and finally contentment. This is unthinkable. But what is possible is for all of us to raise our voices and shout, “No more blood!”
Aside from the United States, in the vast universe of world opinion, only one voice has been campaigning exclusively for a military struggle against drugs. In this off-key concert rings only the voice of Mexico
Mexico, followed by other countries like Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Afghanistan and Turkey, has the most legitimate reason for siding with the universal consensus that drug control is doomed – particularly if we continue down our current path of obeying the dictates of the United States, which has its own agenda and acts in its own interests. We must look toward controlling drugs, not the impossible job of making them extinct. Based on science we have to leave behind concepts of morality and dogmatism and discern, within the law, which drugs may be available under what kind of controls, how soon they should be made available and how to educate the public. This would be a step toward effective drug control.
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