OUR MEXICAN DRUG POLICY REPEATS THE SORRY STORY OF PROHIBITION

Bruce Mirken, Alternet – Like it or not, marijuana is a massive industry. Some 100 million Americans admit to government survey-takers that they’ve used it, with nearly 15 million acknowledging use in the past month.

That’s a huge market — more Americans than will buy a new car or truck this year, or that bought one last year. Estimates based on U.S. government figures have pegged marijuana as the number one cash crop in America, with a value exceeding corn and wheat combined.

Our current policies are based on the fantasy that we can somehow make this massive industry go away. That’s about as likely as the Tooth Fairy paying off the national debt.

We haven’t stopped marijuana use — indeed, federal statistics show a roughly 4,000 percent rise since the first national ban took effect in 1937 — but we have handed a virtual monopoly on production and distribution to criminals, including those brutal Mexican gangs. . .

We’ve seen this movie before. During the 13 dark years of alcohol Prohibition, ruthless gangsters like Al Capone and “Bugs” Moran had a monopoly on the lucrative booze market. So lucrative, in fact, that these scoundrels would routinely gun each other down rather than let a competitor share their territory. Sound familiar?

Today, the bloodbath is taking place in cities like Tijuana and Juarez, Mexico, but it’s beginning to spill across our border. Prohibition simply doesn’t work – not in the 1930s and not now. . .

The situation is so intolerable that three former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have recently joined the chorus calling for a shift in U.S. marijuana policy.

There is no reason to believe that our nation’s current marijuana policies are reducing the use and availability of marijuana. Indeed, in the Netherlands — where, since the mid 1970s, adults have been permitted to possess and purchase small amounts of marijuana from regulated businesses — the rate of marijuana use is less than half of ours, according to a recent World Health Organization study. More importantly, the percentage of teens trying marijuana by age 15 in the Netherlands is roughly one-third the U.S. rate.

By taking marijuana out of the criminal underground and regulating and taxing it as we do beer, wine and liquor, we can cut the lifeline that makes these Mexican drug gangs so large and powerful. And at the same time we’ll have a level of control over marijuana production and distribution that is impossible under prohibition.

Rumor Update of the Week-HR 875

The following note is typical of the calls and e-mails Organic Consumers Association has been receiving this week:famer-jail

“Do you know anything about HR 875, a ‘food safety’ bill that was written by Monsanto, Cargill and ADM? I’ve heard a few individual activists scream about this as the death of farmers markets, CSAs and local organic food, yet have seen no alerts from any of the reliable groups, including OCA. Any idea what’s up with this?”

For the record, Organic Consumers Association does have an alert out on HR875. As OCA points out in our Action Alert, we cannot support a “food Safety” bill unless it provides protection or exemptions for organic and farm-to-consumer producers and cracks down on the real corporate criminals who are tampering with and polluting our nation’s food supply— such as Monsanto.

Having said that, OCA supports aspects of HR875 that call for mandatory recalls of tainted food, increased scrutiny of large slaughterhouses and food manufacturers, and hefty fines against companies that send poisonous food to market. The now discredited ultra-libertarian notion that companies or the “market” will regulate themselves is not only ludicrous, but dangerous, whether we are talking about the banking system or the food and farming sector.

Of course, Monsanto and large corporate agribusiness are out to destroy traditional farming. Unfortunately, while many people have been distracted by HR 875, the biotech companies have been hard at work pushing their agenda: Monsanto’s gene-altered (so-called) drought-resistant corn, Epitopix’s E. coli vaccine, and the ban on rBGH-free labeling that Monsanto’s successor Eli Lilly is trying to push through the Kansas legislature. We need to keep working together to work towards positive alternatives, such as organic agriculture and the green economy.

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