It’s Time To End The Drug War
On July 25, US authorities arrested two men very high up in the Sinaloa drug cartel at an airport in El Paso. The arrests are being hailed as something that will eventually cause major dents in international drug trafficking.
Don’t kid yourself; they won’t. It might throw a few kinks into production and distribution, but that’s about it. It will do nothing to satiate American demand for drugs, and that is the reason cartels smuggle drugs here in the first place: Americans want them; the violence associated with drug use and drug smuggling in the US and Mexico will continue.
We deserve better than a country wracked with drug violence, and the time has come for the US to decriminalize drug production, sales, and consumption. When we do that, buyers go from criminals to customers, and sellers go from dealers to vendors. Violence on both sides of the border associated with illegal drugs ends because why fight over something legal?
The drug war has failed in every respect, and it is time to end it. The government has no business mandating morality and it is not working besides.
