INSERT OWN TRAGIC LEAD LINE HERE: Funerals for the nine Americans shot to death Monday in a small, remote town in northwest Mexico were held Thursday. Three women and six children were slaughtered. None of this is news. Children and foreigners, once more or less off-limits, are now fair game for Mexico’s drug cartels. 

Dry, Technical Matter: Mexico has been at war with its drug cartels since 2006, obliged to do so by America’s own drug war, which forces cartels to smuggle in products a lot of Americans want. The profits from smuggling drugs into America are not small, and the fight amongst cartels for control is as violent as it is competitive. 

Fly In The Ointment: We have no one to blame but ourselves. A violent America has produced a violent world and our drug war has produced the violence in both countries that attends the importation of narcotics into America. 

Here He Goes: The shootings illustrate one of the reasons to end the drug war, over and above the fact it is not the government’s job to criminalize a personal choice like this:

Legalize drugs and violence like this disappears. 

Oh Crap, He’s Appealing To Logic And Reason: Is the US/Mexican border currently awash in violence over the importation of coffee? Of course it isn’t. Coffee is legal. Legalize drugs and drug lords immediately go from drug smugglers to vendors trying to move some product. 

Get Out Your History Books: This week’s shootings reinforce a lesson Prohibition taught us, a lesson America still refuses to heed: morality laws do not work, unless your goal is to make criminals rich, then they work fine. The violence that currently attends trying to smuggle drugs into the US will remain as long as such drugs remain illegal. It’s a lesson America should have learned decades ago. 

It’s time for us to learn it now.

Thank you for reading,

Gaylon

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