Pubdate: Mon, 26 Nov 2012
Source: Gloucester Daily Times (MA)
Copyright: 2012 Eagle Tribune Publishing Company
Contact: http://www.gloucestertimes.com/contactus/local_story_015132144.html
Website: http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/169
Author: Michael Cook

POT TRADE REMAINS A DEADLY, ILLEGAL INDUSTRY

To the Editor;

Two years ago, I wrote a letter to the Daily Times in which I tried 
to get people to see the connections between the demand for illegal 
drugs in the U.S. and the horrific violence rocking Mexico.

I wrote that letter the morning after then Mexican President Felipe 
Calderon had given a powerful speech to the people of his nation 
urging them not to give up hope in the face of such violence and 
mayhem. President Calderon, in that speech, also called on the U.S. 
government and the American people to take responsibility for the 
fact that it was the huge demand for illegal drugs in the US fueling 
the violence in Mexico.

Well, saying that whipped up a firestorm in the Daily Times' 
anonymous comment threads, with more than a few right wing posters 
accusing me of always blaming America first. The fact that what 
Felipe Calderon and I were saying was true mattered not a whit

This letter may tick off as many liberal readers as my first one did. 
That's because, after watching a documentary recently here titled 
"Marijuana Wars", I've realized it's time to get honest and debunk 
the myth that buying a little "ganja" is a harmless activity.

With the violence in Mexico raging unabated, and with marijuana sales 
in the U.S. still the biggest component of the cartels' huge profits, 
any American, young or old, who is buying marijuana on the street is, 
more than likely, buying a product grown by any number of Mexican 
cartels. These cartels are, increasingly, growing their product, not 
in Mexico but on vast tracts of isolated, federal lands in the US, 
particularly in northern California, where the climate is conducive 
to cultivating a particularly high quality "herb".

This high quality "herb" is in high demand among American users. It 
is distributed throughout the U.S. It is a multi-billion dollar a 
year industry.

These isolated, domestic marijuana plantations are guarded by 
individuals the cartels arm wih high powered weaponry, including 
AK-47's, and all kinds of sophisticated communications equipment.

As in Mexico, the cartels are showing themselves more than willing to 
use violence to protect their Calfornia "investments" and the profits 
those "investments" generate.

Ironically, I see these harsh realities as evidence of the need to 
legalize marijuana and take the power and profits away from the cartels.

I find it offensive, no immoral, that the US government and "law 
enforcement" continue to enable this violence and corruption, both at 
home and abroad, just because they cannot admit that their 
40-year-old war on drugs has been an abysmal failure.

But until that time comes, people need to realize, if they are buying 
their marijuana on the street and don't know where it is coming from, 
there is a better than even chance that, whether they want to believe 
it or not, they are, at least indirectly, responsible for the deaths 
of more than 50,000 people in Mexico, and a growing number of deaths 
in the U.S. as the cartels do whatever it takes to protect their 
biggest cash crop of all.

Until marijuana is truly legalized, there really is nothing harmless 
about it at all - unless you're buying it from an old hippy friend 
growing it in his green house to supplement his Social Security.

MICHAEL COOK Gloucester and Vieques, Puerto Rico
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