Tiptoeing Around Elephants
On Sunday night, CBS’s “60 Minutes” did a grimly fascinating piece on the escalating drug war in Mexico. Reported by Anderson Cooper (whose day job, of course, is at CNN), the piece was as notable for what it didn’t cover as what it did. Like most recent media coverage of the growing carnage along our southern border, the “60 Minutes” story carefully tiptoed around the proverbial elephant in the room.
That elephant, of course, is prohibition. Here is a piece of what I wrote in a letter to Cooper after watching his report:
There is nothing about the trade in marijuana or any other drug that is inherently violent. The violence is entirely an artifact of prohibition, a policy which consciously relegates a highly popular and valued product such as marijuana to the criminal underground. We experienced this dramatically during the U.S.’s experiment with Prohibition of alcohol: From 1919 to 1933, the liquor trade was fraught with violence, the murder rate soared, and prisons were jammed — while gangsters got very, very rich. As soon as Prohibition ended, the bootleggers disappeared and the alcoholic beverage business returned to the hands of licensed, regulated, law-abiding businesspeople.
Of course, Cooper and CBS are far from alone. News media accounts of the catastrophe in Mexico have been disturbingly consistent in their avoidance of the central issue. Like “60 Minutes,” many have avoided including, even briefly, anyone willing to question prohibition.
This is especially shocking after the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy (co-chaired by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo) urged decriminalization of marijuana and a broader rethinking of the drug war for precisely this reason. “We are farther than ever from the announced goal of eradicating drugs,” the commission wrote in its recent report. “It is imperative to review critically the deficiencies of the prohibitionist strategy adopted by the United States.”
U.S. policies on marijuana — by far the largest cash cow for Mexican drug gangs — are directly adding to the carnage taking place literally walking distance from San Diego and El Paso. It would be nice if our news media at least started asking the relevant questions.
Tagged with: drug war and law enforcement and Prohibition by the author
28 comments
Well put, Bruce. I sincerely hope that your letter is taken into deep consideration before, if ever, the popular media decide to revisit the topic at hand. How much longer can they honestly ignore the reality of the situation? What are they so afraid of anyways?
Its not that they are avoiding the issue, I dont think they understand that thats the underlying issue. All the media knows is that if it bleeds it leads, they dont know the backstory of the events they cover as much as they want you to believe they do.
I would certainly favor legalization of Cannabis but I am not yet entirely certain what to do about the “rest” of the drugs.
I am asking: should we just legalize Cannabis thereby at the very least freeing up resources for the “other drugs”? Or do we legalize and regulate ALL drugs??
Allan I Frankel, MD
greenbridgemed.com
For the record, MPP deals with marijuana issues only and takes no position on what should be done with other drugs. Regulating and taxing marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol would take away a huge chunk of business from the Mexican gangs that are at the center of the recent violence.
My local paper recently declined to print an editorial of this same stripe. I even called it, “the elephant in the newspaper”. Kudos to MPP for continuing to tie the violence to the prohibition. I would love to see you and Anderson Cooper get together…
jon, I don’t buy it. Surely, if they did their research and/or listened to what popular advocates of marijuana reform have to say, they’d see what the rest of us see happening every day. Unless I’m missing something?
What passes for journalism is pathetic these days. Rarely do you see anything where dissenting viewpoints are posed in order to stir critical thinking.
More government is the answer, don’t you know? Give the public a steady diet of fear and they’ll BEG to be protected. Obama seems to have picked up on this and gives us his daily dosage of fear each day (and the stock market subsequently tanks without fail after he takes to the airwaves.)
We are a horribly reactionary society. You see a crime committed, you first think: police! police! But does anyone stop to think about the underlying cause? No. Our schools are shortening their days and budgets, libraries closing, factories padlocked. None of which bodes well for stirring critical thinking. Only when the government no longer has the money to continue prohibition will they end it. That day seems to be coming if you listen to the fear conjurers (the media.) If the under-employed and others out of work were calculated into National jobless figures, it would be at about 13% at present. Something has to give, and I hope that prohibition is one such casualty of our present economic downturn.
everyone knows whats causing it.
It is NOT in fact prohibition, because prohibition is caused by…. Greedy-ass people in the government who NEED drugs (of all kinds) to be illegal.
Viva la revolucion
Bruce, linking to anti-drugwar blogs sends a message, maybe unintentional. Any prohibitionist (or non) who surfs this blog is going to assume MPP also wants drugs legalized.
Great post.
To the last comment, yes MPP only deals with Cannabis. However, the root cause of social problems with all drugs remains the same.
Prohibition is prohibition is prohibition.
Where there is a demand, there will be a supply.
poo poo
they won’t talk about legalization until you stop hearing “This show was brought to you by the good people at Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wyeth……etc.
Big pharma owns the msm
#1, David asks, “What are they so afraid of anyways?” Like others, I think there are a few answers.
1. Some of them are afraid of loosing money. They have a conflict of interest somewhere. Investments in drug companies, investments in policing/military equipment, investments in privately run prisons, investments in retaining “sponsors.”
2. Some of them are afraid of receiving a “head-beating” from the (teetotaling, yet drunken) self-righteous. Many of the people who are afraid, and in this category, already know through experience, that marijuana is much more benign than alcohol. They are also afraid of losing sponsors/advertisers.
What are the answers?
IMHO, for #1, expose them!
For #2, I’m afraid (no pun intended :- ) the answer is to give them good peer-pressure, just like Bruce did. Write them and tell them. Strength in numbers. Sometimes some people need to hear common sense quite a few times before it sinks in.
Sly Stone famously said at Woodstock when trying to encourage a sing-along, “most of us need to get approval from our neighbors…”
When writing, KISS, keep it simple. Proof-read what you wrote at least a dozen times and spell check.
Personally, I’m irritated the media keeps mis-stating it as a “Drug war” when it’s really a “profits war,” “greed war,” “money war,” “trafficking-route war,” a “customer war.” I say call it what it is. Certainly those folks are not fighting over drugs, it sounds like they have plenty, increasing amounts every year! And as to whether they are *on* drugs when fighting, I have no idea. But it seems logical to me that if they are on drugs, it’s not causing the violence since if it was, then all the drug consumers in the US would be just as violent. Therefore I conclude the violence is due to the reasons I give above.
- A Music Lover
and Sly & The Family Stone Fan
Dr. Allen Frankel, #3, Legalizing all drugs doesn’t make sense, it’s the war on drugs that is more dangerous than the drugs themselves. Hence, I’m a med. marijauan activist with a membership with L.E.A.P. (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) as well as MPP. No one and I mean no one knows what actions to take on harmful drugs other than to legalize them in order to stop the war. Medicinal uses for marijuana make sense so we’re going to legislate marijuana being legal. Our country’s borders are like the outer part of our U.S.A. cage with the combatant like lions of war raging, doing nothing but scaring people. Take the advice from people who’ve know and have been in the drug war for years, legalize ALL drugs to significantly reduce to threat from violent drug organizations. It’s not a matter of what’s right anymore, it’s a matter of removing the danger the best way we can as Americans, for Americans.
You could probably buy all the drugs in the world(at current black market prices,even) And distribute them, free, to all who want them for less money,and most certainly less bloodshed, than the “war on drugs” costs.
I am pro marijuana legalization for personal, medical, and logical reasons. I do not advocate or want other people to use harder drugs, but I have no business protecting someone from them self. Hospitalization & Treatment… not incarceration.
As repetative as it sounds, Prohibition does in fact create violence. For the sake of argument, many Americans like ice cream, and aside from the carcinogens, the sugar is more damaging to your health than marijuana. Either way, lets say today the federal government outlaws ice cream.
You would damn fool to think that an underground black market for selling ice cream would not erput. The cost and profit margins for that ice cream would soar and attrack negatively motivated business minds.
Meanwhile, the federal government with the help of media notice spikes in crime rates where ice cream arrests and bust are being made. The parade on the news about ice cream making people commit violence reaches the citizens across America and all of a sudden, something that people enjoyed peacefully together, is walking armed to the sprinkles with fully automatic weapons and cold hearted killing citizens while leaving no mercy in its path.
Unfortunatley, this sounds a lot like marijuana prohibition and just as rediculous. Marijuana can not load bullets into a gun, or fire a weapon and it does not make people go mad. The only Mad ones here are the old narrow minded bench warmers in political seats. A horses ass could see that it is prohibition creating all the violence. It is all about profit margins, not drugs.
Allocate the resources we use on fighting drugs to breaking up sex slave trade, solving homicides, murders, rapes, battery, assult, robery (including white collar crimes of money fraud), and we will live in a better world than today. How many of these more important crimes go unsolved when your arresting bong smoking hippies, homeless alley way crack heads, and farm bread meth addicts?
Armed to the sprinkles… Thats good!
If we’re serious about putting an end to drug gangs and drug violence, and at the same time pump some much needed revenue into the public treasury,we’ll implement a Personal Use and Cultivation permit (maybe a dozen plants?), similar to a fishing permit, for $100 per year, split between the Federal and State governments.
It’s time to let ordinary Americans grow a little marijuana in their own back yards.
@ Emory #16…
Don’t forget the part about how they say the murders are due to ice cream, and call them “Ice Cream Deaths.”
And quote all sorts of statistics about how people who eat ice cream get a lot of headaches.
if marijuana was legalized. wouldn’t that even help curve our current patient drug recover centers?bring them off the hard shit onto something natural and help build them up mentally. i understand is won’t solve our problems but hey every little bit helps! REVOLUTION CANNABIS!!!
I have a comparison that I believe is relevant.
As far as mainstream discourse is concerned, it’s 1950, and marijuana is homosexuality. We are constantly othering marijuana users with images of tie-dyed airheads, just as we othered homosexuals by depicting them as amoral lust-driven child-recruiters.
So of course the issue of prohibition itself won’t hit the mainstream news. Citizens are trained to believe that marijuana users are the Other, and thus public discourse won’t even consider legalization, as that only matters to the Other, which is by definition Not-Self.
Consider attitudes towards homosexuality, 1950-1980 or thereabouts. Public discourse wasn’t concerned about whether to let gay couples marry; you were more likely to see a talking head on TV explaining that if homosexuals were allowed to work around children, then they would recruit them. (This sort of bigotry being debunked as fascist propaganda by now, of course.) Likewise, when the mainstream discourse turns to marijuana, we only hear discussions about how to more effectively enforce prohibition, why we should continue with prohibition, how to punish those who violate prohibition, and how to “rehabilitate” addicts (it is assumed, as a symptom of the disinformation that goes along with othering, that there are marijuana addicts at all)*. The issue of gay marriage was outside of mainstream discourse because homosexuals were the Other, and the issue was only important to the Other. The same applies to marijuana- and drug-related issues.
* To me, the concept of sending a marijuana user to rehab is similar in form and intent to those parents who send their gay children to prayer camps that claim to “cure” homosexuality. There is no understanding of the real person as an individual – they are merely othered, and a judgment based on that othering is imposed upon them.
Why is it the chimp incident in CT. caused chimp legislation immediately but a failed war on marijuana drags on forever? beneficial tax revenue is disregarded during this economical crisis? what’s really going on?
Marijuana Prohibition in the U.S. is a policy which was born in racism and vested commercial interests. Prohibitionists initially justified their cause by identifying marijuana as “the reason all Mexicans are lazy and stupid” and warning the public that “reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men”. Marijuana Prohibition in the United States began at around the time that alcohol prohibition ended. It has evolved from the demagoguery of “Reefer Madness” to the current status in which the government seeks to criminalize and punish its citizens who choose to use marijuana.
In a nation which places great value on individual liberties, each citizen has the right and responsibility to decide for himself or herself whether or not to use alcohol, tobacco, and yes, marijuana. We the people should not tolerate, let alone encourage, any government to make these decisions for us. Prohibition, this time of marijuana, has once again become a national boondoggle and an unwarranted infringement of personal liberty in a country which calls itself the Land of the Free.
Ending Marijuana Prohibition is in no way sending a message encouraging the use of marijuana, no more than the government now “encourages” the use of alcohol or tobacco by failing to criminalize those substances. Truth and reliable information are what we need from our government, not continued stubborn adherence to wrong-headed policies. It is important to remember that over 20 million Americans have stopped smoking tobacco, and not one of them had to be arrested or put in jail.
Big media is more addicted to money than truth. More interested in placating advertisers than telling the whole story which might upset some of their Goliath advertisers whose beliefs and stubbornness harken back to the Corvair and the Pinto.
As long as greedy big pharma pays billions to TV, magazines, etc… it’s going to be remarkably difficult to get the media to talk honestly about marijuana and the failures of prohibition. Big media cares more about keeping their advertisers happy (most likely with lies about circulation) than keeping their readership/viewers/listeners informed.
Once big pharma figures out how to capitalize and monopolize marijuana as best it can, then we might start hearing about how great it is.
As far as I’m concerned there should be no drug advertising any other place than the companies’ own web sites. And this includes alcohol.
Perhaps the only good news I can think of, with regard to media and advertising, is that companies which profit heavily from selling weapons don’t seem to advertise on big media (I’m not much of a TV watcher).
I remember thinking the same thing after listening to Lou Dobbs (a self-described Independent, ya right) never mention prohibition and its parallels to alcohol during the 1920’s. Not once did he bring up the idea of ending this war and decriminalizing this plant, nor did his guests. What a joke the mainstream media is!
Also, please email Mr. John Lovell, a lobbyist against CA decriminalization, and explain the immoral war being waged against a plant. How can this man live with himself. Oh wait, he gets PAID!
jlovell@johnlovell.com
Radley Balko pointed out a similar story in Foreign Policy magazine:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4684&page=0
While the author was obviously well-informed and sensitive to the situation, again he did not even mention the possibility of ending prohibition. I emailed Mr. Quinones to ask why this had not been considered. He replied and said, among other things, that “The magazine wanted me to focus on Mexico, not on the US side of things. That was the assignment very clearly put to me.”
Which I found strange, given the title of the publication. How could you talk about the situation in Mexico without bringing up the income stream and the weapons suppliers? Anyway, it makes you wonder what other higher-ups in the media outlets are directing journalists to avoid questioning the P-word.
How are we as a country going to get up to date in the medical field if the Government continueswith its “War on Drugs” targeting the marijuana issues. The disease weare fighting is CANCER. It was found by research that it battles
cancers.The war is a peaceful one by the people, we are trying to peacfully
resolve the war with the People of God versus the United States
Government and local state, county, and city governments.Why do they continue to ignore the response of the American People?
It is the duty of every free American to end this violation of Gods law
and the law of this nation.
Specifically, the law that govern the use and aquisition of cannabis
sativa, and herb declared by scientist, that bears seed. Now I would
refer you to the scriptures reguarding the origins and uses by man; Genesis
chapter 1 verses 29 and 30:
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you everyherb bearing seed, which
is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit
of a tree yeilding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to
every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have
given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
This is God’s LAW and man has violated that law by incarcerating and
killing people for using an herb that God made and placed in the Garden
of Eden to help mankind get along and live long lives.
Cannabis sativa was developed by God, it is NOT a drug, it is an herb.
Who is so blind that they cannot see the results of taking an intricate
part of our DNA. There are THC receptors built into our systems, and
when
you take that natural process out you shorten the life.
Look at what you learn from scientists.
Now is the time to make reparation to these people that have been
violated by the Law.
Repentance proceedures, as set forth in the Bible are expected by the
People of God, to the U.S. Government for this clear violation.
The Laws governing cannabis sativa were done so by perjurious
information, citing specifically the lies made popular by the movie “Reefer Madness” produced and developed the U.S. Government. The Leguardia report stated
the real scientific results and yet the information being sent to
mainstream America were complete lies.
And now we see the results of the U.S. Government trying to keep the one
thing that supresses violent tendancies of mankind.
The results are a scourge upon the earth that we know as CANCER. What
will stop it is simple. My words are simple.Legalize Marijuana NOW or the
scourge will be tenfold, Thus Saith The Lord.
Now is our time to make the reparations necessary for humanity to enjoy
the real freedom that one has in life if their diet is in direct
relation to what we learn in the Scriptures from God.
Those who oppose on this issue oppose also God, I’m merely a messenger.
Forward to 3 friends and President Obama
i for one am all for legalizing, taxing, and regulating marijuana. i currently do not smoke it and have not for 7 years due to drug testing. my only concern is all these people wanting to legalize all drugs. i do not want crack and heroine and such alike legal by any means whatsoever so i believe if marijuana were legal we should use alot of money fight the other drugs but then we will be in the sameposition with those also. do not get confused that when our marijuana of other countries see that its legal they will fill their extra shipping space freed up from not shipping marijuana with other thing like cocaine and heroine and will try to flood our country with more of that. not that its not already flooded as it is but my hometown is full of nothing but crackheads and crack dealers and i would never want my children to grow up with it any worse than when i did. i lost alot f friends to crack and i wont lose my kids. so i believe that if proposals dealt more with how we could deal with that effect from legalizing marijuana that maybe we could gain more ground and then i could finally make sweet love to mary-jane
I think that people are not willing to even discuss prohibition because they are afraid that others will view them as drug users. My mom, who has smoked her whole like almost, is terrified of telling ANYONE about it. She thinks that just because she speaks up some one is going to break down her door and arrest her. The times have changed, back in the hippie era this might have been true but we are so close to legalizing it now. If people like her and the people running the news media(which she is also part of) would just speak up we could have this thing in the bad. It’s time we put this issue to vote and when the curtains are closed we can really see what this country wants!
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