Today the Obama administration unveiled a new antidrug strategy for the Southwestern border, a region plagued by horrendous violence from Mexican drug cartels. Alas, the plan simply rearranges the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.
Lovely chairs they may be, but the boat's still going down.
The plan, as reported by the Associated Press based on an advance copy, includes lots of technological fixes like "visual shields near border-crossing points so that drug cartel spotters can't alert approaching…
Update (8/21/2009): Mexican President Felipe Calderón has signed this legislation into law. Click here to read more.
Mexico’s Senate passed a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana and other drugs. The bill would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams of marijuana in Mexico and defers low-level drug dealing cases to the Mexican states.
Proposed by President Felipe Calderon, the bill seeks to free up law enforcement resources in order to better fight violent drug cartels…
President Obama leaves soon for talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday. We can't help but wonder: Will they talk about marijuana policy?
Consider: Mexico's Congress has been holding an extended debate on whether marijuana should be legal for personal use or remain prohibited. And Mexico's ambassador to the U.S. recently said this is a debate that "needs to be taken seriously" on both sides of the border.
President Obama, as everyone knows by now, addressed the issue rather less…
In yet another sign that the debate on fundamentally shifting our marijuana policy has reached critical mass, a remarkable exchange occurred on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday. In a discussion of violent Mexican drug gangs with Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the U.S., host Bob Schieffer asked, "What if marijuana were legalized? Would that change this situation?"
Rather than giving the standard official response that any such discussion was absurd, Ambassador Sarukhan seemed to be walking…
There appears to be a problem with Americans' peripheral vision that makes us unable to see anything to our south. However, the real, hot drug war raging in Mexico has finally bubbled to the point where even we can't miss it.
We probably never would have noticed – nor even acknowledged the role played by Americans' insatiable appetite for illicit drugs including marijuana, which makes up about 60% of Mexico's drug trade – if it weren't for the inevitable expansion of that war into our own country.
The…