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November
07
2019

How to End the Drug Cartel Violence In Mexico
John J. Baeza

Nine Americans-including three women and six children-were gunned down by drug cartel members in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora. Eight young children survived the gunmen’s attack. Although violence of this type occurs in Mexico on a regular basis this attack caught the attention of the American news media due to the citizenship of those killed.  They were U.S. citizens with dual Mexican citizenship.  And it was a horrible attack.

Both President Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) have come up with solutions to stop the cartel violence.

President Trump made his solution very clear in the following tweet:

“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” Trump tweeted. “The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused the offer and proposed his own solution-“hugs not bullets.”  Obrador also thinks that helping the poor is in some way going to affect the way the drug cartels operate.

Both leaders are dead wrong. There is only one way to end the drug cartel violence in Mexico and that is to end the drug war by legalizing all drugs immediately.  This would also end the drug violence we see in cities across the United States.  When alcohol prohibition was ended we didn’t see Coors and Budweiser shooting it out on the street for territory. They had courts to take care of business.  They no longer needed mobsters. And when drugs are legalized we will see the same peaceful transition.

The drug war industrial complex is very big and very powerful.  There are only a few politicians who would dare to propose legalization of all drugs.  But this is what is needed if we want to end the cartel violence in Mexico and here in the United States.

The cartel violence we have seen take thousands upon thousands of lives in Mexico is blowback from our failed domestic policy on drugs.  It is the U.S. demand for drugs that drives the market and the violence.  We are at least partially responsible for the failed Mexican state. A state where every politician and every policeman are corrupt.

As a former frontline drug warrior I know ending the drug war is the only way out of this mess.  All the task forces, narcotics courts, and military cooperation will not stop it.

End the drug war now!

John J. Baeza [send him mail] is a retired NYPD Detective who was assigned to the Manhattan Special Victims Squad where he investigated and reviewed approximately 1,000 case of rape, serial rape, sexual homicide, felony sexual assault, and child abuse cases. He became an expert in the above fields including the sub-specialty of false reports

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