Most of these
books are available for audio download and are well-narrated.
Cory Booker
US Senator
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The
Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and its Danger to the United States (2012). Ted Galen Carpenter’s thesis: The US strategy of drug prohibition, like the US prohibition policy on
alcohol, does not work, and exponentially increases cartel violence in Mexico
and excessive imprisonment in the US for non-violent drug offenses.
The solution: decriminalize the use of
drugs, as did Portugal, and overall drug use will not expand. If the production
and use of drugs were decriminalized, most
of the 20 to 39 billion dollars a year that US citizens pay to black market
drug suppliers would be eliminated. Mexican Cartels and US gangs would lose their billion-dollar incomes and
would not be able to maintain their power: their power depends on increasing
their current level of acquisition of weapons, political influence, and
soldiers.
Drug addiction treatment would be the
intelligent alternative to prison, because upon discharge, clean and sober
addicts will return to society sooner, healthier, with services to assist with
education and employment. If they choose to take drugs, there will not have to
commit crimes to afford drugs. In this decriminalized scenario, more addicts
can avoid recruitment into gangs, and avoid the trauma and cult-like
conditioning of the gang lifestyle inside prison and after release.
Javier
Sicilia, well-known Mexican novelist, essayist, peace activist, poet, college
professor and journalist:
The flawed premise of prohibition is the mistaken
idea that criminalizing drug use, drug production,
and distribution will lower sales, production, use,
and related violence. The facts are that the war on
drugs has increased and continues to increase the
destruction of individuals, families and the rule of
law.
“The legal prohibition of drugs, as always, has bankrolled the industry
of organized crime, as it did in the days of alcohol prohibition in the United
States. Now, the escalation of organized crime into a wealthy, heavily armed
military power, has pitted it against the military power of Latin America and
the United States in the failed war on drugs.”
In closing, democracy and the rule of law
are the only solutions that allow proper protection of US citizens, and global
alliances built on trust and strength. Knowledge and unity is power. It’s not
too late to pull our government back from the brink if we can organize
effectively and remove those in in the US Congress and state government who
promote destructive drug policies––such as more police violence and expensive,
overflowing prisons––when we know current policies are not working, but are
escalating the wealth and power of organized crime on a global level.
The
World Health Organization is urging
countries to end criminalization of drug use and asks for a commitment to
addressing it as a public health problem.
Huffington Post July 24, 2014
True, or
False?
National Association of Drug Court Professionals:
NADCP
Considering how much false information has
been given on TV news about the character of the Mexican people and the
victimization of innocents (over 1,000 documented deaths of children) from the
drug policies our country supports, here are just a few questions.
1. If we legalize drugs for adults in the
US and provide treatment instead of prison for teens and adults, drug use will
increase. FALSE (See statistics for other countries who ended prohibition)
2. If we stop putting teens and adults in
prison for possession of small quantities of drugs to feed their habits, gang recruitment
in prison would decline. TRUE.
3. If addicts could get their drugs
legally and inexpensively, they would commit fewer crimes. TRUE
4. When addicts are released from prison,
the majority are typically rearrested for a drug-related crime. TRUE
5. If
arrested addicts were required to participate in treatment programs, and
provided social supports instead of jail or prison, overall drug addiction
would decline over time. TRUE.
In closing, it is common sense to pull our
US dollars out of Mexico’s organized crime budget. The US government is NOT
making progress in the War On Drugs. Just as they made NO progress for decades
in Viet Nam and lied to the American public (as documented in the Pentagon
Papers). If you saw the factual direct quotes imbedded into the screenplay for
the movie The Post, the US
government sacrificed 58,220
soldiers lives in Viet Nam, because “70% of their reason for continuing the war
for 20 years was their unwillingness to ‘lose face’ as a global power and admit
they lied about their reasons to enter the war, then lied to keep the American
public supporting the war.”
When Wrong
is Wrong: Comparing US government lies told to support a horrific unwinnable
war in Viet Nam with a similar pattern of denial: The US Government’s lies told
to support a horrific unwinnable drug war inside Mexico. (Note: my husband was
a Vietnam Vet forced into the war with thousands of others).
The only ‘benefit’ of the Viet Nam war was the billions of dollars made
by the military-industrial complex, whose lobbyists were buying congressional
votes for decades, to make money off weapons, ammunition, airplanes, bombs, and
poisonous chemicals (agent orange, napalm) that burned, maimed and murdered millions
of Vietnamese civilians; right along with soldiers. The US public was duped,
and let it continue––until Daniel Eldridge sneaked over 4,000 pages of government
documents out of the Rand Corporation think tank office (of which he was a
part). Once the documents were available to the public, the greed, pride, and
dishonesty of the government was exposed, more protests heightened the issues, and the war lost the support of the American people.
46 years since
President Nixon declared the War on Drugs.
84% of all drug law violation arrests in 2015 were for
possession only. Those charged with marijuana violations: 89% possession.
From
December 2006 to the present:
1.6 million
dead 27,000 missing in Mexico
Thousands of non-cartel civilians and migrants die
every year.
The lies: The War on Drugs was promoted as a policy that
reduces drug crime and drug use. The opposite has been true.
More than 64,000 US
users died of overdoses in 2016
See Mexican
Drug War: Wikipedia for extensive
graph
of all cartels and related statistics.
US taxpayers cost per
year for the War On Drugs:
More than $51,000,000,000!
That’s fifty-one billion dollars a year!
The Drug Policy
Alliance: DrugPolicy.org
If we decriminalize drug use in the US,
Mexican cartels will have 20 to 30 Billion dollars a year LESS income to
buy tools of terror. Their ability to control government officials and law
enforcement with cash, extortion, and public propaganda will be severely crippled.
At present, they are branching out to large scale theft from oil refineries,
among many other crimes. Not very nice, but the money they make from these
other crimes like oil/fuel theft is not coming from financially squeezed US
taxpayers.
Source: The US Department of Justice cartel statistics
as reported by CNN in Drugs, Money and Violence, March 27, 2017.
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