Following the release of the report from the Global Commission on Drugs, the U.S. drug czar's office sought to challenge the intellect of current and former presidents of foreign nations as well as esteemed U.S. officials with the response that these high-echelon leaders from around the world were "misguided." The drug czar and his fellow drug war addicts must find the courage to debate this issue in an open, public venue. The Chronicle, by way of their editorial, has hastened the arrival of that glorious day. Thank you! Dean Becker, Houston [end]
When David Simon, creator of HBO's late dramatic crime series The Wire, heard through news media that Atty. Gen. Eric Holder wanted to see the series return for a sixth season, he offered the nation's top prosecutor a deal. He'll start working on a sequel season, Simon responded in an email to the Times of London, "if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanizing drug prohibition." Holder was not available for comment, but it's a safe bet that Simon's deal asks too much of the Obama administration. Despite its declarations to the contrary, Team Obama appears to be stuck in the same old 40-year-old rut better known as the "war on drugs." [continues 622 words]
Union Pacific Refuses To Pay, Says It's Unable To Stop Smugglers EL PASO, Texas - A border security program to X-ray every train rolling into the country has prompted as much as $400 million in fines against U.S. railroads, which are held responsible for the pungent bales of marijuana, tight bundles of cocaine, and anything else criminals cram into the boxcars and tankers as they clickety-clack through Mexico. Union Pacific, the largest rail shipper on the U.S.-Mexico border and the largest recipient of fines, refuses to pay what now amounts to more than $388 million in fines, up from $37.5 million three years ago when the screening began. [continues 276 words]
Way This Nation Has Fought War On Drugs Is Nothing To Celebrate, Says Clarence Page When David Simon, creator of HBO's late dramatic crime series "The Wire," heard that Attorney General Eric Holder wanted to see the series return for a sixth season, he offered the nation's top prosecutor a deal. He'll start working on a sequel season, Simon responded in an email to the Times of London, "if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanizing drug prohibition." [continues 665 words]
When David Simon, creator of HBO's late dramatic crime series "The Wire," heard that Attorney General Eric Holder wanted to see the series return for a sixth season, he offered the nation's top prosecutor a deal. He'll start working on a sequel season, Simon responded in an email to the Times of London, "if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanizing drug prohibition." Holder was not available for comment, but it's a safe bet Simon's deal asks too much of the Obama administration. Despite declarations to the contrary, Team Obama appears to be stuck in the 40-year-old rut better known as the "war on drugs." [continues 622 words]
Get Real About Dealing With Illegal Drugs Along with abortion, gun control and gay marriage, drug legalization is one of the truly thorny issues confronting American society. It raises contentious questions touching on criminality, morality, health and addiction, immigration, even national security. Like the other issues, drug legalization frequently resists rational discussion. For the most part, people have their minds made up. There's compelling reason to change that mindset and put drug legalization on the table for reasoned discussion and debate. The illegal drug trafficking through Mexico has become murderous -- and expensive. It's simply unconscionable to allow the status quo to continue. And doing so will require forthright attention to the issue of demand for illegal drugs in this country -- the engine that drives the drug violence. [continues 256 words]
EL PASO - Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, bringing his peace caravan to U.S. soil, said Saturday that the United States needs to halt the flow of illegal weapons, cut its demand for illegal drugs, and suspend its 40-year war on drugs, which he said is only generating bloodshed in Mexico and forcing thousands to flee north. The caravan ended its six-day journey Saturday by crossing the border into El Paso, one of the safest U.S. cities and home to tens of thousands of Mexicans who have left their homeland in the past three years. Sicilia's son was among an estimated 40,000 people killed in criminal violence since late 2006. [continues 346 words]
Regarding Judith McGinnis' thoughtful June 2 column, the U.S. drug war has given the land of the free the highest incarceration rate in the world. Prohibition-related violence has caused upward of 35,000 deaths in Mexico over the past four years. Despite criminal penalties, the U.S. has higher rates of drug use than European Union countries such as Portugal that have decriminalized. With skyrocketing national debt threatening the long-term viability of the U.S. economy, this country can no longer afford to throw good money after bad drug policy. Robert Sharpe Arlington, Va. [end]
Martha Rivera Alanis deserves more than a certificate for "outstanding civic courage." She should get a medal for being a kindergarten teacher in a combat zone. Alaniz was recognized Monday for her quick thinking in the face of what is an all too common occurrence in Mexico. The sound of gunfire outside her Monterrey school activated Alanis' drop and cover instinct. She got a classroom of 15 terrified 5 and 6-year-olds to put their ears to the floor and wait for the shooting to stop. [continues 276 words]
NEAR DONNA -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent spotted the men as they approached the floodway levee under the moonlight early Friday morning. She focused an infrared telescope on the figures, tracking seven men as they marched north near Farm-to-Market Road 493 about 2:15 a.m. Friday, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in McAllen. Each person carried a large bundle with about 35 pounds of marijuana strapped to their backs. The agent quietly kept the LORIS scope focused on the figures for nearly two hours. [continues 1117 words]
A huge fence runs thousands of miles along the border with Mexico to keep migrants and narcotics out. Trouble is, it also cuts off half of Brownsville, Texas. By Guy Adams Like many a proud Texan, Pamela Taylor likes to mark her turf. So on any given day, she makes sure passers-by can see the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star Flag of her native state fluttering atop the poles that stand in her front garden. Ms Taylor has lived in the southern-most city of Brownsville, Texas, since just after the Second World War, when she left the UK to join her late husband John, a US soldier who had been based near Birmingham. With that in mind, she also flies a Union Jack. "I hang it lower than the American flags," she says, "because it's a smaller part of my heritage." [continues 1342 words]
A Colorado-based initiative to open dialogue about what impact, if any, marijuana's legalization would have on sexual assault rates could soon plant roots in Lubbock. Shannon Drew, 20 and a Texas Tech sophomore from Amarillo, is using April's Sexual Assault Awareness Month to drum up local support for the Women's Marijuana Movement, or WMM. The year-old effort aims to spark what national organizer Mason Tvert in Denver called "public dialogue" on how marijuana legalization could prevent alcohol-related crimes against women. [continues 510 words]
Monday I attended a fascinating three-hour seminar on how Houstonians feel about the justice system in general and the war on drugs in particular. No, it wasn't at a university. It was in the windowless, 18th-floor courtroom of District Judge Jeannine Barr. I was one of 60 Harris County citizens auditioning for 12 slots on the jury that would pass judgment on a man charged with the first-degree felony of possession between 4 and 400 grams of cocaine for purposes of distribution. [continues 662 words]
Would that the editorial writer, who applauds the efforts of Texas Congressman Michael McCaul in seeking to double down in fighting the Mexican drug war, had heard the speech of Mexico's former president, Vicente Fox, recently at Texas A&M University. Fox posed a simple question: "Why do you expect us to stop the drug flow across the border when you can't stop the same drugs from crossing multiple state borders and being distributed all over the U.S.?" He also said there was more marijuana grown in California than in Mexico. [continues 100 words]
So Congressman Michael McCaul wants to step up the war on drugs and win it. He should start by obeying the first rule: Follow the money. The whole thing is about money. And the money is all coming from United States buyers of drugs. We are the problem, not the Mexicans. A War on Drugs is not the answer. Let the free market work, and put the United States money that goes into fighting this war into rehabilitation. With lots of illegal drugs available, the price will eventually go down, the earnings from drug dealing will decline, and the problem will decrease. The problem will then be for those people unwise enough to buy and consume illegal drugs. I say this as a life-long conservative Republican who has watched federal politicians address only crises too late and quite typically with the wrong solutions. Bert McLachlan, Katy [end]
Re: "Choose labels carefully," by Arturo Sarukhan, Tuesday Letters. I was stunned to see the Ambassador of Mexico argue drug cartels are not terrorists, but merely "criminal organizations" that simply want "to maximize their profits." To argue over labeling is one thing. To insinuate the drug cartels are like any other business and to metaphorically compare them to entrepreneurs is shocking and tragically irresponsible. As The Dallas Morning News accurately put it, the drug cartels are terrorist organizations defined not by an ideology, but by tactics of brutality and fear. It's inconceivable this appointed leader would dismiss a threat that is tearing apart his nation. A person of Sarukhan's status should be more careful than to make such ludicrous parallels between business and terrorism. [continues 94 words]
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, has introduced legislation in Congress to designate six Mexican drug trafficking organizations "foreign terrorist organizations." There is no doubt that drug trafficking organizations employ the same tactics as the organizations on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. But there is a critical distinction. All of the terrorist organizations are rooted in religious, ideological, ethnic or historical conflicts. Drug trafficking organizations just want to make money. The people working in these groups don't do it because of vision or self-identity. They sell drugs because common, plentiful plants bring an exorbitant price on the illegal market. There is no easy solution to the centuries-old conflicts that have given rise to modern terrorist organizations. Drug trafficking organizations could be destroyed with the stroke of a pen. Take away the illegality, take away the artificial price. Suzanne Wills suzwills@swbell.net Dallas [end]
The editorial "'Plan Mexico'?" (Page B8, Friday) applauds the efforts of Texas Congressman Michael McCaul to paint yet another shade of lipstick on the pig we named the War On Drugs. Isn't 50 years of failed global drug war schemes enough? McCaul will ask, what is the United States' role in Mexico's war against the drug cartels? Don't bother. When we opted for prohibition of currently illegal drugs, we created the cartels and the subsequent violence. When we cast our role as response by force, as in Plan Colombia, we spread cocaine production back to Peru and Ecuador. Mexico now grows its own opium poppies. The Mexican forces the U.S. helped pay to train were hired away by the Zetas to be the killers we deplore. We have spread narco-violence throughout dozens of other countries in our hemisphere and to West Africa in previous attempts to save Mexico. [continues 165 words]
Re: "Let's call Mexico's Cartels what they are: terrorists," Friday Editorials. The editorial should be better headed "Let's Call Mexico's cartels what they are: very violent, well-financed transnational criminal organizations." These transnational criminal organizations, which operate in both our countries, are not terrorist organizations. They are very violent criminal groups that are well-structured and well-financed. They pursue a single goal. They want to maximize their profits and do what most business do: hostile takeovers and pursue mergers and acquisitions. They use violence to protect their business from other competitors as well as from our two governments' efforts to roll them back. There is no political motivation or agenda whatsoever beyond their attempt to defend their illegal business. [continues 95 words]
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and The Dallas Morning News don't have a clue on how to solve the horror and misery that is Mexico today. They naively believe that tougher penalties will have an impact? Please. As a retired detective, I know that drug dealers accept, as a condition of employment, death and long prison terms. Drug prohibition is the cause of all the beheadings. To end Mexico's death and misery, we need to repeal our drug prohibition just like we did in 1933. As women and children are shot dead every day in Mexico, it is immoral for our country to continue this failed, trillion-dollar modern prohibition. Howard Wooldridge, Dallas [end]
Inside Texas
