El Narco (45 page)

Drug policy reformists say these shops are a glimpse of the future. The grass is grown in America, smoked legally in America, and taxed in America. No dollars are spent on busting it, and no drug money goes to cartel militias in Mexico. El Narco, some say, may be resistant to a million army rounds, but it can be slain by the dreaded L-word—legalization. So we get into that toxic, contentious, prohibited, muddled, and crucially needed argument—the legalization debate.

Right as the Mexican Drug War rages, the debate is reaching the second great flux in its history. The first came in the seventies, with the Jimmy Carter White House. Legalization advocates, including various doctors, got into key government positions, their papers got play, their ideas gained currency. States began to decriminalize marijuana and cocaine was viewed in the media as a happy-go-lucky party drug. Reformers thought they had won the debate. They were wrong. In the eighties, America lashed back against narcotics with a vengeance, and in the nineties the drug war went on steroids. The crack epidemic broke out, celebrities died of overdoses, and lots of middle-class parents got concerned about lots of middle-class kids on smack, speed, and sensimilla. In the early 1990s, surveys found large numbers of Americans thought drugs were the number one problem the country faced. The media was packed with stories of crack babies, cracked-up gangbangers, and nice white kids turning into demons on drugs.

But that was two decades ago. The pendulum has swung back again. For now. Most people don’t even list drugs in their top ten of America’s problems. The economy is most people’s priority, and terrorism, immigration, crime, religion, abortion, gay marriage, and the environment all spark more concern than narcotics. Meanwhile, drug-policy reformers have emerged strengthened with propositions to decriminalize, spread medical use, and finally fully legalize marijuana. Proposition 19 to legalize cannabis in California narrowly missed passing, getting 46.5 percent in the 2010 vote. Activists are determined it will pass in 2012. And if not, in 2014. Or 2016. They can just keep on going.

The policy-reform movement is also enjoying a surge in Latin America, where a number of top politicians are joining a chorus singing for change. In February 2009, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, former Colombian president César Gaviria (who oversaw the killing of Pablo Escobar), and former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso signed a landmark document calling for a U-turn on policy. The report, which they presented with the intention of kick-starting a movement, stated in unambiguous terms:

“The war on drugs has failed. And it’s high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies …

“Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction, and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

“The first step in the search for alternative solutions is to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of current policies. Next, we must shatter the taboos that inhibit public debate about drugs in our societies.”
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The paper caused a whirlwind across the continent. But typical of the drug debate, this was a salvo from former rather than current presidents. Questioning the righteousness of the war on drugs has long been seen as a terminally toxic vote loser. Until politicians get out of office.

Another retired head of state who joined the movement to legalize was Vicente Fox. I went to see him on his ranch to talk about his newfound cause. He looked decidedly less stressed than when in office, relaxing on his large estate in jeans and a T-shirt. Asked why his position had swung round, he explained that the situation itself has changed, with the problem of violence now a far worse cost for Mexico.

I was surprised by how radical his views were on reform. He didn’t just want to decriminalize but spoke of full-on legalization and taxation of the entire narcotics industry. He envisions the marijuana growers up in the Sierra Madre raising their weed as legal farmers. Mexican marijuana could be like its tequila industry, supporting some rural barons and known by drunks (or stoners) the world over. He added that it was a shame Prop 19 failed in California, as it would have been a huge first step. Speaking in his usual baritone voice, the former president went on:

“Prohibition didn’t work in the Garden of Eden. Adam ate the apple. And Al Capone and Chicago are the biggest example of prohibition not working. When they legalized alcohol, that got rid of the violence.

“The damage Mexico is paying for prohibition now is getting exponentially worse. It is affecting investment and tourism. Is it destroying hotels and restaurants and nightclubs in the north of the country. I see important businessmen leaving the country and going to San Antonio or Houston or Dallas.

“But it is not just a loss of income. It is the loss of tranquillity. In the collective psychology, there is fear in the country, and when you have an atmosphere of disharmony, no human being can make the best of themselves. This cost is not worth paying.

“You also have to think that the responsibility of drugs is with the consumer. It is the family that has to give information and educate. We can’t pass that responsibility to the government. The government has to respond urgently to our security. They have to make sure our children get home safe and healthy, that they don’t get caught up in a shoot-out.”

Fox touches on the central points raised for years by the drug-policy reformists in the United States: that drug prohibition hasn’t stopped drug taking; that it creates organized crime with catastrophic consequences; and that the whole idea of a government telling you what to put in your body is illogical.

Arguments for legalization have filled whole books, and this doesn’t intend to be another one. This is a book about El Narco and the Mexican Drug War. Most people have already made up their minds about legalization. But the debate is crucial to understanding the future of El Narco, because how drug-policy reform plays out will have epic consequences in Mexico.

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it.
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The movement can’t agree on much other than that the present policy doesn’t work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts.

Powerful groups are lined up against reform. Certain Christians and religious-driven organizations believe drugs are immoral and that it is our duty to fight their use. This fundamental force has driven the drug war since Opium Commissioner Hamilton Wright railed against pink poppies in 1908, and its influence on American thinking should not be underestimated. Many in the drug-fighting establishment also stand firmly in their trenches. The DEA doesn’t want to lose its $2.3 billion budget, and soldiers who have dedicated their lives can’t stand the idea that struggle has been in vain. Plenty of well-meaning agents firmly believe narcotics are a scourge we have to fight with force. Finally, there is the same group that has provided the impetus for politicians to call the battle cry all along: the concerned middle class. Being hard on drugs is seen as a vote winner for a reason: parents are genuinely concerned about the issue.

Outside America, voices add to the drug-war camp. The United Nations treaties demand that all signatories pursue prohibitionist policies and are made in a hard way to change. Supporting this conservative position are officials from countries as far afield as Italy, Russia, Iran, Nigeria, and China, who are all convinced that the line on prohibition cannot be broken. If California did legalize marijuana, it would not only contravene American federal law, it would also violate the UN treaty. It would be a legal can of worms.
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As the calls for drug reform rise, those in the drug-war camp raise their tone. They claim that drug legalization would be a catastrophe. Even if we did legalize marijuana, they say, how could we ever legalize cocaine, heroin, and meth? One report wildly speculated cocaine use would rise tenfold. If you think things are bad now, they say, imagine the chaos if drugs were legal. There would be psychopathic, gun-toting crackheads on every corner. It would be hell on earth. El Narco would have won.

Despite these immense challenges, several factors are making the drug-policy reform movement stronger than ever. The most important is historical experience. With modern mass drug use beginning in the 1960s, we have had more than four decades to watch its trends. Tellingly, laws do not appear to be the underlying factor determining the amount of drug use. Holland for example has had liberal drug laws, but has lower drug use than the United Kingdom with stricter laws. Portugal had one of the lowest drug-use rates in Europe when it had strict laws, and even lower rates following the decriminalization of all drugs in 2001. The main achievement of this change was to save money and reduce HIV infections.

The United States continues to have some of the highest drug use in the world while maintaining a generally prohibitionist policy. But the types of drugs used have changed over the decades. Powder cocaine was trendy and popular in the seventies, crack exploded in the eighties, ecstasy gained strength in the nineties, and crystal meth had its notorious star turn at the dawn of the new millennium. These changes seem more to do with fashions and transforming social environments than laws and any success at stopping supply. The argument that legalizing drugs would create a catastrophic wave of users isn’t backed by facts.

Drug use in Latin America, including Mexico, is much lower than in the United States, but has substantially risen in the last two decades, giving Latin American countries their own problems with addicts and street-corner battles. Judging from historical experience, drug use is likely to rise in these countries whatever governments do. Drugs are part of globalization and modern consumer societies. This will create even more income for El Narco and make policy reform more urgent.

Advocating legalization of drugs is by no means saying that drugs are good. Everyone agrees that heroin is a dastardly scourge. Reformers argue, however, that the best way to control narcotics is to get them in the open and regulate them. Meanwhile, the billions of dollars spent trying to prohibit narcotics could be spent on prevention campaigns and rehabilitation. Most people who use drugs are not problematic addicts, just as most who drink are not sick alcoholics. But addicts give the most resources to organized crime and cause the gravest damage to their families and communities. Rehabilitation workers say most of those who suffer compulsive drug use have other problems: child abuse, poverty, neglect. They need help. Criminalizing them normally aggravates rather solves their tribulations.

Meanwhile, the hard-core crime associated with drugs is not caused by the narcotics themselves; it is precisely because they are illegal. People kill over street corners because they are fighting over the wealth of the black-market trade, not because they smoked spliffs. Mexican gangsters don’t cut off their rivals’ heads because they are tripping on psychedelics. They go beyond the pale because so much money is involved.

Policy-reform advocates envision a bright future in which the international community comes to terms with the use of narcotics in the modern world in a legal sphere. This would finally destroy trafficking mafias, who would by definition not be able to exist. There would be no more street-corner beefs, shoot-outs over shipments, executions of pushers who haven’t paid their quota, drug money going to the Barrio Azteca, Sinaloa Cartel, Medellín Cartel, Zetas, La Familia, Cosa Nostra, or Jamaican yardies, cocaine fights in Brazilian favelas, or cartel hits on drug czars nor any other drug-related bloodshed in grimy corners all over the globe.

This vision has long been derided as utopian, classified as a nonstarter. But it is rapidly gaining strength with new converts from U.S. Internet billionaires to Latin American peasants. This momentum gives reform advocates a feeling of a snowball effect, a sense that history is on their side. As French poet Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

Then again, many activists felt like that in the seventies. Overconfidence can be dangerous. The pendulum could always swing back.

The biggest policy change so far has been the decriminalization of drug use. Governments who take this course still keep narcotics illegal, but will not punish—or at least not give jail time—to anyone found possessing personal amounts. This has already been done in thirteen U.S. states regarding marijuana, and in Holland and Portugal. In the last two years, it has also gained ground in the front-line states of Latin America. Argentina’s supreme court ruled marijuana possession was not a crime, and Colombia and Mexico itself have decriminalized the personal use of almost all narcotics. In Mexico’s law, approved in 2009, anyone caught with two or three joints, about four lines of cocaine, or even a little bit of meth or heroin can no longer be arrested, fined, or imprisoned.
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However, police will give them the address of the nearest rehab clinic and advise them to get clean. The law was approved on the argument that police had to prioritize going after bigger, more violent criminals. They certainly have plenty of those.