It Is Unanimous

The El Paso City Council has unanimously passed a resolution asking the Federal Government to look into the legalization of drugs.

On Tuesday afternoon El Paso Mayor John Cook vetoed a resolution unanimously passed by city council that would have asked the U.S. government to begin a serious debate on legalizing narcotics.

Earlier in the day city council passed a resolution, rationing that the best way to stop the drug wars in Juarez may be to legalize the drugs here in the United States. It was part of a larger resolution outlining several steps for the United States and Mexico to take in order to cut down on the number of murders between rival drug cartels. Last year more than 1,600 people were murdered in Juarez.

"We know that this drug war and this prohibition on drugs is enriching criminals to traffic in narcotics to these communities, which costs the narcotics teams in the U.S. and Mexico billions of dollars," said Councilman Beto O'Rourke, who added the "legalize drug debate" amendment to the already established resolution.

City council members realize it may be extreme to legalize drugs like heroin, but others like marijuana could make sense. Currently, marijuana accounts for 70 percent of the drugs coming across the border. "Any business will tell you, you take a 70 percent hit to your pocket book, you're going out of business," said Councilman Steve Ortega.

Well of course the Mayor is correct. Debate is out of the question. It might lead to action. Besides we have already had the debate. President Nixon asked for a report. He got one in 1972. Thirty-six years ago.

In this Chapter, we have carefully considered the spectrum of social and legal policy alternatives. On the basis of our findings, discussed in previous Chapters, we have concluded that society should seek to discourage use, while concentrating its attention on the prevention and treatment of heavy and very heavy use. The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective. We have attempted to balance individual freedom on one hand and the obligation of the state to consider the wider social good on the other. We believe our recommended scheme will permit society to exercise its control and influence in ways most useful and efficient, meanwhile reserving to the individual American his sense of privacy, his sense of individuality, and, within the context of ail interacting and interdependent society, his options to select his own life style, values, goals and opportunities.

So the drug war is self defeating. How true. If it wasn't evident then it should be evident 36 years later. Any success that the government has in taking drugs off the market just draws new players into the market.

In any case the El Paso recommendation is just the first hole in the dike. It has been plugged. There will come a time when the holes will exceed the number of pluggers. Then it is all over. For the drug cartels. It takes about 50 years from the time a drug attains wide spread use (1968) until the prohibitionists give up. That means around 2018. Maybe a little sooner if the Mexican problem draws attention to the situation. So I'd say ten years at most.

H/T Colleen McCool who has an interesting www site. She suggests you visit this site if you are interested in a cure for cancer. Here is another site that has a few words on the subject.

In a cannabis study on cancer conducted in 1974, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, instead found that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The Drug Enforcement Agency shut down that study and buried that life saving information. In 2000, it was validated again when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

There is some serious criminal behavior going on here and it is not on the part of pot smokers.