Mexico’s drug war — The Big Pic­ture — Boston​.com

In Decem­ber of 2006, Mexico’s new Pres­i­dent Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug car­tels, revers­ing ear­lier gov­ern­ment pas­sive­ness. Since then, the gov­ern­ment has made some gains, but at a heavy price — gun bat­tles, assas­si­na­tions, kid­nap­pings, fights between rival car­tels, and reprisals have resulted in over 9,500 deaths since Decem­ber 2006 — over 5,300 killed last year alone. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama recently announced extra agents were being deployed to the bor­der and Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton heads to Mex­ico today to pur­sue a broad diplo­matic agenda — over­shad­owed now by spi­ral­ing drug vio­lence and fears of greater cross-border spillover. Offi­cials on both sides of the bor­der are com­mit­ted to stop­ping the vio­lence, and stem­ming the flow of drugs head­ing north and guns and cash head­ing south.

2 Baja Cal­i­for­nia state police stand guard at a cap­tured mar­i­juana green­house in the base­ment of a ranch in Tecate, Mex­ico. (REUTERS/Jorge Duenes)

I know it may sound naïve, but I have to won­der if a lot of the resid­ual vio­lence would be quelled if mar­i­juana were made legal.¹ I know drugs aren’t the only rea­son for bor­der con­trol, but I also won­der if the bor­der sit­u­a­tion would be dif­fer­ent too. I believe enough in the power of the free mar­ket that it could reg­u­late the — shall we say — more col­or­ful char­ac­ters in the industry.

Or maybe  I’ve just been watch­ing too much Weeds. Seri­ously, that show is funny, but I’m left after watch­ing sea­son 4 with a vague uneasi­ness. I think it got to me, that there are actu­ally peo­ple out there whose lives become wholly con­sumed by the drug profession.

1. I’m cer­tainly not eager to try it out, for the record. ↩