US 'deeply concerned' over freeing of Mexico drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero
Source: The Guardian
The White House has waded into a row over the release of a notorious Mexican drug lord who was convicted of murdering a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
In a statement Sunday, the Obama administration said it was "deeply concerned" over the case of Rafael Caro Quintero, who walked out of a Mexican prison on Friday, after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence.
A Mexican federal court ordered his release on administrative grounds, saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.
Caro Quintero, 60, was released from a prison in the western state of Jalisco following the ruling. A founding member of one of Mexico's earliest and biggest drug cartels, Caro Quintero was convicted of the 1985 kidnapping, torture and killing of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/11/mexico-frees-drugs-rafael-caro-quintero
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Glendale's a tough town, man. Real tough. Sometimes the bars there don't have PBR in a can, so you have to settle for dos equis instead while convincing yourself this doesn't make you any less 'real.' I feel for you.
I kid. Point is, reflexive finger-pointing at "the inner city" is a little... obvious.
Anyway.
If the drugs were not available? Okay, so while we're on this track, let's figure out how to accomplish that, first. Perhaps have Gandalf ride by on Shadowfax, king of all horses, and snatch all the drugs away to dump them into the fires of Mount Doom! Hey, it's fantasy, so why not? If this is your starting point, it's no wonder the rest of what you come up with is flawed - foundations of sand, and all.
You really think that if we just make the laws harsher, the penalties stiffer, someday we'll reach the tipping point and drug use will cease? 'Cause short of public executions in the street, I don't think we can get much harsher. And drug use has been on a steady increase since we started this "war on drugs" in the mid-eighties. I have no idea if harsher laws are driving up the drug use rates, but they're certainly not dropping it!
Prohibition is just a failed policy. Whether it's alcohol, drugs or - if you're Saudi - bibles, it fails. There is always going to be someone running that blockade, there's always going to be a market. All prohibition does is as I said - fill prisons with bodies. it also ends up affecting those of us who don't partake, because the 'war on drugs' has led to police militarization and a public acceptance of the use of extreme force in all situations from law enforcement.
As for dealers... I'm sorry, but what the fuck do you think they are? Are they skulking monsters in your head, monstrous figures lurking in dark alleyways, forcing their black magic poison upon unsuspecting passersby? No, they're people who know that a prohibited item will fetch a higher price. Hmmm, flip maybe-meat at a wendys for eight-twenty-five an hour, or sell some powder for a three hundred dollar cut in a ten-minute transaction? Obviously the prohibitive law doesn't do much to stop that end of the market, either does it? One might argue that it actually strengthens it.
And yeah, when you threaten someone with years behind bars, getting savaged by inmates and guards alike, or rehab, they'll choose rehab. Does that mean that years behind bars being savaged by the other people there is a legitimate option? Absolutely not. You're effectively saying people have to be threatened and intimidated with grievous bodily and emotional harm at the hands of the state that has arbitrarily decided that their self-abuse is among the most terrible of crimes is a legitimate practice. In so doing, you frame treatment as a form of punishment, an alternative to beatings and trauma sure, but still punishment - and people avoid punishment by reflex.
If an addict does not want to be treated... then they don't get treated. Same as if someone wants to labor through some other disease. Do we bring the cops to drag cancer sufferers to the hospital, and hold them at gunpoint until they take treatment? Do we threaten our elders if they decide they don't want to choke down the liver pills this morning? Do we condemn HIV-positive people to a choice of either forced treatment or abuse at the hands of the state? Of course not, so why treat addicts like that? That comes from the framing of these peopel as bestial, as subhuman, as some sort of criminal underclass that needs punishment, rather than sick human beings who should be afforded the same dignity that we would afford any other person suffering a condition beyond their control... even if they decide they don't want to seek treatment for it.
You call yourself a "realist," but the reality is that the war on drugs is not reducing drug use, is making our own police forces a danger to our communities, is sapping our treasuries to build and fund prisons, and warps our cultural perceptions of our fellow human beings. As a "realist" you are buried in the fantasy that we can solve the problem just by beating people up, basically.
Yes, if there were a perfect world where there were just no drugs, no addiction, nothing like that, that's where I'd want my kids to be. Hell, I'd settle just world a world without alcoholism, that alone could be a fucking paradise. But that's not the world we have, and it's really never going to be. With that as the working reality, I stand by what I said.
