By Rehka Basu
31 March, 2012
When a former Mexican president comes to town, you might expect drugs to be discussed. You might not expect a pitch for legalizing them.
But there on Wednesday was Vicente Fox, who led Mexico from 2000 to 2006, sharing a cocktail with a group at the Des Moines condo of Connie Wimer and Frank Fogarty and declaring: “With all of those who drink alcohol, 8½ percent die from it; 4½ percent die of cigarette smoking; 0.04 percent die of drugs. And I don’t know of anyone who has died from marijuana.”
He’s right that deaths from those substances are relatively low compared to other causes. WorldLifeExpectancy.com says drug use causes 0.1 per 100,000 deaths in Mexico, and 1.5 deaths per 100,000 in the United States, though drug counselors warn death is not the only measure of physical harm.
But you see Fox’s point when you compare drug deaths in Mexico to violent deaths, which are 18.2 per 100,000.
The drug trade and crimes associated with it drive most of that violence, he would argue. His country is sandwiched between countries that produce and consume those drugs, and Mexico pays a disproportionate price in violent gangs and cartels moving the substances through to feed our habits. Americans consume $50 billion worth of drugs a year.
Mexico pays in lost tourists, families and foreign investments — and lives. “Fifty-thousands kids have been killed in five years,” Fox said. “Another 50,000 killed them. 100,000 are working for the cartels there.”
So Fox’s answer is to legalize drugs, from production to transportation to sale to use. His successor, Felipe Calderon, disagrees and has escalated Mexico’s war on drugs. Fox, delivering the Bucksbaum Lecture at Drake University on Thursday, said that war, waged by the military, is just fostering more violent cartels and deaths, while trampling on civilians’ human rights.
“Maybe the day will come when a Mexican president will say ‘Stop!’ ” Fox declared. I asked him why he didn’t, as president. He replied, “When I was president, we didn’t have all these killings.”
Time magazine reported there were more than 30,000 drug-related killings in the first four years of Calderón’s presidency, compared with 7,000 in the last four years of Fox’s. Still, Fox knows any president who did that would be risking a lot politically.
Consumption is not illegal in Mexico, or in some European countries, and Fox points to Portugal and Holland, where marijuana was legalized. “Nothing dramatic has happened. Young people are not going crazy.”
Not so fast, answers David Kaptain, program manager at Powell Chemical Dependency Center. He says legalization and increasing access to drugs would increase the number of addicts. Kaptain looks not just at death but addiction rates for drugs and alcohol, each estimated at around 9 percent of the population. Even marijuana, he says, is shown to lower motivation in the long run.
“You don’t want the state sanctioning something that is ultimately destructive,” he said.
But he and Fox agree the solution lies in reducing demand rather than supply. They also agree that America’s war on drugs, declared by Richard Nixon in 1974, isn’t being won.
Down the line, we can talk about legalization. But only after we’ve made damn sure every child gets taught prevention and everyone can get top-quality treatment when they need it, without regard to cost.
Wrong escape: My March 28 column said the bouncers who killed Charles Lovelady in 2000 escaped prosecution. They were prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter but escaped conviction. My apologies.
No comments:
Post a Comment