BADIRAGUATO, Mexico (AP) — For the first time that María can remember, half of her marijuana harvest is still in storage on her ranch in Mexico’s Sinaloa state months after it should have been sold.
Sitting in her wooden house tucked into the same mountains that produced some of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers, including Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the 44-year-old mother of four thinks she knows why: expectations Mexico will soon legalize marijuana.
“It has never happened to us where we harvest and have it (stored) in sacks,” said María, who asked that her full name not be used and her exact location not be revealed because in the mountains surrounding Badiraguato, where organized crime controls everything, misspeaking can be dangerous.
Mexican legislation awaiting final Senate approval, which now may not come before September, would legalize pot production and sale for recreational use while creating a private market regulated by the government. Medicinal use is already legal.
We should start thinking about what ending the Drug War will mean to the border.
Will it be easier to cross back into the U.S.?
Should the border be more porous?
The world is changing. We’ll have to adapt.
Too late in one sense…the Drug War set up the conditions for the cartels, which supplied the US demand (the Drug War contained no provisions to help users or reduce US demand) and now, even if the Drug War ends, these organizations will be with us, having found other sources of income (migrants being perhaps the biggest…) Portugal decriminalized all drugs years ago and moved the “prohibition” money to clinics and other support efforts, and broke the drug business. Think we ever learn from others?
I completely agree with you. However, those other criminal activities aren’t as profitable as the drug business, and drug profits fuel the corruption that makes human trafficking and the other criminal enterprises possible. Ending the Drug War has to be the first step.
OH yes, absolutely right, get rid of this horrible Drug War (which in many respects got its start here in El Paso over a century ago when the city enacted an anti-marijuana ordinance, under Mayor Tom Lea Senior, to combat those “crazed Mexicans coming here and abusing our women, etc…”)
That’s not Mexican weed in the photo, chum.
Obviously you know more about Mexican weed than I do.
If anyone thinks the world will be better when every pre-teen/teenager/adult can smoke marijuana in city parks you are sadly mistaken.
As bad as public education is, if you mix clueless people with drugs that addle the brain then you are deliberately creating a society that will be less and less capable with each passing day, racing for last place.
They call marijuana a “gateway drug”, but actually it simply helps bring out the addiction that some people suffer from, as does alcohol. If you are an addict, once knighted you will chase the dragon, leaving pain and devastation in your path.
Legal marijuana will help make sure addicts begin their journey as soon as possible. And the others will simply be low-performing subjects fueling the internet with fail videos.
So let’s lock ’em up.
Do you think smoking legal marijuana is a lot different than smoking illegal marijuana? Because they’re smoking illegal marijuana now.
The U.S. and Mexico will both be more peaceful countries after it’s legalized, but I’m sure the cartels will find something else to smuggle.