I want to go to Mexico

 

Once in a while we get vagrant birds that cross the Rio Grande into Texas, and we have that brief opportunity to see them.  The place they are coming from is a mountain range not too far south of the border.  A long day-trip or a short camping trip into Mexico would open up a vastly different, more-tropical birding experience for us.

 

But we can’t go to Mexico.  Too much violence.  Drug cartels killing people.  We can’t justify the risk just to see a few birds.  There is a war on drugs going on.  I don’t actually know anything about the war on drugs, but that doesn’t stop me from having an opinion about it, so here is:

 

I think there are people who will use drugs.  There are people who will sell drugs.  The people who are going to use drugs will, regardless of the cost, and the people who will sell them will find a way.  The more difficult we make that transaction, the more money will change hands, the more profit will be made, and the more collateral damage there will be on either side of the equation.

 

How much damage do the drug users do to get the money to buy their drugs?  It’s a giant multiple of the money they actually spend on drugs.  And how many lives are lost?  In Mexico alone there are over 1,000 drug trafficking related deaths every month.  1,000 deaths, and those are not just people involved in the drug trade.  There are a lot of innocent men, women, and children in that number.  That’s over 50,000 deaths just in Mexico in the last 5 years, and the problem is much bigger than Mexico and the U.S.  It’s all over Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.

 

What if we simplify it; decriminalize it?  Take desperation and exorbitant profit out of the equation.  Forget the war on drugs.  Let people buy and sell them.  They’re going to do it anyway.  Make the reason for the drug cartels go away.  Make the violence go away.  Make all the property damage go away.  Spend some money on education, prevention, and rehab.  We don’t have to abandon the drug users just because we don’t criminalize them.  Educate, prevent, rehabilitate, and allow for some personal responsibility.  There might be a downside to decriminalizing drugs, but can it be worse than the downside of continuing what we’re doing?

 

Then Judy and I can go to Mexico.