Issue 3: Marijuana Terrorism and Bleeding Juarez

I.

I remember the campaign mentioned in the first video. It was not too long after 9/11 and, just like the economic crisis, everything had to use the attacks as a reference point. Negative wasn't negative enough unless it was terrorist negative. So the ONDCP put out these ads and were ridiculed; whatever truth there was to the claim, it was obvious their intent wasn't to prevent drug money from funding terrorism. It was an attempt by people who were philosophically anti-drug before anything else to ride the wave of sentiment, and it was just these attempts that devalued the event's currency, that created this sickly anti-Americanism that rises in me with the words "nine-eleven", the artificial callousness of an event perverted.

But the point stands, I think, and is illuminated by the continuing drug wars in Ciudad de Juarez over the last year or so, where 2,000 people have been murdered in a drug war unparalleled in its viciousness. This war is funded by wealthy nations' drug habits, and marked by Hezbollahan terrorism (beheadings and behandings) while contributing cash to the continued destabilization of a pluralistic, vital Lebanon.

I want to qualify this first, before it becomes a moral or absolute issue. I want to make it clear that I would dispute any claim to responsibility on the part of any drug users for the actions of their dealers, as well as any attempt to lay it on the shoulders of the Government's prohibition. In the first case, individual culpability within any economic sphere is limitless and marked by an all-too-common tendency toward distortion. In the second, I don't see the resolution of appetites or a capacity for substantive policy change, and so I see no point in discussing abstractions or impossibilities.

Having said that, there is a need to move beyond glib and reactionary dismissals of Bush Era rhetoric. There's nothing about either the violent and theocratic belligerence of Hezbollah or our specific case of a city gone mad with drug murder or the criminalization of soft drug users that is acceptable to any working notions of justice or ethics. Which means that we have an oppotunity: we can begin to be driven by an ethical dedication to human life above right-wing rhetoric, while retaining the legitimacy to speak to those communities that have an effect on the issue (i.e. drug users), above all avoiding juridical or authoritarian solutions to the problem.

My first set of questions concerns this issue. Do we you agree that we have a need to respond to the problem, or is this only a more insidious version of the same old rhetoric? Can we consider the problem of Hezbollah in the western hemisphere without being drawn too far onto a certain side in the foreign policy debates, namely that of the neo-conservatives, and therefore we should avoid involvement in the issue? What, if any, is the ethical responsibility of the American drug user to the issue?

II.

I'm proposing two ideas (and relating both of them to marijuana use, for ease and scale):

1) Certified Canadian
Some form of loose self-regulation that verifies the nation of origin, and sets a premium on the drugs that come via less violent trafficking routes. In this case, Canada seems an ideal example because of a greater laxness in marijuana enforcement (which the cooperation of drug dealers within the more punitive United States seems unlikely). A loosely organized verification system could be set up, with enough holes to prevent law enforcement tracking back up the chain but enough legitimacy to ensure that a large percentage of the product is accurately labeled. Here my ignorance of the chains of marijuana distribution shows, perhaps too seriously to consider this other than the barest sketch of an idea and the actual mechanisms or possibility of the idea are beyond my ability to judge. Perhaps this means the idea is equivalent in abstraction and uselessness to "legalize it", but I'm not so sure. In any case, if possible it could operate as a market-driven pressure against the violence of the cartels, so far the only type of pressure that appears to have an effect.

2) Rest Up for Juarez
This one is more plausible. A single day where all Americans would stop buying or smoking marijuana. Like the Earth Hour, the effect would be negligible, but it would raise awareness of the violence of the Mexican market. Ideally, we could pair it with 4/20, something like "Save It For Tommorow/Juarez", actively associating any non-puritanism with a heightened awareness of the violence.

Do you think these are plausible? Do they avoid the trap of puritanism? Is this the way the problem should/could be dealt with? Do you have any alternative ideas?