Why patriotic, law-and-order types should consider marijuana legalization

My headline is a bit over-broad, but instead of saying xenophobic, anti-immigrant right wingers, I'll be both polite and accurate:

People who strongly oppose weak border security/illegal immigration (who also often oppose drug legalization for different reasons) at least in part due to the drug cartels and the violence they cause, more than they oppose some citizens getting high, should reconsider their position on the latter.

But why give those dirty hippies more weed, when we can solve both problems, if only the government would do its job! Well, the government is doing its job about as good as it is going to do. And it sucks at it. This is why we libertarians, conservatives, and a few liberals oppose big government and its endless programs.

Legalization, (even if highly regulated) is doing a better job at harming the cartels than prohibition could ever do:

Facing stiff competition from pot grown legally and illegally north of the border, the price for a kilogram of Mexican schwag has plummeted by 75 percent, from $100 to $25, the Post reports:

Farmers in the storied "Golden Triangle" region of Mexico's Sinaloa state, which has produced the country's most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop…increasingly, they're unable to compete with US marijuana growers.

As demand for pot is satisfied better elsewhere, what happens? The cartels turn to other banned-in-America substances.

Mexican heroin is flooding north as U.S. authorities trying to contain an epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse have tightened controls on synthetic opiates such as hydrocodone and OxyContin. As the pills become more costly and difficult to obtain, Mexican trafficking organizations have found new markets for heroin in places such as Winchester, Va., and Brattleboro, Vt., where, until recently, needle use for narcotics was rare or unknown.

I'm not going to win over many people saying we should legalize heroin, too. The cartels are following the path of least resistance, economically speaking. The demand is always going to be there. We can have cartels supply that demand, or we can have somewhat more responsible American citizens and businesses supply it.

That doesn't mean legalize everything, it just means that fighting this with blood and guns has accomplished very little over the decades, while marijuana legalization changed the cartel's behavior practically overnight.

If this were a science experiment, you would note well the variable that had an effect. And if you were a scientist with half a brain, you might follow that course.

Mexico's IFE shows win for leftist PRI candidate. Updated

With over 95% of the votes tallied by Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), the PRI Party candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, is shown to be the clear winner in Mexico's General Election.

What does this mean, you may ask, for America? Well, not much or a lot--depending on how you look at it.

I'm no expert on Mexico's PRI, but they have run its executive government for most of recent history. Official relations will probably not change much between our governments, but border violence and economics might.

What I'm expecting from them are re-emphasized socialistic policies. The PRI did base much of their policies on the Soviet Union's. More nationalization, more central planning, which generally means slow growth in today's global economy. And slow growth generally means more crime.

Which brings me to Peña Nieto. The Mexican drug war has been astonishingly violent, and so dangerous for and increasing number of Mexicans that security is their number one issue. Peña Nieto ran on trying a different approach to the drug war; instead of focusing on the big fish, he plans to stop the everyday crimes.

That might be effective for people in Mexico, but I don't see it doing much to stop the border violence nor drug smuggling in the United States. With less heat on the drug cartels it might actually get worse.

Short of dramatic events or significant change in American policy, I expect more immigrants from Mexico both legal and not, similar if not increased levels of drug smuggling and border violence, but otherwise little change.

Update: Maybe Peña Nieto will put the heat on the cartels:

Peña Nieto wants to boost Mexico’s Federal Police, and he’s for creating a new national paramilitary police force to fight the cartels. His campaign has also been “highly solicitous” of the United States, notes Patrick Corcoran of InSight, an organized crime monitoring group. This could mean a bigger U.S. role. Naranjo is also reportedly close to U.S. officials.

Cagle's Mexican flag cartoon controversy

If the plague of Mexican drug cartel violence happened to be occurring here on a similar scale, I would expect the same kind of treatment. I just don't understand the outrage.

(Full size image at Cagle's site)

Here's Cagle on CNN explaining the obvious.