Mother Jones - Comments for "Will Corruption Cross the Line?"

I guess no one knows for

I guess no one knows for sure if legalization of some drugs would work until it happens, unless your crystal ball is better than mine. But what I'd like to know from all you smart people is, what will all the drug dealers and cartel members do when their product is legalized and taxed? Will they suddenly go legit and finally finish their GED? Or will they find another criminal enterprise? I know the stories about the guy doing 25 years for possession of a dime bag, but the truth is the average guy doing time for a drug offense is a well rounded habitual criminal.

Will Corruption cross the Line???

That is not a valid question. Corruption originated here as well as there. Your policemen run drug houses in California. The heads of drug cartels own as many United States police as Mexican ones. Perhaps they are not so obvious or blatantly violent as the press displays. A fruit fly doesn't stand a chance of infiltrating the states. Many tons of drugs arrive every month. When you read about big drug busts, you never hear of big trials following. Oh yes, they run around and round up every young punk playing with a $5 bag in the streets and fill up the prisons with replaceable pawns, while the big guys running the show sit at the table with the politicians they own. The government trained the people harvesting the poppy fields in afganistan. We put their president in power. The drug problem is part of their master plan to get rid of the poor and middle class while retaining a servant class to become their serfs. No conspiracy theory this. It's happening NOW!

agree

1
why are plants illegal?
2 why no mention of the disastrous bush/obama merida initiative?
3 it is the governments, on both sides of the border, whose military/police facilitate all this

Agree with the first comment

Conroy's piece is revealing of corruption which reaches beyond the mostly 'brown' Spanish-speakers on which Becker focuses and all the way to the white halls of the State Department and the White House.

It also undermines the false narrative of 'shared responsibility' trotted out by pro-'drug war' elements.

Why isn't that getting MoJo coverage?

Totally predictable

Corruption of law enforcement is the inevitable result of prohibition. We know how to fix this - repeal drug prohibition!

Border officer corruption

The Texas border region and south Texas generally are no strangers to corruption. Having lived in the state for decades, I can attest to this. It was only confirmed during my vacations in the Rio Grande Valley over the last two (2) years.

It's not just at the border,

It's not just at the border, the cartels are growing grass and poppies in our forest, and have begun importing meth since the precursor drugs became prescription only. Only with the help of the government could these things happen,whether in concert or through naivete it all works out the same.

What's missing. . .

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the excellent reporting by Bill Conroy at Narconews.

This may have allowed him to expose the complicity of our government in the corrupting scourge which narco-trafficking exerts on Mexican security forces and how US interests in arms exports and possibly in allowing the Mexican government to (continue to) be totally permeated by narco-influence:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/03/legal-us-a...

But then again I read this shabby piece by the author and the comments to it:

http://www.thenation.com/bletters/20090406/becker

Reading this and the other pieces dismissing legalization, it seems to me that Washington's line and these same interests exert some power over the writing at MoJo too!

Disappointed.