Exclusive: The argument for President Trump’s “Great Wall” across the U.S. southern border would be severely undercut if America expanded legalization of personal drug use, reports Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
Attention deficit disorder isn’t usually a welcome presidential attribute, but Mexicans can be thankful that Donald Trump has temporarily shifted his focus away from their country to start fights instead with Iran, the European Union, China, California and the U.S. news media.
Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C (Flickr Gage Skidmore)
The last time Trump addressed Mexico, right after the election, the peso fell 17 percent. Within days of his inauguration, Trump demanded that Mexico pay for a border wall, prompting cancellation of his planned summit meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
As former Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan lamented, “it took only one week of bilateral engagement between the new U.S. administration and Mexico to throw the relationship into a tailspin.” That relationship would be better if Trump had stuck to the view he expressed in November 2015: “I don’t care about Mexico, honestly. I really don’t care about Mexico.”
Someday soon, however, Trump will rediscover his interest in Mexico, and relations will likely suffer again. But Mexico need not take his abuse lying down. As the buyer of more than a quarter trillion dollars in U.S. exports — the second-largest market in the world for U.S. goods — Mexico has some leverage if Trump tries to play rough with tariffs and trade.
And if Trump persists in sending a bill to Mexico City for his wall, Pena should seriously consider sending a bill in return to Washington to pay for the U.S. drug war.
High Cost to Mexico
For years now, Mexico has paid an extraordinarily high price in lives and social disruption for Washington’s insistence that North America’s drug problem be tackled south of the border, where the drugs are grown and transported, rather than primarily in clinics and halfway houses at home to treat the medical and psychological issues of users.
Mexican President Pena Nieto.
Successive administrations, starting with President Nixon, have demanded ever-tougher border controls, aerial-spraying programs, and DEA-backed anti-“cartel” operations in Mexico. All those efforts and sacrifices have been for naught. U.S. residents currently export up to $29 billion in cash to Mexican traffickers each year to buy marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and heroin.
Forcing that trade underground has taken a terrible toll on Mexico in terms of violence, corruption and social upheaval. Since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón ordered his military to join the “war” on drug traffickers, Mexico has lost about 200,000 lives and 30,000 more have disappeared, dwarfing the civilian death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq over that period.
The majority of those killed and disappeared were victims of criminal organizations, but human rights organizations also report soaring rates of human rights violations, including torture and killing, committed by security forces.
The 2016 Global Peace Index, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, estimates the total cost of violence in Mexico at $273 billion, or 14 percent of GDP, with no end in sight. Direct fiscal costs of fighting the war on crime were about $32 billion in 2015 alone. Yet the United States has contributed only about $2.5 billion since fiscal 2008 to Mexico’s drug war, under the so-called “Merida Initiative.”
Mexico’s pain shows no signs of easing. The New York Times reported in December that Mexico suffered more than 17,000 homicides in the first 10 months of last year, the highest total since 2012.
“The relapse in security has unnerved Mexico and led many to wonder whether the country is on the brink of a bloody, all-out war between criminal groups,” it said.
Time for an Alternative
In his last phone call with Mexican President Pena, Trump reportedly complained, “You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have to be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out.”
The Pacific Ocean at the U.S.-Mexico border from the Mexican side in 2006. (Wikipedia)
According to one disputed account, Trump threatened to send U.S. troops south of the border if Mexico doesn’t do more to stop the drug problem.
Pena can continue to do Washington’s bidding, ensuring his political demise, or he can challenge Trump by asking why Mexico should fight North America’s drug war on its own soil and at its own expense. If he goes the latter route, he’ll have plenty of good company.
Former heads of state from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, along with other distinguished members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, have called for “normalization” of drugs — eliminating black markets and incentives for violence by legalizing individual possession and cultivation of drugs while instituting public health regulations. They note that such programs have succeeded admirably in Portugal and the Netherlands at reducing both the criminal and public health costs of drug abuse.
“The harms created through implementing punitive drug laws cannot be overstated when it comes to both their severity and scope,” the former heads of state assert in their 2016 report, “Advancing Drug Policy Reform.”
“Thus, we need new approaches that uphold the principles of human dignity, the right to privacy and the rule of law, and recognize that people will always use drugs. In order to uphold these principles all penalties — both criminal and civil — must be abolished for the possession of drugs for personal use.”
Change in Attitudes
Support for decriminalization is growing in Mexico, where the Supreme Court in 2015 approved growing and smoking marijuana for personal use. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox now advocates legalizing all drugs over a transition period of up to a decade.
A marijuana plant.
Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister, recently opined, “Mexico should take advantage of California’s decision to legalize recreational marijuana. Regardless of Mr. Trump’s victory, the approval of the proposition in the United States’ most populous state makes Mexico’s war on drugs ridiculous. What is the purpose of sending Mexican soldiers to burn fields, search trucks and look for narco-tunnels if, once our marijuana makes it into California, it can be sold at the local 7-Eleven?”
Critics rightly point out that what works in the Netherlands won’t necessarily solve Mexico’s problems. Its powerful drug gangs have diversified into a host of other violent criminal enterprises. They control territory, intimidate or corrupt law enforcement, and kill with impunity.
Legalizing drug sales won’t end their criminal ways, but it could erode their profits and let police focus on universally despised crimes with direct victims — murder, kidnapping, extortion and the like.
As Mexican journalist José Luis Pardo Veiras remarked last year, “Decriminalizing drug use will not fix a deeply rooted problem in this country, but it will allow Mexicans to differentiate between drugs and the war on drugs, between drug users and drug traffickers. This is the first step in acknowledging that a different approach is possible.”
As for Trump, let him build his wall and see if that keeps out all the drugs. If not, maybe by then Mexico will be able to offer some useful advice on how to fight the drug problem not with guns, but with more enlightened policies.
Jonathan Marshall is author of many recent articles on arms issues, including “How World War III Could Start,” “NATO’s ProvocativeAnti-Russian Moves,” “Escalations in a New Cold War,” “Ticking Closer to Midnight,” and “Turkey’s Nukes: A Sum of All Fears.”
The war on drugs is just as bad as all the other wars the USA insists on continuing. Unless the drugs are causing danger to others eg on the roads, why make such a big deal about them, when as described graphically above, legal drugs have a vastly more harmful effect than illicit substances. When a person is arrested every 25 seconds in the USA (so I have been told) just for possession of marijuana,there is a tremendous waste of human lives and resources in pursuing this mad attack on the population.
If the Mexican government wants to end the drug war simply legalize coca and opium from poppy flowers. A fully legal recreational drug market for growing, consuming and selling recreational drugs. The Mexican government will not because they are scum like the US government who oppress people, animals and destroy earth with no regard.
. The 2 greatest lies told in the drug war are that people cannot control their consumption of processed plants and 2. that the government can ever stop people from wanting to use recreational drugs.
When you have such boneheaded intransigence on the part of U.S. politicians on scaling back the drug war, and it’s an intransigence literally flaunted in the faces of world leaders who see the common sense in approaches like Portugal and the Netherlands, then you know there are other, more hidden and likely sinister motives at play in the U.S. policy making ranks… more than “we just don’t agree…”. There is an agenda for control operating in this country that has NOTHING to do with its so-called leaders caring about the welfare of its citizens. These are monsters ruling us. And now a babbling idiot monster-enabler has been installed as president. Way to go America…
“What’s behind the Great Wall of America? Trump’s false advertising routine for a Mexican border wall provides an apt excuse for lucrative militarisation schemes” by Belen Fernandez – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/02/whats-great-wall-america-170208080147744.html
Fortunately, as you may have seen, Bill, Trump’s billionaire builder friend has refused to participate and thinks the wall is “idiotic” (like most of Trump’s foolish ideas) and explains why.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-31/miami-billionaire-perez-rejects-his-friend-trump-s-wall-overture
Hmmmmmm……
I had wondered at first if Trump was just trying to play to his base.
Now I’m not so sure…
I read the link and was horrified at the gross and vicious comments posted after her article. I have read her books and articles and really appreciate her perception and humor, but obvious some Al Jazeera readers do not.
FYI: Drugs Re: Big Business!!!
A brief history of the industrial/manufacture of drug industry – vis a vis the military industrial complex
— as conjoined with Kissinger’s 1970’s NSSM.
::
Thus we find that the United States still maintains an overwhelming lead in the production and sale of drugs.
Eleven of the eighteen leading firms are located in the United States; three in Switzerland; two in Germany; and two in the United Kingdom. Nutritionist T. J. Frye notes that the Drug Trust in the United States is controlled by the Rockefeller group in a cartel relationship with I. G. Farben of Germany.
In fact, I. G. Farben was the largest chemical concern in Germany during the 1930s, when it engaged in an active cartel agreement with Standard Oil of New Jersey.
The Allied Military Government split it up into three companies after World War II, as part of the “anti-cartel” goals of that period, which was not unlike the famed splitting up of Standard Oil itself by court order, while the Rockefellers maintained controlling interest in each of the new companies. In Germany, General William Draper, of Dillon Read investment bankers, unveiled the new decree from his office in the I. G. Farben building.
Henceforth, I. G. Farben would exist no more; instead, three companies would emerge—Bayer, of Leverkusen; BASF at Ludwigshafen; and Hoescht, near Frankfort. Each of the three spawns is now larger than the old I. G. Farben; only ICI of England is larger. These firms export more than half of their product. BASF is represented in the United States by Shearman and Sterling, the Rockefeller law firm of which William Rockefeller is a partner.
The world’s No. 1 drug firm, Merck, began as an apothecary shop in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1668. Its president, John J. Horan, is a partner of J. P. Morgan Company, and the Morgan Guaranty Trust. He attended a Bilderberger meeting in Rye, New York, May 10-12, 1985. In 1953, Merck absorbed another large drug firm, Sharp & Dohme. At that time, Oscar Ewing, the central figure in the government fluoridation promotion for the Aluminum Trust, was secretary of the Merck firm, his office then being at One Wall Street, New York.
Directors of Merck include John T. Connor, who began his business career with Cravath, Swaine and Moore, the law firm for Kuhn, Loeb Company; Connor then joined the Office of Naval Research, became Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy 1945-47, became president of Merck, then president of Allied Stores from 1967-80, then chairman of Schroders, the London banking firm. Connor is also a director of a competing drug firm, Warner Lambert, director of the media conglomerate Capital Cities ABC, and director of Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank.
Each of the major drug firms in the United States has at least one director with close Rockefeller connections, or with a Rothschild bank. Another director of Merck is John K. McKinley, chief operating officer of Texaco; he is also a director of Manufacturers Hanover Bank, which Congressional records identify as a major Rothschild bank.
The history of the pharmaceutical drug business has always been a chronicle of fraud, of preying on the fears of the uneducated and the gullible and taking advantage of the universal fears of the illness and death.
Thus we find that the United States still maintains an overwhelming lead in the production and sale of drugs. In the United States, the sale of prescription drugs rose in 1987 by 12.5% to $27 billion.
Eleven of the eighteen leading firms are located in the United States; three in Switzerland; two in Germany; and two in the United Kingdom. Nutritionist T. J. Frye notes that the Drug Trust in the United States is controlled by the Rockefeller group in a cartel relationship with I. G. Farben of Germany.
In fact, I. G. Farben was the largest chemical concern in Germany during the 1930s, when it engaged in an active cartel agreement with Standard Oil of New Jersey.
The Allied Military Government split it up into three companies after World War II, as part of the “anti-cartel” goals of that period, which was not unlike the famed splitting up of Standard Oil itself by court order, while the Rockefellers maintained controlling interest in each of the new companies. In Germany, General William Draper, of Dillon Read investment bankers, unveiled the new decree from his office in the I. G. Farben building.
Henceforth, I. G. Farben would exist no more; instead, three companies would emerge—Bayer, of Leverkusen; BASF at Ludwigshafen; and Hoescht, near Frankfort. Each of the three spawns is now larger than the old I. G. Farben; only ICI of England is larger. These firms export more than half of their product. BASF is represented in the United States by Shearman and Sterling, the Rockefeller law firm of which William Rockefeller is a partner.
The world’s No. 1 drug firm, Merck, began as an apothecary shop in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1668. Its president, John J. Horan, is a partner of J. P. Morgan Company, and the Morgan Guaranty Trust. He attended a Bilderberger meeting in Rye, New York, May 10-12, 1985. In 1953, Merck absorbed another large drug firm, Sharp & Dohme. At that time, Oscar Ewing, the central figure in the government fluoridation promotion for the Aluminum Trust, was secretary of the Merck firm, his office then being at One Wall Street, New York.
Directors of Merck include John T. Connor, who began his business career with Cravath, Swaine and Moore, the law firm for Kuhn, Loeb Company; Connor then joined the Office of Naval Research, became Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy 1945-47, became president of Merck, then president of Allied Stores from 1967-80, then chairman of Schroders, the London banking firm. Connor is also a director of a competing drug firm, Warner Lambert, director of the media conglomerate Capital Cities ABC, and director of Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank.
Each of the major drug firms in the United States has at least one director with close Rockefeller connections, or with a Rothschild bank. Another director of Merck is John K. McKinley, chief operating officer of Texaco; he is also a director of Manufacturers Hanover Bank, which Congressional records identify as a major Rothschild bank.
The history of the pharmaceutical drug business has always been a chronicle of fraud, of preying on the fears of the uneducated and the gullible and taking advantage of the universal fears of the illness and death.
Thus we find that the United States still maintains an overwhelming lead in the production and sale of drugs. In the United States, the sale of prescription drugs rose in 1987 by 12.5% to $27 billion.
Eleven of the eighteen leading firms are located in the United States; three in Switzerland; two in Germany; and two in the United Kingdom. Nutritionist T. J. Frye notes that the Drug Trust in the United States is controlled by the Rockefeller group in a cartel relationship with I. G. Farben of Germany.
In fact, I. G. Farben was the largest chemical concern in Germany during the 1930s, when it engaged in an active cartel agreement with Standard Oil of New Jersey.
The Allied Military Government split it up into three companies after World War II, as part of the “anti-cartel” goals of that period, which was not unlike the famed splitting up of Standard Oil itself by court order, while the Rockefellers maintained controlling interest in each of the new companies. In Germany, General William Draper, of Dillon Read investment bankers, unveiled the new decree from his office in the I. G. Farben building.
Henceforth, I. G. Farben would exist no more; instead, three companies would emerge—Bayer, of Leverkusen; BASF at Ludwigshafen; and Hoescht, near Frankfort. Each of the three spawns is now larger than the old I. G. Farben; only ICI of England is larger. These firms export more than half of their product. BASF is represented in the United States by Shearman and Sterling, the Rockefeller law firm of which William Rockefeller is a partner.
The world’s No. 1 drug firm, Merck, began as an apothecary shop in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1668. Its president, John J. Horan, is a partner of J. P. Morgan Company, and the Morgan Guaranty Trust. He attended a Bilderberger meeting in Rye, New York, May 10-12, 1985. In 1953, Merck absorbed another large drug firm, Sharp & Dohme. At that time, Oscar Ewing, the central figure in the government fluoridation promotion for the Aluminum Trust, was secretary of the Merck firm, his office then being at One Wall Street, New York.
Directors of Merck include John T. Connor, who began his business career with Cravath, Swaine and Moore, the law firm for Kuhn, Loeb Company; Connor then joined the Office of Naval Research, became Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy 1945-47, became president of Merck, then president of Allied Stores from 1967-80, then chairman of Schroders, the London banking firm. Connor is also a director of a competing drug firm, Warner Lambert, director of the media conglomerate Capital Cities ABC, and director of Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank.
Each of the major drug firms in the United States has at least one director with close Rockefeller connections, or with a Rothschild bank. Another director of Merck is John K. McKinley, chief operating officer of Texaco; he is also a director of Manufacturers Hanover Bank, which Congressional records identify as a major Rothschild bank.
.
There is an education in those posts J’hon Doe II. I can’t thank you enough. I’ll save what you’ve reported and look further. Most appreciated, thanks.
There is quite a good entry about I.G. Farben at this link…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben
Thank you J’hon Doe II and Bob Van Noy.
Wow, a fascinating and horrifying history.
According to the wiki article, the breakup of the company after the war was apparently back into some of the companies that merged together to originally create it including Bayer and BASF.
I wonder if the culture of a company like say, Monsanto, continues over the whole life of that company….
And here’s a terrible irony from the wiki link:
“I. G. Farben had bought the patent for the pesticide Zyklon B, which had been invented by the Nobel Prize-winning Jewish German chemist Fritz Haber’s research group at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Elektrochemistry in the 1920s, and which was originally used as an insecticide, especially as a fumigant in grain stores. IG Farben licensed the pesticide to various companies, including the American Cyanamid Company for use, for example, in de-lousing incoming Mexican immigrants in the 1930s, and to the German company Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung), founded by Fritz Haber, and whose products were used in Holocaust gas chambers. IG Farben owned 42.2 % of the shares of Degesch and was represented in its supervisory board. Pesticides similar to Zyklon B remain in production by other companies, and are used e.g. as insecticides.”
It seems that any invention that can do harm will be used eventually in a way that may horrify the inventor himself/herself.
We are seriously lacking oversight within the greater scientific community over the pursuit of “inventions” whose unintended consequences may horrify the inventor.
Flame retardants are endocrine disrupters and banned in Sweden. That’s why people should buy their grandchildren 100% cotton pajamas which are not doused with flame retardants.
Bovine growth hormones injected into factory farmed animals may have adverse effects on people who eat them not to mention the stress they place on the animals.
We don’t consider unintended consequences when there’s a buck to be made.
And the oversight in Congress is compromised.
This kinda stuff seems overwhelming.
The Union of Concerned Scientists tries and they represent the type of thinking that should have a say.
I haven’t seen it but John Adams opera “Dr. Atomic” about Oppenheimer’s work on the bomb, according to a recent talk by the composer, mentions that he believes Oppenheimer eventually came to regret the invention.
Drug Peddling —
::
The Sacklers’ OxyContin score came long after the family initially got into the pharmaceutical business. Brothers Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler — >>>>each practicing psychiatrists<<<< — bought a small, struggling drug manufacturer in New York City in 1952, which would eventually become Purdue Pharma. The brothers initially sold small-time products like laxative and earwax remover.
Arthur, simultaneously, was a standout <<in the field of medical advertising.<> — invented in World War I-era Germany — <<
and installed a timed-release mechanism, which promised to stymie abuse by spreading the drug’s effects over half-day period.
This enabled them to market it beyond the traditional target audience for powerful opioids — cancer patients — and not long after OxyContin’s launch in 1995, primary-care doctors were prescribing it for an array of painful symptoms. Sales hit $1.5 billion by 2002.
(AP Photo/Toby Talbot)
But the drug wasn’t as abuse-resistant as it claimed. Someone looking for a fix could just crush the pills to break the time-release mechanism, then snort the powder for a heroin-like high. Addiction, overdoses and accidental deaths followed, and Purdue Pharma found itself facing charges that it had misbranded OxyContin as far less risky than it was. In 2007, Purdue paid $635 million in fines after pleading guilty to false marketing charges by the Department of Justice. (Sackler family members were never charged.)
THE OXY CONTIN KLAN: The 14 Billion$$ Newcomer to Forbes List of Richest U.S. Families
(God Bless America)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2015/07/01/the-oxycontin-clan-the-14-billion-newcomer-to-forbes-2015-list-of-richest-u-s-families/#36eb40c2c0e2
US “war on drugs” and the Giant US Pharmaceutical Industry $$$$$$
http://www.adn.com/nation-world/2016/12/26/oxycontins-global-drive-were-only-just-getting-started/
Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost revenue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma.
So the company’s owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the painkiller that set off the U.S. opioid crisis into medicine cabinets around the world.
A network of international companies owned by the family is moving rapidly into Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other regions, and pushing for broad use of painkillers in places ill-prepared to deal with opioid abuse and addiction.
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2016/12/26/oxycontins-global-drive-were-only-just-getting-started/
[Key officials switch sides from DEA to pharmaceutical industry]
In the global drive, the companies, known as Mundipharma, are using some of the controversial marketing practices that made OxyContin a pharmaceutical blockbuster in the U.S.
In Brazil, China and elsewhere, the companies are running training seminars at which doctors are urged to overcome “opiophobia” and prescribe painkillers. They are sponsoring public campaigns that encourage people to seek medical treatment for chronic pain. They are even offering patient discounts to make prescription opioids more affordable.
With all due respect to the article, Trump and the “wall” saber rattling is a bargaining chip for future dealings with Mexico’s oil industry….as is most of Trumps present dealing world wide…….illegal drugs equal big profits for lots of “secret ops”….good luck with trying to take those funds away……..
Great piece, Jonathan Marshall.
thank you!
Successive administrations, starting with President Nixon, have demanded ever-tougher border controls, aerial-spraying programs, and DEA-backed anti-“cartel” operations in Mexico.
Using a meat cleaver when a scalpel is called for is a frequent American “solution” that Trump seems prone to follow. As for his wall, he would do well to consider that previous “walls” in history – China’s Great Wall, France’s Maginot Line, and Soviet Russia’s iron curtain from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, etc. – didn’t all work out as advertised.
Unfortunately Israel’s wall seems to be working just fine, and it can build it wherever it wants, even if this is “not helpful” to peace.
I remember well back then when Richard Nixon first declared America’s War on Drugs. Like many other things the critics of Nixon’s new war, were shouted down as being nothing more than ‘potheads’, and were told to go shut up and sit in the corner. As usual America took to the way of the right-wing, who love using brute force to solving anything of what ‘they’ think ills America. These characters who advocate using extreme violence to fix what’s broken are the same people who for over the last fifty years (& even more than that) have been getting their way almost on everything, no matter what. Oh yeah, the left (if there is a left in America) won some battles here and there along the way, such as granting acceptance of gay rights to the gay community, but all in all there is much more evidence to be found where the true left in America wasn’t ever listened to, let alone taken seriously.
Lastly, when will us Americans learn to quit bossing other countries around?
Well said. As for the last, I fear it will be only when we all see that big mushroom over DC or if Iran takes out Israel. I kinda prefer the last option. We’ve never really had a bloody nose and I’m afraid that is what it will take.
I hear you zman, my hope is our catastrophic event will be none to bloody, and for the most part be something of a tradegy we all will be able to contend with….but as far as catastrophic events goes, who in the hell knows? They never listen to us.
Soundtrack to my comment here is Michael Jackson’s ‘They Don’t Really Care About US’.
i think trump is dumb mexico will not be paying the wall and they have there own rules! 10,000 percent and billion of americans disagree of building a wall in mexico