But I am.
I've commented before on why I support legalization/decriminalization of marijuana: it's stupid to jail people who use, buy or grow it, especially when many real, mean criminals get shorter sentences because we haven't got jail space.
I can see the seeds of wisdom in others' arguments, that taxed weed could increase revenues during Great Depression II the way booze did after the 18th Amendment was repealed, that, whatever your metrics, cannabis use is more medically benign than legal dope like cigarettes and liquor.
But lately I've heard an argument so persuasive it has made even me a Legalize It diarist. The criminalization of the possession and cultivation of marijuana is part of a grave and urgent threat to America's national security.
Let's go south of the border.
By now, anyone paying attention to Mexico has heard about the Joint Forces Command report released Nov. 25, warning that the growing power of the country's drug cartels.
The danger the cartels pose to Mexican stability stems less from their wealth or firepower, which has turned once placid border cities like Juarez and Nuevo Laredo into free-fire zones, but their insidious corruption of the country's law enforcement, judiciary and politics.
Mexico may be, as the report describes in the direst of terms, on the verge of a "rapid and sudden collapse." The only other state granted the report's award of Country Least Likely to Succeed: Pakistan.
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."
Outgoing CIA chief Michael Hayden told reporters earlier this month that Mexico could rival Iran as a looming security concern to the Obama illustration, eclipsing even fractious Iraq.
While we tend to think of the Mexican drug business as predominately based on the transshipment of cocaine, marijuana (and, recently, methamphetamine) comprises a significant portion of the cartels' income stream. A March 2008 study by the Department of State cited Mexico as the largest supplier of imported marijuana in the U.S.
But the highest walls will not stop the cartels' influence on the weed trade in el Norte. The State report, along with studies by the Department of Justice and the Congressional Research Service, note the ramping-up of U.S. production on public lands by cartel-controlled operators. Such operations are expanding from their traditional grounds in California into the Pacific Northwest and Eastern U.S. While cocaine and meth offer high return-for-risk, marijuana continues to be, as one law enforcement source told me, "the cartels' bread and butter."
Legalizing marijuana would not end the power of the cartels, but it would quickly choke off a major source of their funding, slowing their ability to corrupt the legal apparatus of the Mexican government. And ameliorating a threat to America's security as great as Iran or Pakistan would certainly lighten the load on a new president already burdened by a second Great Depression and a government of his own riddled with the remnants of past corruption.
Living with the status quo is not an option. Because, if the Joint Forces report is to be believed, the status quo could well lead to a failed state just across a shallow river from our country.
If the Lou Dobbses of the world truly want to make our borders more secure, they should be in the vanguard of the legalization movement.
Update: A moment's googling to respond to a comment by soros yielded a stat I'd been hoping to find when writing this:
Marijuana is cartels' best moneymaker
Walters said the U.S. government is seeking additional resources to prosecute traffickers of marijuana, which now earns cartels about $8.5 billion or about 61 percent of their annual estimated income of $13.8 billion. Cocaine sales earn the cartels about $3.9 billion, and methamphetamine about $1 billion, he said.
"While the criminal organizations that are a threat to both of our countries make a lot of money off of heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine, the vast majority of their money to buy guns, bribe, corrupt and destroy lives is from marijuana," said Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Take with as much salt as you like, but I imagine the percentages aren't that far off.
sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
http://www.thestate.com/...
http://74.125.47.132/...
http://www.state.gov/...
http://www.usdoj.gov/...
http://www.chron.com/...