The ripples of the Mexican drug wars crossing into the US are becoming more like waves in Washington. Concern is mounting. The War on Drugs is seemingly dancing its swan song as the failed policy comes home to roost.
More after the bump.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported today:
An estimated 6,290 drug-related murders occurred in Mexico last year, six times the standard definition of a civil war, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a leading scholar on the issue at the Brookings Institution.
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, described beheadings of Mexican mayors and police chiefs and said Mexican drug gangs have infiltrated the cannabis fields on both public and private lands in Northern California. He said Mexican villagers are kidnapped and smuggled into the northern coastal forests to grow pot, leaving environmental wreckage in their wake.
Meanwhile, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism, held hearings today on the impact of the Mexican drug wars on US soil. The Hill's Michael O'Brien blogged about an interview prior to the hearing in which Sanchez stated:
"Well, certainly, I have seen in my own state of California people over and over voting a big majority the whole issue of marijuana and possession of that," Sanchez said this morning on CNN. "So maybe it would be a good pilot program to see how that regulation of marijuana might happen in California since the populous, the majority of Californians believe maybe that's should happen."
Taking a page from a number of those who favor the reform of pot laws, Sanchez likened the issue to the prohibition of alcohol in the early 20th century.
"Well, certainly there is one drug — it's called alcohol — that we prohibited in the United States and had such a problem with as far as underground economy and cartels of that sort that we ended up actually regulating it and taxing it," she said. "And so there has always been this thought that maybe if we do that with drugs, it would lower the profits in it and make some of this go away."
Less than a month ago, CA State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced legislation to legalize cannabis. Of course, even if California legalizes cannabis, the feds have shown mightily in the past they have no problem asserting the federal prohibition of all forms of cannabis, medicinal, industrial or otherwise.
One of the beauties of federalism, however, is the states are the incubators. Since 1996, qualified Californians have continued to assert their state right to medical cannabis in defiance of the feds. After 13 years, a state regulated medical cannabis industry continues to evolve, providing the state with $ millions.
Now, today, as Washington looks to rein in the impact of Mexico's drug wars in the homeland, indications are that it will look west to California to again take the lead to help stop the cannabis wars.