Sorry Lilliput but before you worry about police and general corruption can I just remind you of the crippling levels of poverty and unemployment in South Africa, they are the main reasons for any acts of crime.

That’s a pretty good description of bogof Stella bought from Tesco

True, but it can make things a lot lot worse than they need be:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/08/05/jorge-castaneda/a-us-war-with-mexican-consequences/

There is enough info to back up drug legalisation without needing to inflame readers by writing about police gang rapes!

On the contrary, I think it’s entirely appropriate to point out the kinds of human rights abuses the US-funded Mexican military has committed whilst persuing a policy which doesn’t work. It’s not just that this $1,4bn is going to be wasted, but it’s also going to a security services with a particularly nasty track record. Were I an American, I’d be pretty concerned about who this money was going to and how they conduct themselves. The ‘War on Drugs’ should be contested on financial grounds, grounds of massively expanding the state & police’s power over its citizens, and on moral grounds.

Additionally, I don’t see how anyone can talk about corruption in Mexico without linking it to the drugs trade. Corruption is overwhelmingly caused by powerful drugs cartels either bribing or threatening state/local officials in order to protect their assets & interests, so it you want to clean up the state, you’ll only be able to do that by ending prohibition.

Now, where I would agree with you, Peter & Mike is that there is a case for reform & accountability of the Mexican miltary irrespective of whether there was a drugs problem in that country. But since that reform is a long way from coming, I don’t think the US should be giving them any military aid.

[Thanks for the comments, everyone]

There is enough info to back up drug legalisation without needing to inflame readers by writing about police gang rapes!

Indeed – I don’t even see why you need to invoke drugs to explain incidents like this in Mexico. You hardly need drug laws to guarantee disgusting behaviour by the authorities of one of the world’s most notoriously corrupt countries.

“There is evidence that the War on Drugs leads to raped teenagers”

I’m sorry, what is the evidence?

Probably so far in agreement with the article that they don’t feel the need to comment on it.

It is a fine piece, Neil.

Brilliant. I was going to launch into a tirade, but that sentence is so much better.

If drugs were legalised, the pushers would continue in business just as before, since people would prefer their (tax-free) prices to those of legal suppliers. And if the pushers carry on as before, so will the law enforcement and,according to you, the rapes.

The end of the prohibition of alcohol in the USA led to the values of the bootleggers, i.e. racketeering, pervading large swathes of the US economy for the next generation.

Eh? Prohibition ended in 1933; the next 30 years of US history is pretty much universally rated as the least crooked, best-for-the-working-man, most honest time the country has ever had. *Then* Nixon, Reagan, deregulation, Wall Street, the 1980s, etc.

Perhaps the legalisation of drugs would lead to more raped teenagers, not fewer. I have no idea, and neither has Neil Robertson.

There is evidence that the War on Drugs leads to raped teenagers. There is no evidence that the legalisation of drugs would. Yes, it’s possible that it might, but in the absence of evidence that’s like saying ‘if we stop sacrificing virgins then the sun won’t rise in the morning’.

Actually, I don’t see how you get from an out-of-control militia raping a teenager to the legalisation of drugs.

The end of the prohibition of alcohol in the USA led to the values of the bootleggers, i.e. racketeering, pervading large swathes of the US economy for the next generation.

Perhaps the legalisation of drugs would lead to more raped teenagers, not fewer. I have no idea, and neither has Neil Robertson.