Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Reagan's George Shultz on the Drug War

The Wall Street Journal's Mary Anastasia O'Grady has an interesting twist on former Secretary of State George Shultz's take on Mexican violence related to drug wars and interdiction.

Read it all here.

Some excerpts:

"It's gotten to the point that . . . you've got to be worried about what's happening to Mexico, and you've got to realize that the money that's financing all that comes from the United States in terms of the profits from the illegal drugs. It's not healthy for us, let alone Mexico, to have this violence taking place."

But, he says, we still have not created the "political space" necessary to raise the issue in public. "Right now if you are in politics you can't discuss the problem. It's just poison. The result is that we have this giant problem that is tearing Mexico apart . . . and we have plenty of problems here too and we're really not having a debate about it."

I asked Mr. Shultz if he thinks a more sensible approach might come from the states. He says "people can express themselves a little better at the state level." And, with respect to some liberalization of the drug-possession laws at the state level, "I regard these developments as a distinctive statement by people that the present system is not working very well and they want to change it."
at

1 comment:

  1. Bill FlemingOctober 14, 2009 at 10:53 AM

    Sanity? Do I detect a small breeze of sanity wafting off of this post? How pleasant.

    ReplyDelete

Compose a username. We will delete comments posted under the name, "Anonymous." It's tedious and boring to view comments posted under "Anonymous."

If you don't want to register with Blogger, that's fine; just click the little circle in front of "Name/URL," then write something in the box that appears. Even your actual name if you like it.

You'll also have to write in the letters/numbers that appear in the image box to prove you are human. Thanks for humoring us. The comments will be much more entertaining with a variety of user handles.

If you have trouble reading the words you have to type in before you publish comments, click the recycle button until something comes up that you can read.