Marijuana Legalization Is Already Making Mexican Drug Cartels Poorer

By German Lopez, Vox

31 December 15

e're still not sure of the full impact of marijuana legalization, in terms of pot use and abuse, in the states that have legalized. But a report from Deborah Bonello for the Los Angeles Times shows one way that legalization for recreational and medical purposes is working:

The loosening of marijuana laws across much of the United States has increased competition from growers north of the border, apparently enough to drive down prices paid to Mexican farmers. Small-scale growers here in the state of Sinaloa, one of the country's biggest production areas, said that over the last four years the amount they receive per kilogram has fallen from $100 to $30.

The price decline appears to have led to reduced marijuana production in Mexico and a drop in trafficking to the U.S., according to officials on both sides of the border and available data.

As Bonello reports, the drop in price — and competition from higher-quality US-made marijuana — is hitting drug cartels, too. So now they have to look to other opportunities, or look for ways to deal in high-quality cannabis, to make up for lost profits, or just accept the hit in their finances.

This was a predictable outcome of legalization, but still a big deal and welcome news. One of the major arguments for legal pot is that it will weaken drug cartels, cutting off a major source of revenue and inhibiting their ability to carry out violent acts — from mass murders to beheadings to extortion — around the world. And cannabis used to make up a significant chunk of cartels' drug export revenue: as much as 20 to 30 percent, according to previous estimates from the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness (2012) and the RAND Corporation (2010).

Will this be enough to completely eliminate drug cartels? Certainly not. These groups deal in far more than pot, including extortion and other drugs like cocaine and heroin.

Still, it will hurt. As the numbers above suggest, marijuana used to be a big source of drug cartels' revenue, and that's slowly but surely going away. It's still possible that legalization in America could produce downsides in the US, such as more cannabis abuse. But it's a potentially huge win for Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The big argument for drug legalization is reducing drug cartels' power around the world

What if I told you that the US could sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives to potentially save a few thousand lives in Canada and other developed nations? Would it seem like a good trade-off to you?

Most Americans, I'd guess, would not accept this trade-off. But that's what developed countries, including the US, essentially expect from Mexico and other developing countries embroiled in drug violence as a result of the war on drugs. In a 2014 paper, economists Daniel Mejia and Pascual Restrepo explained:

Suppose for a moment that all cocaine consumption in the US disappears and goes to Canada. Would the US authorities be willing to confront drug trafficking networks at the cost of seeing the homicide rate in cities such as Seattle go up from its current level of about five homicides per 100,000 individuals to a level close to 150 in order to prevent cocaine shipments from reaching Vancouver? If your answer to this question is 'perhaps not,' well… this is exactly what Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American countries have been doing over the last 20 years: implementing supply-reduction policies so that drugs don't reach consumer countries at the cost of very pronounced cycles of violence and political corruption, with the consequent losses of legitimacy of state institutions.

The way the drug war works is that developing nations, such as Colombia and Mexico, act as manufacturing and transshipment countries for drugs, while the US and other wealthy countries make up the great majority of demand for these illicit substances. So criminal groups will produce cocaine in Colombia and ship it to Mexico, and the drug is smuggled into the US from there.

It's not that Colombians or Mexicans don't use drugs, but demand in the US — where people are wealthier and can thus better afford an expensive drug habit — is much higher. This is obvious in national drug surveys: They show that about 1.5 percent of Mexicans ages 12 to 65 in 2011 used illicit drugs in the previous year, while about 8.7 percent of all Americans 12 and older in the previous month did in 2011. (The age and timespan differences are due to differing methodologies in national surveys, but they nonetheless show that way more Americans than Mexicans use drugs.)

In theory, the Mexican government and those in other developing nations should be able to stop drug violence within their borders, and crack down on drug trafficking groups to suppress crime just as well as the US and other developed nations have. The problem is Mexico and other developing countries don't have the incredibly powerful political, economic, and criminal justice institutions that developed nations have. So drug trafficking organizations can exploit these weaknesses, build up huge operations, and effectively wage war within developing countries.

What's worse, the drug war makes it harder for developing countries to build up these institutions. For one, the threat of violence is generally destructive and makes it tough for any of these countries to see the kind of meaningful economic growth that is necessary to build up any institutions. But the drug war also gives drug trafficking groups enormous profits — through the black market of prohibited drugs — allowing them to bribe, extort, blackmail, and finance a war against any government entity that poses a threat.

Developed countries have tried to alleviate all of these issues by helping developing countries finance their own war on drugs, such as the US-funded Merida Initiative for Mexico. But these measures either fail to suppress violence — as shown by Mexico's war on drugs, in which as many as 80,000 people have died — or shift violence to other countries that aren't getting as much support, as happened when drug trafficking operations moved from Colombia to Central America after the US government helped Colombia crack down on drugs in the 1990s and 2000s.

The final result: a never-ending cycle of a violent trade-off that most Americans would consider unacceptable within our own borders. Legalizing pot — and perhaps other drugs — might help cut into that cycle, as the Los Angeles Times report shows.

How the Polluter-Backed National Black Chamber Misleads Minorities

By Martin Luther King III, The Washington Post

31 December 15

or months now, the National Black Chamber of Commerce has been warning communities of color that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan will cause job losses and generate higher energy bills.

In fact, the opposite is true.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants will create clean- energy jobs, improve public health, bring greater reliability to our electric power grid, bolster our national security, demonstrate the United States’ resolve to combat climate change and maybe even reduce our utility bills.

By limiting the emission of carbon dioxide, the Clean Power Plan also will slow a main driver of extreme weather, which has inflicted widespread economic damage and human misery, including death.

That’s what the National Black Chamber of Commerce neglects to mention.

Why? As it turns out, the money behind the chamber’s campaign comes from polluters who stand to gain if the Clean Power Plan is blocked. According to The Post, the chamber received more than $800,000 over the past decade from ExxonMobil, and among the sponsors of the group’s national conference in August were other companies that oppose strong action to combat climate change.

At the heart of the chamber’s case is a now-discredited 2014 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that purported to analyze the then-proposed Clean Power Plan — not the actual plan the EPA advanced this summer.

That report has been widely debunked by fact checkers, including PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent media analysis organization, and The Post’s Fact Checker, which gave the Chamber of Commerce’s “ report’’ its worst rating for veracity: four Pinocchios.

Here’s what the Clean Power Plan will actually deliver. In addition to cutting carbon pollution nationwide by 32 percent from 2005 levels in 15?years, it will prevent up to 3,600 premature deaths and 90,000 asthma attacks in children, according to the Obama administration.

The chamber also conveniently leaves out why we must tackle climate change.

Extreme weather is on the rise and costing us dearly. Americans paid about $100 billion in 2012 alone just to clean up after extreme weather, including powerful storms, massive fires, severe floods and powerful storms.

Look at who suffered first and suffered the most after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.

It was the communities — largely African American — in low-lying areas that got hit worst when the levees broke.

Fourteen of the 15 hottest years since record-keeping began in the 1800s have occurred since 2000, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization. And 2015 is on course to set an all-time heat record. We all know who suffers the most during extreme waves — folks who can’t afford air conditioning in their homes.

And consider who lives closest to coal-fired power plants and is most exposed to their pollution; 39 percent of the 6 million Americans who live within 30 miles of a power plant are people of color, according to the NAACP.

No wonder polls indicate that most African Americans actually support provisions of the Clean Power Plan. Many people of color live on the front lines of environmental hazard and harm. According to a Nov. 4 poll by Green for All and the Natural Resources Defense Council, 77 percent of African Americans recognize that their community suffers a greater burden from air pollution and climate change than the population at large.

That explains why 83 percent support limiting power plant carbon pollution under the EPA plan, according to the joint poll.

The national survey also found that 66 percent believe the Clean Power Plan will foster job creation.

African Americans are not going to be fooled by any group supported by industrial polluters. They know climate change is real and that we have to do something about it. Only 3 percent believe concern about climate change is overblown.

African Americans and all people of color can benefit greatly by supporting the Clean Power Plan, which will help reduce the impacts of climate change and expand the use of clean, renewable energy from the wind and sun.

In so doing, we will join with Americans of all races in a vibrant coalition for environmental progress and justice — and secure a brighter, healthier and more prosperous future.