"Mexico's stark reminder of the cost of prohibition"

The Independent

Highlights:  "Even by the barbaric standards of Mexico's drug criminality, the discovery this week in the north-east of the country of a mass grave with 72 bodies – including 14 women – is shocking. It is also a reminder of the root cause of the violence that has killed an estimated 28,000 people since president Felipe Calderón declared domestic war on the drug cartels almost four years ago. The mayhem reflects above all one simple fact: that the United States, which shares Mexico's 2,000-mile long northern border, is the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs."

"The size of this clandestine market obviously cannot be calculated with precision. But the best guesses put it at $60bn or more per year and suggest that 70 per cent of the flow of illegal drugs into the US is controlled by Mexican cartels, which have long since supplanted their Colombian counterparts as the driving force in the region's drug business. Cocaine, heroin, cannabis or methamphetamine – whatever the US user's substance of preference, the overwhelming likelihood is that it will have transited though Mexico."

"If Americans lost their taste for drugs, the Mexican cartels would be out of business. That, however, will not happen; indeed the forbidden nature of drugs may make them more attractive. So why not legalise them? The argument has been powerfully made before and will be so again, but probably to no avail. Sadly the barbaric drug wars will continue."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-mexicos-stark-reminder-of-the-cost-of-prohibition-2061932.html