We are here to express our unity with, and our sympathy and commitment to the people of Ciudad Juárez. We support them as they seek to free themselves from the terror that has plagued their city for the last several years. We who live north of the Rio Grande in El Paso and Las Cruces and other communities in the United States say to the people of Juárez: “Nosotros tambien somos juarenses.” (“We too are juarenses.”) We stand with you. Your fight is our fight. We recognize our role in creating the human catastrophe in your city and join you as you seek to restore order and bring life back to normal.That is the essence of our DECLARATION IN SUPPORT OF THE EFFORTS OF CIUDAD JUÁREZ TO REDUCE THE VIOLENCE RELATED TO DRUG TRAFFICKING that appeared in the El Paso, Inc., on May 16, 2010.
I wish to thank the members of the committee with whom I worked to put together that DECLARATION: UTEP Professor Dr. Kathy Staudt and the very courageous El Paso City Council Representatives Beto O’Rourke, Susie Byrd, and Steve Ortega. I also want to thank the other members of the Ciudad Juárez Support Network and all the people who signed the DECLARATION. The list of names includes many leaders in our community, including another member of the El Paso City Council, Ann Morgan Lilly, State Representative Marissa Márquez, and County Commissioner Verónica Escobar.
We have many more folks who have endorsed the DECLARATION, but because of the deadline to get it published in the newspaper, we could not include them all at this time. We will keep adding names as they come in and I am sure the list of endorsers will grow by leaps and bounds.
We want to state our conviction emphatically that the only way to bring down the violence significantly in Juárez is by legalizing drugs in the United States, especially marijuana, whose sale, mostly in our country, provides 50 to 70 percent of the revenues received by the Mexican cartels.
The evidence is now overwhelming that the U.S. War on Drugs has not achieved its goals, but rather has been extremely costly financially and has very harmful to our society in many ways. The War on Drugs has been a complete failure in reducing consumption of drugs among Americans. And let’s be very clear about this: the zero tolerance policy and emphasis on enforcement in the United States bear most of the responsibility for the horrible violence that has turned Juárez into the deadliest city in the world and has raised the possibility that Mexico could become a failed state.
Those who are not convinced that this is the honest truth need to do more homework and at the same time connect dots that are bigger than elephants. Some critical thinking is required here, although not that much, because the information is readily available and this is not that difficult to figure out.
Those who think they have the moral high ground by supporting drug prohibition are not giving proper attention to the disastrous consequences of that tragically misguided policy. The cure has been much more deadly than the disease itself. The price of drug prohibition—turning cities like Juárez into killing fields of massive proportions—is totally unacceptable and morally repugnant.
The moral high ground is really with those who have thoughtfully and honestly analyzed the drug problem, who have informed themselves well, who have come to understand the calamitous outcomes of rigid and unjust drug policies, and who realize that these policies are doomed to failure. The fundamental problem with the War on Drugs is that it seeks to transform an unchangeable aspect of human nature and attempts to change the unchangeable law of supply and demand. You stand on higher moral ground when you work to end the violence than when you defend a failed policy that brings massive destruction and suffering to your neighbors.
The primary concern of the supporters of the DECLARATION is eliminating the drug trade-fomented climate of lawlessness in Juárez, ending the massacres, ending the femicides, ending the kidnappings, ending the extortions, ending the arsons, and stopping the precipitous decline of a beautiful and proud city.
We have a crisis here, and we need more people to join us in demanding change from Washington. We need Congressman Silvestre Reyes to take some leadership on this issue. This is a moral imperative. This is a matter of conscience. Our neighbors are in deep trouble and we know why. We must help them.
We especially need more pillars of the community to step forward and openly express their opposition to current drug policies. We need corporate CEO’s, business people, attorneys, judges, and religious leaders to take a stand with us. It does no good to agree with the DECLARATION and continue to stay in the closet. Your open support of the cause will encourage more people to join us and will speed up the process of diminishing the violence.
We also need some in the media to stop trivializing our call for drug reform by calling it an effort to “legalize pot.” The people who have signed the DECLARATION are not potheads or hippies. They are respectable, responsible, and moral leaders in the community.
I personally am not here to encourage the use of drugs. Just the opposite—I am against the use of drugs and desperately want to see a well funded, aggressive program to discourage our citizens, especially the youth, from using drugs. Using drugs is a bad choice. I have never used drugs myself. But I make no moral judgment regarding drug use.
We badly need a comprehensive government and societal crusade against the use of narcotics similar to what we have had since the 1960s regarding the use of tobacco. Our many anti-smoking campaigns over the decades have been extremely successful, bringing down adult smoking rates in the United States from over 50 percent half a century ago to less than 20 percent today.
I just want a sensible and workable policy regarding drugs that gets us back to 1933, when a previous generation of Americans came to understand the deadly consequences of liquor prohibition and overwhelmingly repealed the eighteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, which outlawed liquor beginning in 1920, had not succeeded in stopping Americans from drinking and instead had given rise to massive violation of the law, gang warfare, uncontrolled violence, widespread corruption, and disrespect for authority.
Let’s not ignore the lesson that liquor prohibition taught us. Let’s use reason, common sense, and pragmatism to find a way out of the horrible mess that drug prohibition has created. Let’s bring an end to the War on Drugs in favor of a system that makes drugs legal but strictly controls, regulates, and taxes their production, distribution, and sale. And let’s start with the most widely used drug out there, marijuana. That is what the anti-prohibitionists of the 1920s and 1930s would do. Surely we are as smart as they were. We need to follow their example.
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To sign onto the DECLARATION, go to: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/13/declaration-in-support-of-cuidad-juarez
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