For Rosarito Beach, a 'surefire way' to ease troubles amid drug war?

Debate about safety, corruption, perceived racism and many other side topics filled the comment board in the days after I posted an item titled "Rosarito Beach begins issuing bilingual citations."

Some comments carried an angry tone and many had nothing to do with Rosarito Beach, a once-popular haven trying to survive a tourism scare caused by drug gangs involved in an unrelenting, murderous war among themselves.

At least one person stated that demand for drugs in the United States is fueling the narco war, and that most of the the high-powered weapons used by the gang enforcers come from the U.S.

True on both counts.

(Rosarito Beach, which is located just south of Tijuana and had until recently been immensely popular among surfers, fishermen and general Baja California travelers, seems merely a victim of its proximity to a main point of drug entry.)

At least one person commented that if the drugs -- mostly cocaine and marijuana -- were legalized, the cartels would be out of business and the violence would end. Plus, the drugs could be taxed and generate revenue.

Sadly, this is true. But never in our lifetimes will cocaine be legalized.

Interestingly, though, in a story that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 30, a veteran federal agent who for the past 30 years has worked for the U.S Border Patrol, Customs Service and Department of Homeland Security,  advocated the same thing.

Terry Nelson's exact words: "My years of experience as a federal agent tell me that legalizing and effectively regulating drugs will stop drug market crime and violence by putting major cartels out of business."

Arresting top traffickers, imposing harsh sentences on users and dealers, and extremely costly stepped-up efforts by law enforcement agencies has not worked. Drugs of all kinds remain easy to obtain. The cartels are very good at delivering product.

Nelson concluded, "If what we've been doing worked at all, we wouldn't be battling Mexican drug dealers in our own cities or anywhere else. There's one surefire way to bankrupt them, but when will our leaders talk about it?"

Maybe never. But others are talking about it -- right here on Outposts.

-- Pete Thomas

Photos: A surfer catches a wave in a photo provided by the Rosarito Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. In second photo, Mexican soldiers patrol the city's main drag in November. Credit: Don Bartletti/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[guity]

I could go for a carrot and stick approach -- legalize all the drugs, then set up extremely stiff penalties for any person who causes injury to another person while impaired by drugs, as well as stiff penalties for underage use and even stiffer penalties for any adult who aids and abets underage use. Sentences for these infractions would range from 20 years to life for adults.

[EW]

These incredibly dangerous drugs cannnot be legalized because more kooks would be getting high. The answer is to make the punishment so incredibly draconian that the idiots simply don't want to risk dealing.

[Tio Foncho]

You are going to have to decide which is worse: Mexicans killing each other over drug trade routes, or Americans frying their brains on those drugs. When opiates were legal in the 19th century and early 20th century, there were twice as many drug addicts as there are now. Who's going to pay for their care? One thing that nobody seems to consider is the social cost to the taxpayer to sustain a whole population of vegetative people for their entire lives.

And if you think legalizing something stops the illegal trade, think again. Prohibition ended in 1933, yet bootleg alcohol is still a multi-billion dollar business in the US. Why didn't that end when alcoholic beverages were made legal?

[RC]

Clinton was the first President publicly to admit smoking pot in his youth.

Bush the Younger was the first President publicly to reveal snorting coke in his youth.

Perhaps, we are simply on a 4-year lag here, and it is possible that both cocaine and cannabis will be legal in our lifetimes after all. But then again, I guess that depends on how old you are now!

[Steve Wimer]

Legalize drugs, with caveats and emptors. For example, if you have health problems due to drugs, you must pay for your healthcare, in cash, no insurance and no public assistance. Mandatory drug testing for jobs involving the public safety, no jobs for those who use drugs. Mandatory drug testing for entry to high school and/or college. Drug use? No entry. Drug use leads to crime? Mandatory drug tests as part of your probation.

[george bedula]

marijuana's effects usually lead to some sort of temporary incapacitation - use it, and you know you are high - different than liquor, when you'll swear you're not. gives you the munchies, makes you amorous in many cases, and sleepy in most.

the government has put this mild mood elevator at the top of its wanted list because
it activtes creative genes, makes individuals even more so, not likely to be soldiers,
cops, production workers, government clerks, respect authority, would be demagogues at any level, jaywalking rules or no walking on the grass signs.

cocaine, as chewed by the indians of south america, in small doses, lets them work thru the dental pain of brutally short lives lived with minimal, if any, dental care, full of responsibility to parents and children, God, neighbors, extended family, and domestic animals.

as abused internationally, in powdered or crack form, cocaine has a never ending threshold of intensity - the user always wants to increase the frequency
and the quantity of the dosage, desiring ever more passionate visons of power and grandeur in which the user is the central character, often leading to
violence and debauchery. it's image as the drug of choice by those who wish to
display sexua and/or organizational dominationr is unsurpassed.

it is necessary to eliminate the images of success this drug provides concurrent with any program that liberalizes its usage in any way. governments should make its abuse punishable by short term jail, not prison, time, but not to any
sentence that permits yard walking, weight lifting, television watching, and gang
activity. young and old, rich and poor, whoever is sentenced, should be empoyed in activities traditionally assigned to convict labor, ditch digging, road building, trash removal - all done while wearing leg irons and orange jumpsuits
displaying their crime in letters large enough for observers to read clearly and undercut the message of glamour and survival of the craziest promulgated in the popular media by the drug's proponents and opponents.
work, honest labor, is anathema to the cocaine abuser. they might very well change!

[smokey]

Legalize drugs.

A century from now the addictive personalities will be removed from society. They'll die before they reproduce. It'll be a tough 100 years but we can tax the hell out of them (drug users) to pay for the burials.

[Rich Monk]

I do not use drugs, and rarely drink but then that is just me. Humans as we well know will do anything for immediate pleasure and gratification regardless of any distructive outcome. Legalize drugs, create medical facilities from taxes collected on the sale of drugs to pay for these services. Prohibition is the best example. Sure there are plenty of alcoholics in the USA but they are not killing each other to buy alcohol, other than the DUI.
Around the World Hundreds of Billion of $$Dollars is wasted on Drug issues that could be used for something positive, and that is besides 10's of thousands in prison or executed.Take religion out of the equation and start using common sense!
Legalize Drugs!

[Soutoc]

The culture needs to be fixed. There is an acceptance of crime. The governement even encourages it. They have chosen blindess. Now the disease has spread uncontollably. War is the only cure. Too late now.

[Les Matheson]

While there's no such thing as a "victimless crime", drug use is a case where the primary victim is the user themselves, and collateral damage to others is not generally crippling. We need to get out of the absolutist mindset that something is all good or all bad -- those simplistic categories do not help us make good policy choices. We don't outlaw cigarettes or alcohol, because we recognize that the consequences of doing so outweigh the costs, and that the principle of personal responsibility justifies allowing people to do self-destructive things, within reason.

Drugs are in that category. We're unwisely waging a war on something that cannot possibly be defeated in this manner, and the prime beneficiaries are drug traffickers. The damage done by the solution exceeds the damage done by the problem.

[stephaniep]

The federal agent is hardly the first official to go on record about the general failure of the US war on drugs. In 1998 former Sec of State George Shultz, who served under "Just Say No" Ronald Reagan, took an ad out in the NY Times saying the same thing. Sadly, it seems all of these officials wait until the word "former" appears in their title before they find the courage to question the disaster that is the US drug policy.

[Mac]

Marijuana should be legalize! Give farmers a stimulus package and let them grow the it. Then just sit back and watch our economy stabilize and blossom. Not complicated at all.

[Louis G. Fazzi]

We should immediately legalize all drugs and take the $100 billlion or more drug business out of the shadows and put it and the income generated into the mainstream. We need to tax it the same as alcohol and tobacco and use the tax revenues to pay for treatment facilities and to educate the public about the dangers not only of drug use but also alcohol and tobacco use. If anyone then needs or wants alcohol or drug treatment it will be there and paid for by the taxes on the drugs etc. Currently society is required to pay for the damage caused by drug and alcohol use and for the police efforts to interdict drug offenders but there is no corresponding payment into the system by the users or drug suppliers. This will change once the drug cartels are put out of business and the big drug companies allowed to sell all drugs through approved pharmacies or suppliers. There are models from Europe we can learn from on how to do this effectively. It has been said that the revenues generated simply by the taxes on drugs which are now funneled into the underground economy would be sufficient to fix all our current fiscal woes. Combine that with the lesser burden on law enforcement nationwide and the very real effects of an intelligent approach to drug and alcohol use, and we will see how society moves beneficially into the new millenium.

[Windu]

America is essentially a socialist country, and will be even more now that capitalism has (only) started to show its devastating flaws. There is no way current entitlement programs can continue, so if you think the responsible among us are going to foot the bill for dopeheads too, you've got another thing coming. The only way legalization works is if the US Government is the one selling the drugs and collecting the revenue. That's not palatable but it sure wouldn't surprise me to see it proposed.

[nacho]

I don't know if legalizing Drugs will magically desolve the current situation, And i rather not be on I-5 or I-405 along with my kids with drug induced users. But ya know what? our society continues with illicit and prescribed drugs daily. In order
to receive a controlled substance in the U.S. a person will have to be 18 yrs.old and
be prescribed by medical Doctors. Hence the words controlled substance. Now the
question is will the U.S. lax the controlled substance laws? and limit controlled substances for adults who which can demonstrate non abusive indulgence.

Personally i don't use drugs and honestly i don't need them. For me coffee is awesome enough,but with that said i don't speak for the millions of drug users in the U.S. and seeing first hand innocent friends killed in Rosarito and petrified familys no where to turn and billions of dollars spent on so called drug wars. How large will the penal system grow in CA. before we realize resources can be better spent?

[B. A.]

Because of the highly addictive nature of some drugs legalization is a questionable idea. Though some might be tempted to think it will immediately erase all the problems, this is only wishful thinking at best. Personal experience with a neighbor whose parents let him use - he was legal in his own world and subsidized by his mom - still brought forth the fact that he broke into ours and everyones homes in the area to feed his ever growing ravenous addiction. The idea of "legalize" and all the problems go away simply doesn't look at the set of complexities that will come with that scenario itself. These cartels who are willing to kill, behead and massacre at the drop of a hat are not going give away their hard fought dominance in this trade in any easy way legalized or not. Having traveled extensively and lived abroad where foreign areas have different policies, especially certain locales in Europe that practice a certain type of legalization, I see no distinct difference from the same problems we have here in the US than in those areas . This is a complex problem and petty ideas like legalize and all problems disappear are overly simplistic and amount to nothing more than wishful thinking.

[Jack]

Look at Amsterdam, although many drugs are legal society frowns upon any person who cannot use their substance of choice responsibly. If you think alcoholics are any different from crack, cocaine, heroin, or other "hard" drug addicts try living with one. They will destroy their lives and those of the people surrounding them in order to get drunk. America needs to wake up to the problem of alcoholism.
Legalize marijuana and use the revenue to effectively tackle hard drug use.

Promote responsible use of inebriating substances!!!!!! Yes this is actually possible...

Some suggestions: A user could access a set amount of the drug of choice each day/week/month that they can afford, but will lose the privilege if found to act irresponsibly under the influence or have no control over their use. Restriction of drug use privileges could be used as a deterrent for misdemeanors/minor felonies and non violent crimes.
If a person were to commit a violent crime while under the influence, or be proven to commit a crime to sustain a habit, extreme sentences should be given. "Hard" drug users must give up the right to own guns and other weapons and if found in possession would be sentenced seriously.

[Cameron]

When has any prohibitive type law actually kept the thing in which it prohibits from happening? Supply and demand is like gravity, it doesn't care that you make it illegal. Even if these sort of prohibitions lessen the number of users, it is at the cost of empowering orginizations that have no respect these sort of laws anyways.

[jimshoez]

Star Trek was essentially a socialist society and was darn near utopian. It was established out of the ashes of a capitalist society sorta like we probably will encounter with global warming. Legalization of drugs will only be a stimulation to the economy. It will crate jobs through industry and put money into the government rather than wasting money on fighting what is essentially a personal battle.

[Loren]

"When opiates were legal in the 19th century and early 20th century, there were twice as many drug addicts as there are now."

"bootleg alcohol is still a multi-billion dollar business in the US"

^^^ Ha! If those are what you consider facts, I'd hate to see you outright lie. Do yourself a favor and research the issue before making a fool of yourself again.

[ek]

Regarding the comments on the previous statements:
When opiates were legal in the 19th century and early 20th century, there were twice as many drug addicts as there are now."

"bootleg alcohol is still a multi-billion dollar business in the US"

^^^ Ha! If those are what you consider facts, I'd hate to see you outright lie. Do yourself a favor and research the issue before making a fool of yourself again.

It would seem that multi-billion dollar business is a bit much, but a capital news service article estimated 15$ million for the state of Michigan alone, so the costs of bootlegging could be in the millions at least.

As far as the number of drug addicts in the past - apparently 27% of Chinese (13.5 million people) was addicted to opium in 1900. It was also the cause of at least two wars between Britain (and later other countries) and China. Part of the reason for the illegalization of drugs, at least in Britain, was because they were losing a significant portion of their workforce to addiction. Legalization may not be all that its proponents think it will be.