If you like the Sky-High Murder Rate in Latin America, Thank the War On Drugs

Honduras now has the world's highest murder rate.  Mexico and a few Central American countries are close behind.   And why has so much of Latin America turned into a giant killing field?  You can thank America's War On (some) Drugs.

Every demagogue who whipped up mass hysteria against marijuana in the 1930s — and every politician since then who's kept the country riled up and paranoid about “DRUGS!!!” — Congratulations!  I hope you're proud of the thousands of people you've killed and the millions of lives you've ruined.

The most recent symptom of America's War On Some Drugs is the flood of child refugees pouring over our border.  Most of the people who are so twisted out of shape over these refugees — unable to put two and two together — probably still think we need to “crack down on drugs!”

From the linked article:

“First, by prohibiting any sort of legitimate drug production in the United States, we place all the immense profits from the drug trade directly into the hands of criminals in Latin America. Drugs are cheap to produce, and many policy regimes, from full legalization to some sort of government monopoly disbursing drugs to certified addicts, would cut off the cartels at the knees.

Second, and perhaps more important with respect to gang violence in Latin America, we've aggressively pushed for a highly militarized approach to drug policy throughout the world. U.S. drug policy is all about exporting our drug war, pushing other nations to spray drug farms with herbicide, capture or kill cartel leaders, and worst of all, fight the cartels with the military...toppling one cartel merely increases the violence as smaller gangs fight for freed-up territory, or move to a neighboring country.”