The Caravan for Peace Calls for an End to the Drug War

On August 12, where the wall between Mexico and the U.S. meets the Pacific Ocean, acclaimed Mexican poet Javier Sicilia and busloads of people who are fed up with the drug war launched the Caravan for Peace. Over the next several weeks, the Caravan will travel to 25 different U.S. cities with the goal of starting a serious national dialogue about the failure of drug prohibition.

Javier Sicilia, whose son was murdered by drug traffickers in 2011, described the drug war this way:

"This war's failure is devastating: the 23 million American drug consumers are far from diminishing but increasing instead; in the past 5 years, Mexico has accumulated almost 70 thousand dead, more than 20 thousand missing people, more than 250 thousand have been displaced, along with hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, and these figures keep rising. The American gun manufacturers arm the organized crime through illegal trade, while the Mérida Initiative legally arms the Mexican army, fostering war. The American jails imprison millions of human beings because of drug consumption. The immigrants are criminalized on this side of the border and extorted or made to disappear on the other side; the temptation to militarize using the police regime emerges on both sides, while setting a deep crisis for democracy and undermining the greatness of open societies."

Produced by Alex Manning and Paul Feine.

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[RustyDaleShackleford]

Why not?

[savageecho]

Do you realize that all we have done make making drugs illegal is force the industry underground? The demand was never addressed, only the supply and possession. Just like in prohibition, people still drank alcohol and at about the same rates as pre-prohibition. What prohibition did was start organized crime, it never stopped the users. It is the same with the drug war, the users sill use just now people die over it and we spend billions in tax dollars. BTW, I don't do drugs or even smoke cigs.

[LaborHours]

Lesson to learn from the failed drug war? Do not attempt to legislate moral behavior.

[BenchitoJREL]

@savageecho

[BenchitoJREL]

The most interesting part is that if you legalize pot less drug coming into the USA you are gonna have!!!!

[BenchitoJREL]

My mom is Guatemalan and my dad Mexican, I am a gay Latino . So fight for our rightful rights!!!! THANK YOU!!!

[Blake Harllee]

Yeah! You damn Libertarians wanting "Freedom" and "Liberty".

[RustyDaleShackleford]

You have the right to do whatever you want as long as you don't infringe on anybody else's rights. So nobody's got the right to force you to live any certain way, and government does this nonstop, and in almost every part of life. Also, government funds everything it does by theft, also called taxation. Do you disagree, and think others have any right to tell you what to do?

[glennd7962]

Chile, Portugal and others. In fact, in the U.S. you see very little impact of drug law enforcement policy on use - but hey, ignorant dopes like you don't need silly things like facts. Just take juirisdictions like California where use of pot was basically legalized for a while. There wasn't some big spike in use, but hey, keep up the nonsense. You do realize that drugs, prostitution and gambling were all legal in our 'founders' world, yes?

[glennd7962]

and nothing I said contravenes your latest comment, dingbat. But to say that being libertarian means 'nobody can tell me what to do' is asinine. And as for "being a slave to Hayek" - you could do worse, as you spew bullshit at an alarming rate...