Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Muzzled Press

Valley in Exile has this about the attack on El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo:
Muzzled
Press
: "Monday's attack on the newspaper El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
has its intended effect: The paper plans to scale back its coverage of murders
in that border city.The San Antonio Express-News says the Mexican daily, which
already refrains from printing names of suspects, will move its stories on the
killings from its front page to inside the paper. 'There is no point in
investigating narcotrafficking,' Ramon Cantu Deandar, the paper's editor, said
Tuesday. 'That's an international problem that not even the authorities have the
will to fix.' The Dallas Morning News has eyewitness accounts from newsroom
employees: 'The assailants walked into the lobby of the newspaper and yelled,
'You're all going to hell' and ... started shooting up the place,' said Ramón
Cantú Deandar, editor of El Mañana and an afternoon daily, La Tarde. At the
bottom of this story, the DMN also offers excerpts of El Mañana's front-page
editorial calling the attack an act of terrorism -- and calling for legalizing
some drugs 'in order to exert control.'The newspaper is correct: The only way to
destroy the power of the drug cartels is to take away their money. The only way
to do that is to stop making the cost of drugs artificially high due to
prohibition. Drug prohibition has failed."

To some extent I agree that prohibition is failing. It seems every action our legislature takes to control the problem simply makes the whole business more profitable for drug cartels. Face it, Americans are willing to pay more for drugs than they are willig to pay taxes. I think preventing young people from doing drugs is probably the best approach, curbing demand. Then there is the other part of me that remembers the lesson of wiping your butt. It's an ongoing sruggle. You don't stop because you'll have to wipe again later anyway. It's one of those things you just have to do all the time for as long as you live.

So, I guess my thinking is, we'll NEVER, EVER win the war against drugs. We like getting high too much. But we do have to fight them because it's a good thing. Politicians, I guess because their job is so competitive, are always trying to defeat drugs. Sometimes, against an equal opponent, the best you can do is keep up instead of trying to beat. I learned this lesson from Sherlock Holmes fighting Dr. Moriarty, Commander Data against a master game player, and my grandma who would tie up a card game if she wasn't going to win. We can't win, but we can still fight a good fight.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drugs are bad for this place and our kids. Why are politicians working so closely with drug dealers? JD gave ten thousand dollars to my girlfriends cousin Aaron Gonzalez and I know he sells most of the drugs here in Edcouch.

The feds are indicting him but why do our leaders like JD or others work with these evil people who are destroying this place? Drug dealers can make it easy to loan yourself four hundred thousand dollars. Sure looks bad.

Mack T. Harrison said...

So even though we'll never win the war on drugs, we keep on fighting it? One example of insanity is when someone keeps doing the same thing, expecting different results. This drug was has made society crazy.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info.

I didn't know that about either one. I knew that JD was a political prostitute, but not at the illegal drugs level.

My mind is now set, and it's set against JD!

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