It's Time

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Wednesday, in Mexico. Clinton admitted that the U.S. is very much complicit in the increasingly explosive problem that is the Mexican drug trade. This is a truism that no one from the former Bush Administration would ever have admitted, lest they be waterboarded by Dick Cheney.

Humans have been altering their states of consciousness since time immemorial. The biological and psychological drive to alter reality is just too strong and history is fraught with futile attempts by arrogant, ignorant power brokers to ban it. The Spanish Conquistadors attempted to ban the Aztecs from using peyote in the 16th century. It didn’t work.

Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia wrote an excellent op-ed piece in the NY Times imploring the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs to remove the outlaw designation from the coca leaf. Morales’ argument makes way too much sense, therefore, it most likely will be ignored by the powers that be at the UN.

The time has come to abandon the ignorance, arrogance, and the joke that is the war on drugs which is nothing more than a war profiteer machine. Natural plants such as marijuana and coca should be legal to grow and possess without designation. Then legalize, regulate, and tax other drugs such as cocaine and heroin to put all of the drug cartels out of business. Maybe it’s time to declare war on failed policies and while we’re at it let’s declare war on declaring war. Then we can take to the streets to protest the wars on failed policies and declaring war.