Angry Mexico

Mexico is angry at the U.S. As well they should be:

Mexico’s economy is being dragged down by the recession to the north. American addicts have turned Mexico into a drug superhighway, and its police and soldiers are under assault from American guns. Nafta promised 15 years ago that Mexican trucks would be allowed on American roads, but Congress said they were unsafe.

Not to mention the other failures of NAFTA, as Trend mentioned yesterday. And the border wall.

Now, Mexico has a lot of problems of its own. An unresponsive government unwilling or unable to deal with poverty and a corrupt police force top the list. But before we tell Mexico to look into the mirror for their problems, maybe we should do the same. If Mexico is being unreasonable in blaming the U.S., aren't we just as guilty? We took what we wanted from NAFTA and reneged upon what we decided we didn't like. It is our drug demands and our unthinking belief that drugs should be illegal that is fueling the violence in Mexico and increasingly in the U.S. It is our loose gun laws that facilitate the violence. It is our border wall that makes people more desperate in smuggling both themselves and drugs into the United States.

There is an obvious step the United States could take to help solve all of these problems: decriminalize marijuana. While cocaine and heroin are big problems too, a lot of this trade and violence revolves around weed. I think it's increasingly clear that decriminalization is going to happen in the next 2 decades, given polling number demographics on the issue and the increasing acceptance of the drug into mainstream America. Doing so, or at least beginning to take the first steps, would make our borders much safer, save both Mexican and American lives, and probably improve relations with our southern neighbor.