Drug Control Begets Gun Control: The Violence in Mexico Is Caused by Prohibition, Not Firearms

Sullum, Jacob, Reason

DURING HIS April visit to Mexico, President Barack Obama suggested that Americans are partly to blame for the appalling violence associated with the illegal drug trade there. "The demand for these drugs in the United States is what's helping keep these cartels in business," he said. "This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States."

Obama is right that the U.S. is largely responsible for the carnage in Mexico, which claimed more than 6,000 lives last year. But the problem is neither the drugs Americans buy nor the guns they sell; it's the war on drugs our government has drafted the rest of the world to fight. Instead of acknowledging the failure …

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Publication information: Article title: Drug Control Begets Gun Control: The Violence in Mexico Is Caused by Prohibition, Not Firearms. Contributors: Sullum, Jacob - Author. Magazine title: Reason. Volume: 41. Issue: 3 Publication date: July 2009. Page number: 6. © 2009 Reason Foundation. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

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