This cartoon is lame. It makes the artist look inexperienced and ignorant about these issues.

Finally a liberal-leaning antidote to the neocon/conspiracy views of the "other side." Thank you.

leaglize pot and a lot of the crime will go away.

Mark watch the History Channel show on Wyatt Earp it tells of the border wars when Earp was sheriff. The outlaws were American cowboy rustlers and the US would not enforce laws, for the buyers and shippers packers and butchers were all profiting off it. When profit is involved no government will interfere.

hey Mark, guess i found something I disagree with you about and this is a BIG disagreement. And you even put marijuana in the same group as all those other S--T drugs. And you can put alcohol in that S--T category as well. I always thought you were enlightened because you inhaled. Ummm...

keep it local folks...works in canada

Perfectly said. The little dopers on this side of the border are keeping this going.

I have nothing against legalized pot use.

It reeks, kills brain cells like nobody's business, screws up brain chemistry, and subjects the user to more than half of the oral/bronchial health risks associated with cigarettes, but if people want to piss away the hours in a drug-induced haze, it's no skin off my nose.

Plus, California could use a cash crop right about now.

If I recall, when Vicente Fox was President of Mexico he was a day or two away from legalizing personal use of drugs in Mexico but our Presidnet Bush stepped in at the last minute and pressure him from withdrawing that stance.

Within 6 months the drug violence escalated. Had they legalized it they could have created an Amsterdam type tourist industry and had less illegal crossings here, not to mention thousands of lives saved in Mexico. Once again, Bush's policies lead to death. He should be #1 in the war crimes tribunal. Did I go off on a tangent? ;-)

I love to imagine if suddenly the Presidents of both countries, USA and Mexico would have a televised statement and say, "Congress has determined that the war on drugs has failed and passed an emergency bill legalizing all previously illegal drugs. Yep, heroine, cocaine, marjuana, LSD, and etc... You have freedom to choose and its your body, you can do with it what you want. However, if you cause harm to anyone, causing their injury or death by use of these drugs, you can be found guilty of manslaughter or murder. All drug enforcement departments will now be assisting in drug rehab facilities."

The cartels and gangs would be out of business ASAP. And not to mentions all the alphabet agencies... CIA, DEA, ATF, FBI, etc...

Oh, it's a dream...

Mark, I love your work and generally(though not always) agree with your views, but on this one, you missed the mark by a mile.
ALL the violence, killing, corruption, money-laundering, ect associated with drugs, is 100% the inevitable result of drug PROHIBITION. Drug prohibition is nothing more than both:

A)An employemnt guarantee program for otherwise-unemployable drug
prohibition jackboots that couldn't make it in the private sector.

B) A profit guarantee program for the drug traffickers, who'd be out of business overnite, should recreational drugs be legalized and regulated, taxed and sold as alcohol now is.

Blaming some harmless pothead for the violence that may or may not have occured somewhere along the way between the plant in the ground, and his purchase of pot from his local dealer, when the REAL cause for all the harm and violence is drug *prohibition*, is rather disingenious. The War on Drugs is like peeing in your boots,and then complaining that your feet are wet.

+ 1 for homegrown! :)

There is, of course, the small problem that the police and military of Mexico long-since took over the drug trade from there. What? You want them to live on *those* salaries?
-kt

We need good jobs for jackboots. What else could those people be doing? It's better than sinking all that money into the military. Doh!

Shhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwoooooooooooooooooooo.

"Narco Mex, Incorporated": Another bit of yellow journalism from Mark Fiore. It's hard to imagine greater idiocy than the implied contention in this latest Mark Fiore cartoon that a consumer boycott of marijuana would affect the drug cartels of Mexico. Or a greater lie than alledged link between marijuana and heroin and cocaine that Fiore implicitly alledges in the piece. In point of fact, the best marijuana comes from California's Humbolt and Mendocino counties, with Hawaian products not all that far behind. Not from Mexico. And is (relatively) unassociated with violent crime.

To be sure, there is a (weak and backhanded) plea for the rational step of legalization of marijuana in the cartoon. But it's buried in false and confused inuendos.

Anyway, all of the violence to Americans by the drug cartels of Mexico is minor comared to the violence done to Americans due to lack of universal and quality health care coverage, lack of acess to free, quality education, and lack of access to quality, frequent intra and inter urban 24/7/365 public transit that puts Americans into the carnage-producing devices known as auotmobiles. How about the violence to Mexican (and other) immigrant "undocumented" workers, hyper exploited in American meat packing and other plants?

---marty

I know the tendency is to draw three fingers and one thumb in the post-Peanuts era, but why don't you try to be a rebel ? Go, draw that pinky ! Your style and the medium permit it.

I guess the alternate title of this animation could be, "Grow Local."

-MF