On Monday, I published an article in The Daily Campus called, “We American drug market fuel international war on drugs.” It linked the rampant drug culture in America (particularly the use of marijuana) to the cartel violence raging in Mexico.

In the past day I have received numerous emails from various readers of The Daily Campus, most of which are not affiliated with SMU. All of the emails were concerned with the legalization of marijuana, which my article, in fact, never denounced nor promoted.

Apparently I am “wrong,” “unfair,” or just flat out “preposterous” for asserting that a “low level drug users” could be blamed for such “rampant violence.” I believe the readers are confused in their entirety about the point I was making.

I stated that there is a moral dilemma in buying an illicit substance that comes from organizations that have killed 34,612 Mexican citizens. There is no denying that it is the United States that purchases the majority of the marijuana that comes from Mexico.

The profits from the sale of drugs to the United States population are in turn used to buy guns, produce more drugs, run prostitution rings, etc. All of the cartels present in Mexico vie for power and profit from these sales, in a sense, it is all business competition – and destructive at that.

One reader, Chuck, stated that “it’s unfair for [me] to ask civilized Americans and Mexicans to wait for everyone to stop using marijuana before we can all enjoy a life without violent criminal groups,” and I could not agree more, but that is not what my article said. I believe that the legalization of marijuana is, in fact, a step in the right direction to lessening violence in Mexico, which the U.S. citizens have helped perpetuate.

What one cannot do, which reader Thomas asserted, is state that the “blood is on the hands of the politicians who…implement the failed prohibitionist model of criminalizing what free people put into their own bodies.” One must not forget that it is the constituents that elect these officials to office in the first place.

If there is a tinge of guilt in the moral conscience of America because of our culture which promotes the use of marijuana, then America has a responsibility to put politicians in to office that will begin the process of the legalization of marijuana to curb the black market created by the illegality of the drugs themselves.

I am unsure if some readers failed to catch the mention that the “War on Drugs” is actually Mexico’s war on drugs declared by Mexican President Calderon and not an American war on drugs, or if they are just informed about the goings on in Mexico. It is not the “DEA that is causing bloodshed,” as one respondent put it. No, actually the DEA is not running Mexico’s war on drugs. And if no one in the United States smoked marijuana, there would be no reason for Mexico to have a war on drugs as the cartels would be significantly less funded than they are at the moment.

I find it interesting that so many people vehemently responded to my article when I challenged what has become a very integral part of American culture. I expected some resistance to my opinion (no one likes to be accused of fueling the death of others after all), but the responses were all extremely passionate in denouncing what I had said, claiming that I am uneducated when it comes to the international issue of drugs.

As I mentioned before, all of the emails, in some way, stated that the legalization of marijuana would solve the problems in Mexico. Although I agree, (yes you heard it readers, I was not as many of you seemed to believe, declaiming the legalization of marijuana) it must be noted that the process of legalization is much more complicated than passing one law.

In addition to that, there must be a carefully planned strategy for regulating marijuana trade, laws passed on age restrictions, and protection against the infiltration of cartels into a legalized market. All of these issues must be confronted before any actual legislation can occur.

I hope this article clarifies some of the ambiguous points and misconceptions in my previous article. As always, I thank the Daily Campus readers for their continued comments and feedback and look forward to further discussions on this, and other, topics.

Michael Dearman is a first year majoring in the pursuit of truth and the overthrow of systems. He can be reached for comments at [email protected].