Ulsterirish wrote..

beach front homes in mexico 250k, annual property taxes 150 dollars
sounds good to me

That's BS. You can't buy land in Mexico, you can only lease it, and the taxes are more than you think. The corruption down there is still worse than in the U.S. - at least for now. Don't go packing your bags so quickly......

End-You use to be right. Now a non Mexican can own certain property in Mexico. There are restrictions as to the type and use, but if you just wanted to buy a regular house in Mexico, that is no longer a problem. Now the question becomes,
when will it be safe to own something there? Mexico has a history of nationalizing businesses over the years and private property rights could go out the window again. Just prior to the 1982 devaluation, I was seriously looking into moving to the American Section of Monterrey. I could rent a nice home overlooking Monterrey, water paid, with a maid and a gardener for about the same as I was paying to own a smaller home in Laredo. Rule of thumb don't bring more than you can afford to leave behind. Just rent, it makes a quick departure much easier. Also, don't put money in Mexican banks. Better to keep what you need in the US in a multinational bank and transfer it into pesos as you need it. Sudden devaluations are also a historically reoccuring problem.Other than that it's a great place to life.

So if Mexico does legalize drugs what does this do? Move the drug war across the border into the USA?

This will only mean that the DEA and other drug enforcement agencies will have to virtually turn on the afterburners perhaps resulting in full militarization of our interdiction efforts. You know the USA is NOT going to follow Mexico's lead here. Every mexican and his brother will be bringing dope across the border with easy access.

How does this affect us???

Noodleman wrote..

This will only mean that the DEA and other drug enforcement agencies will have to virtually turn on the afterburners

They won't have to do a damn thing.. Already they can enforce the law or not however they please! Look at Wall Street, all that crime sure didn't force the Executive branch to respond by doing anything about it. They'll enforce whatever they want, where and when it pleases them. Basically he executive branch has found an easy way to enslave the legislature. They can pass all the laws they want, the executive branch can flip those laws on and off like a light switch.

Anyway, if they flip the enforcement switch to "off", be grateful. The drugs themselves aren't nearly as dangerous as the bullets that fly when they adopt the notorious "crackdown til the end of time" strategy. Unlike Wall Street crimes, these would all be victimless crimes if the government didn't mandate fight-or-flight paranoia throughout the recreational drug industry (minus tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine which apparently got in just under the wire before everyone became a statist douchebag).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/1....

I'd like to repeat myself and agree again with Asimov. Bath salts and MANY of the really dangerous drugs would disappear if there were safer, but similar, drugs readily available. There just wouldn't be a market for that crap. Our drug problems are largely self-inflicted, society's always got along just fine with a few drunks or opium addicts here and there..

Alcohol especially has been around about as long as we have, even monkeys and bees get drunk in nature. Nobody's sure when beer was invented, because it was that long ago. T'was already invented, and probably already pretty tasty, in ancient Sumeria. So please, humans, have some perspective and leave "the other" alone for crying out loud.

Yay.

Speedy Gonzalez can get wired on high quality and legal stimulants. I hear he's sick of the impure illicit ****.

So perhaps Mexico will take heroin processing go the next level and produce powder again? The black tar is tearing up users left and right but likely has the best margin ATM.

No idea what Merika will do in retaliation but it likely won't be pretty should they act.

http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/victims.....

Just a few of the many victims of "our" assinine drug policy. There are many many many more. More than I can ever know no matter how much time I spend looking at it. It is just blatantly absurd nonsense. People accept this because.... why? Obomney will fix it for sure.

It's a cancer. Isnt it obvious? The whole drug enforcement racket is no different than any other crime syndicate. All made possible by unaccountable tax dollars and unbelieveable levels of taxpayer stupidity. Unfortunately the patient has no will to cut this cancer out.

I'm not completely sold on Mexico moving to legalization. Could be a political ploy to get more foreign aid from the US. Having a supplier nation right next door where dope is fully legalized would be a major pain in the ass for a nation where the cops are still raiding medical marijuna shops. I bet if Wash DC coughed up a few $bil$ the new Mexican pres would change his mind.

Watch this play out.

This guy will be assassinated before he is allowed to implement this solution.

Quote:

Could be a political ploy to get more foreign aid from the US.

Yup, the old "I have nuclear weapons gimme your fukken money" ploy.

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https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin....

A little pushback for a pot arrest:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/02/ve....

Quote:

A Vermont farmer used his tractor to crush seven Orleans County Sheriff’s Department squad cars on Thursday because he was angry about being arrested on marijuana charges last month.

“It’s more than half our fleet,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Phil Brooks explained to the Burlington Free Press. “We have 11 cars.”

Some people have had enough, it seems.

The comment section for the Vermont story was VERY encouraging. Maybe there is hope for this country after all....maybe.

Bilge

Has anyone else actually read the article linked to? While the WoD is a hopeless effort, the back story in the article on how Mexico got to this point doesn't sound particularly positive. From the article, it sounds like the cartels have effectively taken over the government, with drugs to possibly be legalized in their area of operation, an area that contains only a tiny fraction of their market while remaining illegal in their primary market in the US.

I was wondering why ANY drug cartel would EVER want drugs legalized until I realized that in this case it would simply enable their operations in an area of little demand while not hurting their black market profits, the majority of which come from the US.

Winston, yes, I read it. How they got there isn't so good, but this is the law of unintended consequences at work. Governments think they're "in control" of this sort of thing all the time, but the fact is that they're usually not.

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That's BS. You can't buy land in Mexico, you can only lease it, and the taxes are more than you think

Actually, the last time I looked into it, when I was planning on moving down there, was, you could only lease land that was within 50 miles of the coast or the border, but beyond those limits, you were actually allowed to own it. It may have changed since 2004, but that's what the scenario was then.

As for being more corrupt than the US? I wouldn't bet any money on that...

Not to mention the irony of having a third-world country right next door where people are orders of magnitude more free than here in the US of A... it would get at least some people thinking...

etc...

Quote:

Not to mention the irony of having a third-world country right next door where people are orders of magnitude more free than here in the US of A... it would get at least some people thinking...

Same reason I hope Romney wins. A lot of people who think they are free will be challenged when Romney flips on them. Anyone capable of seeing that Obama is full of crap must have figured it out by now, not much more to gain from another 4 years. I'd never vote for Romney based on such a cynical reason, but when watching a train-wreck I may passively root for one train or another. Go Romney!

Let's get to the Serious question!! How is this going to impact the price of WEED???