1NC
1
Interpretation: Marijuana includes the parts of the cannabis plant that are not stalks
or sterilized seeds
Violation: Hemp falls within the exceptions stipulated by the definition- products that
have zero THC or use fiber from the stalks are exempted.
Bacca 14
[Angela Bacca, editor of Cannabis Now Magazine, Alternet, What’s the Difference Between Hemp and
Marijuana?, June 8, http://sandiegofreepress.org/2014/06/whats-the-difference-between-hemp-andmarijuana/#.VAqG42OKXpc]
Nonetheless, Ernest Small’s interpretations of cannabinoid content in strains as a distinguishing factor
toward the semantic differences of the plant were eventually written into law when the United States
legalized (sort of) the domestic sale of foreign cultivated hemp products for cosmetics, clothing and
nutrition. In 2001, the Drug Enforcement Administration attempted to ban all products sourced from
hemp, but lost this battle in the courts. Instead, it clarified that any product containing THC is illegal
for sale in the United States, excluding hemp products with no levels of THC. The ruling is credited for
allowing more imported hemp products into the legal U.S. marketplace. “Canada, for example, defines
hemp as products of strains of cannabis which produce less than 0.3 percent THC, while many
European countries set the THC limit at 0.2 percent,” says Jeremy Daw, author of Weed the People:
From Founding Fiber to Forbidden Fruit. “That may seem like a minor difference, but compare to the
definition of marijuana in the United States, which (contrary to popular belief) does not use a THC
limit at all .” Daw says U.S. law, according to the most authoritative court decision on the question,
Hemp Industries Association v. DEA, defines marijuana as all parts of any Cannabis sativa L. plant,
except for defined exceptions, which could be assumed to be what the United States government
defines as “hemp.” “Such exceptions include fibers from cannabis stalks and products derived from
sterilized cannabis seeds, but explicitly do not include resins extracted from any variety of cannabis
plant,” Daw continues. “Popular misreadings of this part of the court case has led to even more
confusion about the difference between hemp and marijuana.”
Vote neg
1. GROUND – hemp is a completely distinct literature base, and it’s not illegal
Hemp ethics no date - Butte College Students who are working on finding out the
ethical reasons for the use of hemp
Since there are so many differences between industrial hemp and high-THC marijuana, it seems to
make sense that it would be a fostered, rather than demonized crop. Although technically hemp is not
illegal to grow, it requires obtaining a special permit from the DEA. These permits are rarely given out and require
that the crop be surrounded by security measures such as fences, razor wire, security guards, or dogs. For a crop that has little-to-no potential
to get people high, the current attitude is both irresponsible and draconian.
2. Topic education- the topic is centered in education about legalizing activity that
is currently criminal – hemp has an exception in the law already, the aff
destroys education about legalization of marijuana
3. LIMITS – tons of variant uses of the plant – it has over 50,000 possible distinct
advantages
Meints 12
(Jeff, “Vote industrial hemp,” http://www.voteindustrialhemp.com/)
Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction,
health food, and fuel. It is one of the fastest growing biomasses knownand one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It also
runs parallel with the "Green Future" objectives that are becoming increasingly popular. Hemp requires little to no pesticides no
herbicidescontrols erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially
harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product polychlorinated
dibensodioxins, popularly known as dioxins, which are carcinogenic, and contribute
to deforestation, cosmetics, and
plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily. The strongest chemical needed
to whiten the already light hemp paper is non-toxic hydrogen peroxide.¶ Cannabis sativa L. subsp. sativa var. sativa is the variety grown
for industrial use in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere, while C. sativa subsp. indica generally has poor fiber quality and is primarily used for
production of recreational and medicinal drugs. The major difference between the two types of plants is the appearance and the amount
of THC secreted in a resinous mixture by epidermal hairs called glandular trichomes. Strains of Cannabis approved for industrial hemp
production produce only minute amounts of this psychoactive drug, not enough for any physical or psychological effects. Typically, Hemp
contains below 0.3% THC, while Cannabis grown for marijuana can contain anywhere from 6 or 7 % to 20% or even more.¶ Industrial
Hemp is produced in many countries around the world. Major producers include Canada, France, and China. While more hemp is exported
to the United States than to any other country, the United States Government does not consistently distinguish between marijuana and
the non-psychoactive Cannabis used for industrial and commercial purposes.¶ It's possible to grow hemp organically on most of the
world's farmland. There are many varieties that can be selected for their various characteristics - high oil content or fibres of particular
lengths - with seed banks holding over 100 strains of industrial hemp.¶ A rapidly growing plant, hemp chokes out other weeds, has a
strong resistance to most pests and so can be grown with other legume crops, maturing in just 8-12 weeks fulfilling it nitrogen
requirements.¶ With a long tap root able to reach water, bind and aerate the soil where other plants can't, hemp crops can be used to
reclaim land in areas prone to drought ( e.g. African Sahara) or flooding.¶ Once
harvested the crop has a high yield of
cellulose, edible proteins, oils and fibres with over 50,000 different product applications across a
whole array of industries.
T is a voting issue- it’s a prima facie obligation and competing interpretations is the
best framework because it minimizes arbitrariness and sets a model for the entire
season.
2
The Republicans are winning but the race is close—undecided voters could decide the
election
Cohn 9-12
(Nate, covers elections at the NYTimes The Upshot. “Democrats Are Seeing More Daylight in Path to
Senate Control” 9-12-14 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/13/upshot/democrats-are-seeing-moredaylight-in-path-to-senate-control.html?abt=0002&abg=1//wyoccd)
A few months ago, the Democratic path to a Senate majority looked long and arduous. It has started
to look easier. The Democrats started the campaign with a clear advantage in enough races to end up with 45 seats, well short of the 50 needed to retain control of the chamber. To get to 50, the party was going
to have to run the table in five battleground states where polls were already showing Republicans with an occasional lead — or replace one of them by holding either Arkansas or Louisiana, two deep-red states with Democratic
incumbents in jeopardy. Doing so would have been challenging under any circumstances. It seemed especially daunting this year, given the president’s low approval ratings and the long history of the president’s party suffering a
But today the Democratic path to victory looks as clear as it has at any point this year. That
path remains narrow, to be sure. The Democrats will probably still need to sweep those five fairly close races. Yet with just two months to go, the party appears to have an advantage in four of
them. And the Democrats have other opportunities that might give them more breathing room. The Democrats now appear to have a modest lead in
Colorado and Michigan, two states where Republicans entered the summer with high hopes. Over the last month, a diverse set of pollsters has given Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, a Democratic
“midterm penalty.”
incumbent, a lead of an average of 3.7 points. In Michigan, the Democrat, Gary Peters, leads by an even larger 5.5-point margin. These leads are not insurmountable. But they are not insubstantial, either. There is no evidence of a
trend toward the Republicans and, if anything, the Democratic advantage has grown over the summer. Leo, The Upshot’s Senate forecasting model, now gives the Democrats around an 80 percent chance of winning each of these
states. At one point earlier this year, Leo interpreted Mr. Udall to be the underdog, and Mr. Peters had only a 59 percent chance of winning as recently as a month and a half ago. If Colorado and Michigan are penciled into the
Democratic column, the Democrats will then need three more states to retain control. The Democrats have a fairly broad set of options for those states, but the likeliest possibility is that the election comes down to Alaska, Iowa
and North Carolina. All three pose big challenges to Democrats. Alaska voted for Mitt Romney by 14 points in 2012. The president’s approval ratings are terrible in Iowa, where the Democrats have an imperfect nominee — one
who seemed to criticize farmers in recorded remarks at a fund-raiser — in one of the few competitive races where the party will not benefit from incumbency. And there is no state where Democrats suffer more from an off-year
electorate than North Carolina, where Democrats are exceptionally dependent on young and nonwhite voters to overcome the state’s conservative and older white voters. Nonetheless, it is not clear that the Republicans are
favored in any of these states. In North Carolina and Iowa, the Democrats maintain a fairly clear, if small, lead in the polls, and Alaska is notoriously difficult to poll. Leo now gives Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina a 73 percent
chance of victory, given that she leads her Republican opponent, Thom Tillis, by two percentage points, 45 to 43, in an average of polls. I might rate her chances somewhat lower, in part because she’s benefiting from an unlikely
six-point edge in a new poll from Rasmussen, a firm with a record of relying on dubious sampling and weighting techniques. Another factor complicating the polls is that they may be underestimating the support of Mr. Tillis by
asking respondents about a Libertarian candidate, Sean Haugh, who is not seriously campaigning but is nonetheless receiving more support than Libertarian candidates in North Carolina generally do. Even so, Ms. Hagan generally
leads in the polls that do not name Mr. Haugh, and there’s not much question which candidate is ahead. Representative Bruce Braley, the Democratic nominee in Iowa, also has an advantage, albeit an even more tenuous one than
Ms. Hagan. He has been leading by about two-thirds of a point over the last month. His lead, however, is fairly consistent: His Republican opponent, Joni Ernst, has led in just one poll over the last three months, and a more recent
The current
Democratic advantage could prove to be fleeting, but there’s not much evidence of movement in the Republicans’ direction for now. Even if
Democrats were to win both Iowa and North Carolina, they would still be one seat short of 50 seats. (If
the two parties each win 50 seats, Vice President Joe Biden will break the tie, to the Democrats’ advantage.) Their path of least resistance is probably Alaska, a state where
a Democratic incumbent, Mark Begich, ought to have a decent chance of defeating his Republican challenger. There have only been two polls since Dan Sullivan,
the Republican, won the party’s nomination in mid-August. Both of these polls show Mr. Sullivan with
the lead. Nonetheless, there are plenty of reasons to have reservations about the Alaska polling. Alaska is the only state where there hasn’t been a single nonpartisan, traditional telephone poll this year. It’s a state with
version of that poll, an online survey by YouGov, The New York Times and CBS, flipped to Mr. Braley. Unlike the races in Colorado and Michigan, those in North Carolina and Iowa are true tossups.
a long history of polling miscues, perhaps in part because the state’s small, far-flung and isolated population poses unique challenges to pollsters. The New York Times/CBS News/YouGov panel is particularly sparse in Alaska, where
there were only around 400 respondents in the most recent poll. That’s fewer than the panel surveyed in some congressional districts, and my look at the congressional district data suggests that there’s plenty of noise in the places
where the sample size is that small. The other poll, by Rasmussen, does not have a transparent way to survey voters without a landline telephone, and its record has not been very strong in recent years. The fairest read of the
Sullivan a 55
percent chance of winning. But there are two ways that one can have a 55 percent chance of winning. One can imagine, for instance, a race in which a lot of polling makes it quite clear that one
available data is that Mr. Sullivan, the Republican, has the edge. After all, he has the edge in the only two data points since his nomination. That’s why Leo, The Upshot’s Senate model, gives Mr.
candidate has a narrow lead. On the other hand, the 55 percent in Alaska reflects a great deal of uncertainty about the state of the race. There’s so much uncertainty that no one should be surprised if the very next poll happens to
show Mr. Begich with a lead of five points. So a lot is riding on what’s actually going on in Alaska — and I’m not sure we’ll ever have a great sense of the race, given the polling challenges. But this much is clear: If Mr. Begich is the
favorite, then the Democrats have a fairly clean path to 50 seats. In fact, they would have an edge in 50 seats, as of today. If, on the other hand, Mr. Sullivan is the favorite, then the Democrats will need to mount a comeback or win
another state, like Kansas, Georgia, Arkansas or Louisiana. Leo thinks the G.O.P. is favored in all of these red states, and not without reason. But all are fairly close, and there’s a particularly great degree of uncertainty in Kansas,
where an independent candidate, Greg Orman, seems to hold a nominal lead at the earliest stages of a late-breaking race. He has not said which party’s caucus he would join in the Senate.
Over all, the
Republicans are still the slightest favorites to retake the chamber. For Democrats to retain their
majority, they will have to win at least two states that voted against President Obama in 2008 and 2012. It is possible
that this will prove untenable over the final few months of the race, and that Republicans will
gradually gain as undecided voters who disapprove of the president’s performance and voted for Mitt Romney make up their minds. But the
Democrats now have a lead in enough races to get to 49 seats — and have a few options to reach 50.
Marijuana legalization would be a democratic victory
Pew Research Center 13
(“Majority Now Supports Legalizing Marijuana” 4-4-13 http://www.peoplepress.org/2013/04/04/majority-now-supports-legalizing-marijuana//wyoccd)
For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor
legalizing the use of marijuana. A national survey finds that 52% say that the use of marijuana should
be made legal while 45% say it should not. Support for legalizing marijuana has risen 11 points since 2010. The
change is even more dramatic since the late 1960s. A 1969 Gallup survey found that just 12% favored legalizing marijuana use, while 84% were
opposed. The survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 13-17 among 1,501 adults, finds that young people are the most
supportive of marijuana legalization. Fully
65% of Millennials –born since 1980 and now between 18 and 32 – favor legalizing
the use of marijuana, up from just 36% in 2008. Yet there also has been a striking change in long-term attitudes among older
generations, particularly Baby Boomers. Half (50%) of Boomers now favor legalizing marijuana, among the highest percentages ever. In 1978,
47% of Boomers favored legalizing marijuana, but support plummeted during the 1980s, reaching a low of 17% in 1990. Since 1994, however,
the percentage of Boomers favoring marijuana legalization has doubled, from 24% to 50%. Generation
X, born between 1965 and 1980, came of age in the 1990s when there was widespread opposition to legalizing marijuana. Support for
marijuana legalization among Gen X also has risen dramatically – from just 28% in 1994 to 42% a decade later and 54%
currently. The Silent Generation continues to be less supportive of marijuana legalization than younger age cohorts. But the percentage of
Silents who favor legalization has nearly doubled –from 17% to 32% – since 2002. The survey finds that an increasing percentage of Americans
say they have tried marijuana. Overall, 48% say they have ever tried marijuana, up from 38% a decade ago. Roughly half in all age groups,
except for those 65 and older, say they have tried marijuana. About one-in-ten (12%) say they have used marijuana in the past year. Age
differences are much more pronounced when it comes to the recent use of marijuana: 27% of those younger than 30 say they have used
marijuana in the past year, at least three times the percentage in any other age group. Among those who say they have used marijuana in the
past year, 47% say they used it “just for fun,” while 30% say it was for a medical issue; 23% volunteer they used it for medical purposes and also
just for fun. As support for marijuana legalization has grown, there has been a decline in the percentage viewing it as a “gateway drug.”
Currently, just 38% agree that “for most people the use of marijuana leads to the use of hard drugs.” In 1977, 60% said its use led to the use of
hard drugs. More recently, there has been a major shift in attitudes on whether it is immoral to smoke marijuana. Currently, 32% say that
smoking marijuana is morally wrong, an 18-point decline since 2006 (50%). Over this period, the percentage saying that smoking marijuana is
not a moral issue has risen 15 points (from 35% then to 50% today). Amid changing attitudes about marijuana, a sizable percentage of
Americans (72%) say that government efforts to enforce marijuana laws cost more than they are worth. And 60% say that the federal
government should not enforce federal laws prohibiting the use of marijuana in states where it is legal. Last fall, voters in two states – Colorado
and Washington state – approved the personal use of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. There are partisan differences over
legalizing marijuana use and whether smoking marijuana is morally wrong. But Republicans and Democrats have similar views on enforcing
marijuana laws: 57% of Republicans and 59% of Democrats say that the federal government should not enforce federal marijuana laws in states
that permit its use. Substantial
majorities of both Republicans (67%) and Democrats (71%) also say federal
enforcement of marijuana laws is not worth the cost. While Americans increasingly support legalizing marijuana and fewer
see its potential dangers, many still do not like the idea of people using marijuana around them. About half (51%) say they would feel
uncomfortable if people around them were using marijuana, while 48% would not feel uncomfortable. As with nearly all attitudes about
marijuana, there are substantial age differences in discomfort with others using marijuana – 74% of those 65 and older say they would be
uncomfortable if people around them used marijuana, compared with 35% of those under 30.
Passing popular policies can motivate the base and grab swing voters--- dems win
Herrnson and Curry 11
(Paul S. Herrnson is the Director of The Roper Center and the founder and former director of the Center
for American Politics and Citizenship. JAMES M. CURRY. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR. University of Utah.
Department of Political Science. “Issue Voting and Partisan Defections in Congressional Elections” 5-2-11
Legislative Studies Quarterly Volume 26, Issue 2 wiley DA: 8-27-14//wyoccd)
Our findings show that issues have an impact on voter decision making in congressional elections—
one that extends beyond shoring-up the votes of partisans or winning the votes of independents.
Party-owned issues and government performance issues also have the potential to encourage some
voters to look beyond their party identification and vote for a candidate of the opposing party. In some
elections, the issues that dominate the political agenda stack up in favor of one party over another. In 2006, Democratic House candidates
benefited from an agenda that was dominated by government corruption and the war in Iraq. These widely salient issues discouraged crossover
voting among voting Democrats. Furthermore, they likely combined with widespread hostility toward a highly unpopular chief executive to
encourage significant defections among Republican voters. Democrats also benefitted from voters who were focused on health care, the
national economy, and Social Security and Medicare. Two
Republican-owned issues on the political agenda, terrorism and
important voting issues as well, but only among a few Democrats.
This helped to reduce the number of Democratic voters who defected in favor of GOP candidates. Just
as important as the specific issues that encourage crossover voting is the fact that the impact of these
issues often matched or exceeded the impact of several established predictors of partisan defection
national security and immigration policy, were
including strength of partisanship, social context, incumbency, and candidate quality. The findings also demonstrate that transient,
nonideological government performance issues can have just as large an impact on voting behavior in congressional elections as long-term
party-owned issues. These results have implications for our understanding of party identification. Although an individual's partisan attachments
may be a stable part of their social identity (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002), our results suggest that some voters can and do act contrary
to their partisanship. When partisan voters become strongly concerned with issues that are not traditionally associated with their party or
reflect unfavorably on their party's performance in office, they are more likely to vote for candidates of the other party. Although most voters
care mainly about issues that are owned by their party, those who become deeply concerned about other issues may cast their ballots for the
opposing party's congressional candidate. The results also have strategic implications for candidates, parties, advocacy groups, and others that
communicate in election campaigns. They suggest that by focusing their agenda-setting efforts on particular issues, politicians can influence the
vote choices of members of the opposing party. That is, by
focusing on long-term party-owned issues and transient
government performance issues campaigners can help keep their partisan base at home and siphon
off votes from their opponent's base at the same time. This approach is most likely to be successful
when campaign communications are targeted at voters whose ideology is not in line with their
partisanship and whose partisanship is not reinforced by their social context. Given that most congressional
candidates win by large margins, the strategic deployment of issues is not likely to influence many election outcomes. However, party-owned
and government performance issues have the potential to shape the outcomes of some competitive races. In an era when neither party has a
stronghold on Congress, they also could influence which party controls the House and the size of that party's majority. Moreover, issues differ
from other variables that influence voting behavior. Unlike the context of a particular election, the attributes of individual voters, or the
president's standing in the polls, issues are one aspect of a political campaign that politicians can manipulate
GOP senate leadership would ensure a TPA for Obama
Koppich 14
(John, Forbes Staff. “Asia's Week: Giant Pacific Rim Trade Pact Runs into Tricky U.S. Political Calendar” 131-14 http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoppisch/2014/01/31/giant-asia-pacific-trade-pact-with-u-srunning-into-tricky-political-calendar//wyoccd)
On Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech, U.S. President Barack Obama cited the advantages of a proposed, giant
trade deal with a bevy of Pacific Rim countries. Hopes rose that negotiations will move forward
quickly this year. But then the very next day, Harry Reid, the leader of a legislative body that would have to approve any deal
and a member of Obama’s own Democratic party, swiftly dashed those hopes. He announced he was firmly opposed to giving the
president the “fast track” authority he needs to negotiate international trade deals.¶ An Obama spokesman says he’ll push ahead anyway, but
Asia-Pacific countries counting on boosting trade across the ocean will need to be patient—thanks to domestic U.S. politics. With Congressional
elections set for November, a deal this year is unlikely. One-third of the members of Reid’s chamber, the Senate, are up for re-election and all
members of the lower chamber, the House. The
Republican Party in the U.S. has long been much more supportive
of trade pacts than the Democrats. The Republicans already control the House and are expected to
keep control, and they need six seats to take control of the 100-seat Senate. If they get those seats—
and political observers give them a better than 50-50 chance—then Obama could get his fast-track
negotiating authority early next year.
TPA is key to the TPP—critical to preserve economic growth and global security
Miller and Nadeau 14
(Scott Miller holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, D.C. Paul Nadeau is program manager and research associate with the Scholl
Chair at CSIS. “TPP Is More than a Trade Agreement” 1-31-14 http://csis.org/publication/tpp-moretrade-agreement//wyoccd)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made news this week when he said that “everyone would be well advised not to push (Trade Promotion
Authority, TPA) right now.” Because
trade agreements negotiated by the United States practically require TPA
to be concluded, Senator Reid’s comments were described as “putting the brakes” on the President’s trade agenda until after the
midterm elections in November.¶ Senator Reid’s comments should not have been surprising or even troubling. When asked if he would bring
TPA to the Senate floor, Reid replied with “We’ll see,” leaving the possibility on the table. That trade critics are pleased with Senator Reid’s
comments and that business groups are not isn’t news. President Obama expressed support for trade agreements during the State of the Union
address, but not much more than a name-check and not enough to provide political cover to Democrats who might consider supporting TPA.
With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans openly advocating TPA, the issue was probably due to get some pushback from Democrats. Tactically, this makes sense because no Democrat in a contested seat (and Senator Reid has many to protect) for the
November elections stands to gain from TPA or the deals that it would accelerate, chiefly the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).¶
Who gains
the most now from TPA and the resulting TPP agreement? The White House. This isn’t because of the immediate
economic benefits to the United States, or because it provides a template for future large-scale, comprehensive trade agreements, or because
the President has advanced the most ambitious trade agenda since the early 1990s.¶ The
White House needs TPA because the
TPP is the “pivot to Asia.” The military realignment is important, but the repositioning is mostly
relative, driven by drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pivot is a political and economic realignment that aims to
improve cooperation and integration among the United States and East Asia. Then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton said this explicitly in her
Foreign Policy article, “America’s Pacific Century,” when she wrote “[O]pen
markets in Asia provide the United States with
unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology. Our
economic recovery at home will depend on exports and the ability of American firms to tap into the
vast and growing consumer base of Asia.” Military presence was only one out of the six courses of action that Secretary Clinton
used to define the Asia Pivot, while the TPP is arguably the key ingredient of three (deepening America's relationships with rising powers,
including China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment). If solving the financial crisis and passing
health care reform were President Obama’s key domestic policy victories, then the Asia Pivot is primed to be the area where he beneficially
changes the course of U.S. foreign policy (the discussions with Iran are still too nascent to determine how far reaching they will become).¶
Today, there are tensions among Asia’s large powers, and the United States is likely the single entity
that can influence the situation. The United States and Asia need each other and TPP is the vehicle
that can functionally, economically, and politically help bind them together. The Members of Congress and staff
that have drafted the TPA bill have put admirable effort into legislation. Trade negotiators working on TPP have been equally tireless. But TPP,
and Asia, cannot wait forever. Many
in Asia are already concerned that the Pivot was only superficial and that
United States is already moving on. If TPA and TPP remain framed as a trade issue, with all of the political baggage that comes
with that, the Administration risks putting TPP on ice for 2014.¶ Alternatively, the Administration can influence perceptions by framing the TPP
as a strategic goal that will be the cornerstone of the Asia Pivot. This would reassure U.S. partners in Asia and answer domestic critics who
argue that the Pivot lacks substance. Moreover, it would give the President an achievable goal in advance of his April trip to Asia.¶ Many have
had their say on TPA this week. What matters now is what the President does. We hope he will start by reminding policymakers what’s at stake.
Asian war leads to massive nuclear war, economic collapse, and environmental
degradation that threatens extinction
Mead 10
(Walter, senior fellow @ the Council on Foreign Relations, “Obama in Asia”, 11-9-10 http://blogs.theamerican-interest.com/wrm/2010/11/09/obama-in-asia//wyoccd)
The decision to go to Asia is one that all thinking Americans can and should support regardless of
either party or ideological affiliation. East and South Asia are the places where the 21st century, for
better or for worse, will most likely be shaped; economic growth, environmental progress, the destiny
of democracy and success against terror are all at stake here. American objectives in this region are clear. While
convincing China that its best interests are not served by a rash, Kaiser Wilhelm-like dash for supremacy in the region, the US does not
want either to isolate or contain China. We want a strong, rich, open and free China in an Asia that is
also strong, rich, open and free. Our destiny is inextricably linked with Asia’s; Asian success will make
America stronger, richer and more secure. Asia’s failures will reverberate over here, threatening our
prosperity, our security and perhaps even our survival .¶ The world’s two most mutually hostile
nuclear states, India and Pakistan, are in Asia. The two states most likely to threaten others with
nukes, North Korea and aspiring rogue nuclear power Iran, are there. The two superpowers with a
billion plus people are in Asia as well. This is where the world’s fastest growing economies are. It is
where the worst environmental problems exist
3
International drug control framework is strong now.
Organization of American States 13
[Organization of American States, THE DRUG PROBLEM IN THE AMERICAS: STUDIES, LEGAL AND
REGULATORY ALTERNATIVES, 2013, http://smartapproaches.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/alternativasLegales_ENG.pdf // wyo-cjh]
National drug policy choices are made in the context of a set of longstanding international drug
treaties.5 The first international drug laws focused on regulation of substances such as opium (Hague Convention 1912). However, in the early years of
international drug policy, very little progress was made regarding how to organize or consolidate international policy. The United Nations attempted to address this
problem through the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which was aimed at consolidating enforcement treaties into one global accord. This treaty
introduced the system of “scheduling” of drugs, which is still in use today. Over the next 30 years, international drug policy evolved gradually. The 1961 Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs focused on controlling the most notable plant-based drugs such as opium, cannabis, and cocaine. Ten years later, increased use of
these drugs gave rise to the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances (1971), which expanded international policies to include synthetic substances
such as amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and psychedelics. In the late 1980s, the United Nations broadened its approach to include many facets of
drug trafficking. The United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) regulated precursor chemicals and
required signatory nations to enact laws against money laundering and other offenses related to drugs. Many narcotic, plant-based, and psychotropic substances
are covered by these international drug control treaties. The
vast majority of governments are signatories to these treaties,
which render the use, sale, trafficking, and production of drugs like heroin, cocaine, and cannabis
illegal. However, when signing, ratifying, or acceding to an agreement, a state may sign with a reservation that seeks to exclude or modify the legal effect of
certain provisions of the treaty as they apply to that state.6 Within the context of the conventions, countries around the
world have liberalized certain aspects of their control policies, almost exclusively on the demand side.
Within some countries there is variability among subnational jurisdictions, as demonstrated by the
diverse ways states and localities in Australia and the United States treat cannabis under the law. Though
nations vary in the aggressiveness of their enforcement on the supply side, there has been minimal experimentation in terms of
the limits of the UN conventions. The conventions do not mandate or define enforcement (except against the
cultivation of illicit drugs), and thus different countries interpret certain parts of the treaties in different ways. 7
Indeed, drug policies vary around the world—from use of the death penalty for drug crimes in some Middle Eastern countries to heroin injection rooms in Canada,
Switzerland, and other parts of Western Europe. Several countries (such as the Czech Republic, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and Azerbaijan) have removed criminal or
reduced penalties for the personal use and possession of all illicit drugs; others have limited decriminalization to marijuana. Progress
and challenges
related to drug control and treaty obligations are discussed at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), a 53-member
United Nations body that meets annually. The CND offers opportunities to advocate for specific approaches to drug
control, such as health-oriented measures and supply reduction. The latter policy is often debated at length at CND, and has
traditionally been heavily emphasized within international drug policy discussions. However, recently there have been an increasing
number of resolutions agreed to by all countries that address health-related issues. Still, countries
generally understand that the full-scale legalization of any drug under the conventions would violate
international law, and this can constrain national drug policy. For example, it is widely believed that the government
of the Netherlands has at times considered legalization of marijuana, but held back because of the
international treaties to which it is a signatory.
Legalization causes collapse of the IDCR and threatens the whole international treaty
system and is uniquely bad for international control of licit pharmaceuticals.
Bewley-Taylor 3
[David Bewley-Taylor, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy and founding Director of the
Global Drug Policy Observatory, “Challenging the UN drug control conventions: problems and
possibilities,” International Journal of Drug Policy, Volume 14, Issue 2, April 2003, Pages 171–179,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395903000057 // wyo-cjh]
Disregarding the treaties Another strategy would be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties or certain parts of them. In this
way they could institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example
the legalisation of cannabis and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. This option
has been gaining support amongst many opponents of the prohibition based international system for some time. Disregarding all or selected
components of the treaties, however, raises serious issues beyond the realm of drug control. The
possibility of nations unilaterally ignoring drug control treaty commitments could threaten the
stability of the entire treaty system. As a consequence states may be wary of opting out. Some international lawyers
argue that all treaties can naturally cease to be binding when a fundamental change of circumstances has
occurred since the time of signing (Starke, 1989, pp. 473–474). Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in the nature and extent of the drug
problem since the 1960s, this doctrine of rebus sic stantibus could probably be applied to the drug treaties. Yet
the selective application of such a principle would call into question the validity of many and varied
conventions. This “collective responsibility for global order” argument would of course be more persuasive were it not for the selective approach to
international law adopted by the United States of America. Washington's withdrawal from the Kyoto Treaty and repudiation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
had already gone a long way to threaten the treaty system before its recent announcement to “unsign” itself from the convention to establish an International
Criminal Court (Teather, 2002 and Lewis, 2002). In facilitating this unprecedented move the administration of George W. Bush seems to have asserted that the US is
also no longer bound by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Under the 1969 Convention, a country that has signed a treaty cannot act to defeat the
purpose of that treaty, even if it does not intend to ratify it. Thus, having set this precedent on the basis of national interest, Washington will surely find itself in an
awkward position vis-à-vis its opposition to any defection from the drug control treaties on similar grounds. Conclusions Nations
wishing to expand
national policy space by operating beyond the present confines of the current global drug prohibition
regime are faced with several possible paths. These all have their own problems and will certainly all encounter intense
opposition from the prohibition-oriented camp and the powerful US–UN axis. The possibility for Parties to
successfully revise the treaties is severely limited. Many opportunities exist for nations that favour the status quo, particularly the US, to block any move for
modification or amending. An official re-examination of the treaties at a conference may also provide prohibition-oriented nations with the opportunity to hijack
proceedings and strengthen the current regime. This
may lead Parties to seriously examine denouncing or disregarding
all or part of one or more of the conventions. As argued, a credible alliance of nations would be better able to withstand UN–US
opposition than a lone state. Nonetheless, levels of resilience would certainly differ between nations depending upon their economic status and relationship with
the US. The abandonment
of many multilateral treaties by the current Republican administration in Washington has also reopened debate on the efficacy of simply ignoring the drug conventions. If faced with censure for
, Parties will now be able to
argue that they are merely emulating the habits of a
hegemon. Such action seems doubtful though considering most democratic, particularly
defecting from the global prohibition regime
European nations (Fukuyama, 2002), still maintain a high regard for international law. Furthermore, since
the treaties fulfil an important role in the control of licit pharmaceuticals any withdrawal from the
international system would certainly be problematic.
Upholding the principles, norms, and procedures of International Law is critical to
avoiding nuclear war and ecological catastrophe
DAMROSCH AND MULLERSON ‘95
(Lori, Professor of Law @ Columbia and Rein, Prof of Int’l Law @ Kings College, Beyond Confrontation,
pg 1-2 //wyo-ef)
The contemporary world has an ever-increasing need for an international legal system that can
respond to the demands of our time. Of the many reasons for this fact, we will survey only a few of the
most salient. First and foremost is the increasing interdependence of all peoples. Even as the world is
riven with many contradictions and conflicts, it is also becoming more integrated with a greater need
for orderly, predictable conduct. Events, and especially natural and social disasters, even when they
occur within a single country, have more noticeable effects on conditions in the world at large. The
Chernobyl accident, the earthquake in Armenia, and internal political processes underway in the
territories of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – these and many other events occurring
within separate countries or regions have a global significance affecting the destiny of all peoples.
The intertwining of the economic life of diverse countries today is even greater than was the
interdependence of different regions within the same state only half a century ago. Order and
predictability of the behavior of actors on the international scene can be achieved first of all with the
aid of social norms, among which international law occupies an important place.
A second reason for the growth of the role of international law is inextricably connected with the first.
The threats of a thermonuclear catastrophe, universal ecological crisis, and acute economic problems
in developing countries are of global concern and endanger the very existence of humanity.
Resolution of these problems demands coordinated efforts of all states and peoples, which would be
impossible to achieve without the aid of international norms, procedures, institutions.
4
Text: The United States should decriminalize nearly all marihuana in the United States.
Prosecutorial decriminalization solves overcriminalization at the federal and state
level and sidesteps judicial and legislative politics.
Luna 12
[ERIK LUNA, Sydney and Frances Lewis Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law,
“PROSECUTORIAL DECRIMINALIZATION,” THE JOURNAOLF CRIMINALL AW & CRIMINOLOGY, Vol. 102,
No. 3, 2012,
http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7437&context=jclc // wyocjh]
I would like to suggest another way of looking at
overcriminalization
prosecutorial decriminalization has both positive and normative aspects
prosecutors have the power to decriminalize conduct and they are already doing it en
masse.
this power
can ameliorate some of the problems of
overcriminalization.
the prosecutorial function is steeped in
discretion
when the
legislature declares certain behavior criminal and attaches a particular punishment, prosecutors
exercise virtually limitless discretion to administer the relevant code section. The courts will not
demand that charges be leveled; nor will they upset a prosecutor's decision to bring charges nor are
judges likely to hinder plea negotiations and the concomitant agreements.
What is to be done in the meantime, during the interregnum between our overcriminalized present and a hopefully more reasonable future? Here,
. The relevant concept, "
,"
descriptive claim is that
. The
, in fact,
The prescriptive claim is that
, when exercised openly and pursuant to public reason,
The descriptive argument is straightforward-and, I think, relatively uncontroversial-involving just a few moves. First,
, which, as used here, simply means the power to choose between two or more courses of conduct.34 Discretion is a "residual concept," as James Vorenberg suggested, "the room left for subjective judgment" after taking into consideration the applicable
constraints, most notably, statutes and court decisions.35 Or to use Ronald Dworkin's famous simile, discretion is "like the hole of a doughnut," which "does not exist except as an area left open by a surrounding belt of restriction."3 6 In the present context,
;38
39 As then-Judge Warren Burger opined, "Few subjects are less adapted to
judicial review than the exercise by the Executive of his discretion in deciding when and whether to institute criminal proceedings, or what precise charge shall be made, or whether to dismiss a proceeding once brought." 4 0 The primary legal checks are the burdens of proof t o charge
and convict-respectively, probable cause and proof beyond a reasonable doubt 4 1 -along with the obligations of pretrial and trial procedure. In practice, however, the process scuttles few cases brought in earnest.42 Even in a world without overcriminalization, one might expect that the
The boundaries of language and foresight prevent a legislature from formulating
rules in every law enforcement scenario.
The necessity of political compromise also lends itself to statutory imprecision, freeing lawmakers
from having to make hard decisions that could upset voters
scope of prosecutorial discretion would be substantial.
For this reason, lawmakers may prefer general terms that capture broad swaths of conduct, ensuring that wrongdoers do not escape punishment through an inadvertent
loophole.
5
COLLAPSE IS ASSURED DO TO CAPITALISM’S UNSUSTAINABLE USE OF RESOURCES
LEADING TO ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE AND HUMAN EXTINCTION. NOW IS THE
OPPORTUNE TIME TO BREAK AWAY FROM CAPITALISM DURING THIS CRISIS.
Knight 09
[Alex Knight, Masters in Political Science, Organizer, teacher and writer in Philadelphia. Began organizing
students in college on anti-war and environmental issues. A real time Activist. “Is it the end of
capitalism”, May 4th, 2009, http://endofcapitalism.com/about/1-is-this-the-end-of-capitalism/, Access
Date 6/11/13, \\wyo-bb]
Capitalism requires growth. A system that requires growth cannot last forever on a planet that is defined by
ecological and social limits. Capitalism is therefore fundamentally unsustainable – sooner or later it will run up
against those limits and the system will stop functioning. At this moment we are in the midst of a crisis which is calling into
question the future of this system. Now is a perfect opportunity to envision a new way of living in the world
that can meet human needs while also respecting the needs of the planet. It is time to build this new world. The current
economic crisis which began in 2007 is unlike any previous crisis faced by global capitalism. In earlier downturns
there remained a way to grow out of it by expanding production – there were new resources and energy supplies,
new markets, and new pools of labor to exploit. The system just needed to expand its reach, because there was plenty of money
to make outside its existing grasp. If we study what lies at the root of today’s crisis, we will discover very real limits to growth blocking that path
this time. From extreme poverty alongside excessive consumption to exhaustion of resources and ecosystems, the system’s capacity for growth
has reached a breaking point. The
present economic recession might not be recorded in the history books as
the final chapter of capitalism. But the ongoing crisis illustrates that like Humpty-Dumpty, the
capitalist system is broken and there’s no sense continuing to use all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to try to
put it back together again. It would be wiser to spend those resources developing an economy that works
better for our communities and our planet. Contrary to what may be reported in the news, this is not merely a financial crisis.
Professor Richard Wolff in his excellent video Capitalism Hits the Fan explains that this crisis did not begin in the financial markets and it hasn’t
ended there. When the corporate media cast blame for the recession on abstractions like “toxic assets,” “collateralized debt obligations,”
“credit default swaps,” or focus discussion of the problem on the crimes and errors of individual investors and firms, they obscure the true
depth of the crisis. This is a crisis of the system itself, meaning the only solution is a total change in the structure of the economy.
Capitalism cannot be “fixed,” it must be replaced. Despite unprecedented efforts on the part of the King’s men, who have
spared no expense on his recovery, Humpty remains in critical condition today and his long-term prospects are not
looking good. Journalist and former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins has been tracking the extent of the Wall St. bailout, and
reported in December ’09 that the US government has in the past year committed over $14 trillion to buy up worthless debt from troubled
banks. (Putting this in perspective, the entire yearly economy of the United States is also $14 trillion.) Despite these unprecedented giveaways,
businesses continue to close their doors or downsize their workforces, pushing the official US unemployment rate over 10% as of November
’09. But this number only includes those jobless workers who are currently looking for full-time employment. A more accurate figure, including
the underemployed and those discouraged from actively seeking employment would be 17.5%, or nearly 1 of every 5 American workers out of
a job. While the US Congress quickly gave out trillions of dollars to banks and corporations facing hardship, it has thus far created no new job
training or unemployment programs to ease the suffering of the millions of workers losing their incomes. Nor does it appear willing to create a
public health care program for the nearly 50 million Americans now without access to a doctor. At the same time the US government continues
to drag its feet on the issue of climate change, recently joining with China to “wreck” the Copenhagen climate summit (in Bill McKibben’s
words) that was attempting to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. Such favoritism towards banks and corporations while neglecting the
basic well-being of the public and the planet reflects the sickness of capitalist priorities. In this system, profit is valued more highly than human
and non-human life. Capitalism requires
growth, and according to an article published in New Scientist, growth is “killing the
Earth.” The article included the below graph, showing the size of the global economy (GDP) skyrocketing over the last fifty years. [GRAPH
OMITTED] But this tremendous growth in economic output corresponds to an equally rapid growth in
damage done to the global environment. Forest loss, fisheries depleted, ozone destruction, species
extinctions, carbon dioxide emissions, and the rise of global temperatures all race towards the top of the page,
suggesting that if capitalism were able to recover from its current fall and continue on a path of endless
growth, there soon might not be any planet left to live
The legalization of pot is just an excuse to open up more revenue streams while
barring others from participating, allowing the stigmatization of those considered
economic losers
Dixon 14
[Bruce A. Dixon, Managing editor at Black Agenda Report and the co-chair of the Georgia Green Party,
01/08/2014, “Is the End of Marijuana Prohibition the End of the War On Drugs? Probably Not.”,
http://blackagendareport.com/content/end-marijuana-prohibition-end-war-drugs-probably-not, \\wyobb]
The forty years of so-called “war on drugs” has been the rhetorical excuse for a nationwide policy of
punitive overpolicing in black and brown communities. Although black and white rates of drug use have been virtually
identical, law enforcement strategies focused police resources almost exclusively upon communities of color. Prosecutors and judges did their
bit as well, charging and convicting whites significantly less often, and to less severe sentences than blacks. The
forty years war on
drugs has been the front door of what can only be described as the prison state, in which African
Americans are 13% of the population but more than 40% of the prisoners, and the chief interactions
of government with young black males is policing, the courts and imprisonment. Given all that, the beginning
of the end of marijuana prohibition, first in Colorado and soon to be followed by other states ought to be great
good news. But not necessarily. Ask yourself, what would it look like if policymakers wanted to end the
prohibition of marijuana, but not necessarily the the war on drugs. What if they desired to lock down
the potential economic opportunities opened up by legalizing weed to themselves and their class, to
a handful of their wealthy and well-connected friends and campaign contributors?
What if they wanted to
make the legal marijuana market safe for predatory agribusiness, which would like to claim lucrative patents on all the genetic varieties of
marijuana which can be legally grown, as they already try to do with other crops? "The end of marijuana prohibition is not designed to create
jobs in our communities, nor is it intended to shrink the prison state..." If they wanted to do those things, the system in place in Colorado today
would be a good start. In Denver today, low income property owners can't just plant pot in the back yard or on the roof in hopes of making one
mortgage payment a year out of twelve, it doesn't work that way. Ordinary households are limited to 3 plants per adult, and for reference only
the female plants are good for smoking, and prohibited from selling the weed or the seed. To
participate in the marijuana
economy as anything but a consumer requires background checks, hefty license fees, a minimum of
hundreds of thousands to invest, and the right connections. All this currently drives the price of legal weed in Colorado
to over $600 per ounce, including a 25% state tax, roughly double the reported street price of illegal weed. So to enable the state to collect that
tax money, and the bankers, growers and investors to collect their profits from marijuana taxed by the state and regulated in the corporate
interest, cops and judges and jailers in near future, in Colorado and in your state as well, figure to be just as busy as they always have been the
last forty years, doing pretty much what they've always done... conducting a war on illegal drugs, chiefly in the poorer and blacker sections of
town, with predictable results. The
end of marijuana prohibition is not designed to create jobs in our
communities, nor is it intended to shrink the prison state. Our ruling class simply does not allow
economic growth that they can't monopolize, and the modern prison state has never been about
protecting the public from drugs or crime. Prisons and our lifelong persecution of former prisoners
serve to single out, brand and stigmatize the economic losers in modern capitalist society,
so that those
hanging on from paycheck to paycheck can have someone to look down upon and so that they might imagine that this vast edifice of inequality
is, if not just, inevitable.
The alternative is to unconditionally embrace the communist hypothesis. Every political
action must be evaluated as either advancing or destroying the destiny of humanity
Badiou 8 [Alain Badiou, former Chair of Philosophy at École normale supérieure, “The Meaning of
Sarkozy,” 2008, pp. 97-103, wyo-sc]
I would like to situate the Sarkozy episode, which is not an impressive page in French history, in a broader horizon. I Let us picture a kind of
Hegelian fresco of recent world history - by which I do not, like our journalists, mean the triad Mitterrand-Chirac-Sarkozy, but rather the
development of the politics of working-class and popular emancipation over nearly two centuries. Since the French Revolution and its gradually
universal echo, since the most radically egalitarian developments of that revolution, the decrees of Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety on
the 'maximum' and Babeuf's theorizations, we
know (when I say 'we', I mean humanity in the abstract, and the knowledge in question is
communism is the right hypothesis. Indeed, there is no other, or at
least I am not aware of one. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the
market economy, to parliamentary democracy - the form of state suited to capitalism - and to the
inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. What do we mean by 'communism'? As Marx
argued in the 1844 ManUJcriptJ, communism is an idea regarding the destiny of the human species. This use of the
word must be completely distinguished from the meaning of the adjective 'communist' that is so worn-out today, in such
expressions as 'communist parties', 'communist states' or 'communist world' - never mind that 'communist state' is an oxymoron, to which the
universally available on the paths of emancipation) that
obscure coinage 'socialist state' has wisely been preferred. Even if, as we shall see, these uses of the word belong to a time when the
hypothesis was still coming-to-be. In its generic sense, 'communist' means
first of all, in a negative sense - as we can read in
its canonical text The Communist ManijeJto - that the logic of classes, of the fundamental subordination of people
who actually work for a dominant class, can be overcome. This arrangement, which has been that of history ever since
antiquity, is not inevitable. Consequently, the oligarchic power of those who possess wealth and organize its
circulation, crystallized in the might of states, is not inescapable. The communist hypothesis is that a
different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and
even the division of labour: every individual will be a 'multi-purpose worker', and in particular people will circulate between manual
and intellectual work, as well as between town and country. The private appropriation of monstrous fortunes and their transmission by
inheritance will disappear. The
existence of a coercive state separate from civil society, with its military and
police, will no longer seem a self-evident necessity. There will be, Marx tells us - and he saw this point as his major
contribution - after a brief sequence of 'proletarian dictatorship' charged with destroying the remains of the old world, a long sequence of
reorganization on the basis of a 'free association' of producers and creators, which will make possible a 'withering away' of the state.
'Communism' as such only denotes this very general set of intellectual representations. This set is
the horizon of any initiative,
however local and limited in time it may be, that breaks with the order of established opinions - the
necessity of inequalities and the state instrument for protecting these - and composes a fragment of a politics of
emancipation. In other words, communism is what Kant called an 'Idea', with a regulatory function, rather than a
programme. It is absurd to characterize communist principles in the sense I have defined them here as utopian, as is so often done.
They are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion, that serve to produce lines of
demarcation between different forms of politics. By and large, a particular political sequence is either
compatible with these principles or opposed to them, in which case it is reactionary. 'Communism', in
this sense, is a heuristic hypothesis that is very frequently used in political argument, even if the word itself does not appear. If it is
still true, as Sartre said, that 'every anti-communist is a swine', it is because any political sequence that, in its
principles or lack of them, stands in formal contradiction with the communist hypothesis in its generic
sense, has to be judged as opposed to the emancipation of the whole of humanity, and thus to the properly
human destiny of humanity. Whoever does not illuminate the coming-to-be of humanity with the communist
hypothesis - whatever words they use, as such words matter little - reduces humanity, as far as its collective becoming is
concerned, to animality. As we know, the contemporary - that is, the capitalist name of this animality - is
'competition'. The war dictated by self-interest, and nothing more. As a pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has
no doubt existed in a practical state since the beginnings of the existence of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state
coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, we have the appearance of rudiments or fragments of the
communist hypothesis. This is why, in a pamphlet titled De l'UJeologie, which I wrote in collaboration with the late lamented Francois
Balmes and was published in 1976, we proposed to identity 'communist invariants'f Popular revolts, such as that of the slaves led by Spartacus,
or that of the German peasants led by Thomas Munzer, are examples of this practical existence of communist invariants. However, in the
explicit form that it was given by certain thinkers and activists of the French Revolution, the
communist hypothesis inaugurates
political modernity. It was this that laid low the mental structures of the ancien regime, yet without being tied to those
'democratic' political forms that the bourgeoisie would make the instrument for its own pursuit of
power. This point is essential: from the beginning, the communist hypothesis in no way coincided with the 'democratic' hypothesis that
would lead to present-day parliamentarism. It subsumes a different history and different events. What seems important and creative when
illuminated by the communist hypothesis is different in kind from what bourgeois-democratic historiography selects. That is indeed why Marx,
giving materialist foundations to the first effective great sequence of the modern politics of emancipation, both took over the word
'communism' and distanced himself from any kind of democratic 'politicism' by maintaining, after the lesson of the Paris Commune, that the
bourgeois state, no matter how democratic, must be destroyed. Well, I leave it to you to judge what is
important or not, to judge the points whose consequences you choose to assume against the horizon
of the communist hypothesis. Once again, it is the right hypothesis, and we can appeal to its principles, whatever the declensions
or variations that these undergo in different contexts. Sartre said in an interview, which I paraphrase: If the communist hypothesis
is not right, if it is not practicable, well, that means that humanity is not a thing in itself, not very
different from ants or termites. What did he mean by that? If competition, the 'free market', the sum of little
pleasures, and the walls that protect you from the desire of the weak, are the alpha and omega of all
collective and private existence, then the human animal is not worth a cent. And it is this worthlessness to which Bush
with his aggressive conservatism and crusader spirit, Blair the Pious with his militarist rhetoric, and Sarkozy with his 'work, family, country'
discipline, want to reduce the existence of the immense majority of living individuals. And the 'Left' is still worse, simply juxtaposing to this
vacant violence a vague spirit of charity. To morbid competition, the pasteboard victories of daddy's boys and girls, the ridiculous supermen of
unleashed finance, the coked-up heroes of the planetary stock exchange, this Left can only oppose the same actors with a bit of social
politeness, a little walnut oil in the wheels, crumbs of holy wafer for the disinherited - in other words, borrowing from Nietzsche, the bloodless
figure of the 'last man. To put an end once and for all to May '68 means agreeing that our only choice is between the hereditary nihilism of
finance and social piety. It not only means accepting that communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, not only acknowledging that the Parti
Communiste Francais has been wretchedly defeated, but also and above all it means abandoning the hypothesis that May '68 was a militant
invention precisely aware ofthe failure of state'communism'. And thus that May '68, and still more so the five years that followed, inaugurated
a new sequence for the genuine communist hypothesis, one that always keeps its distance from the state. Certainly, no one could say where all
this might lead, but we knew in any case that what was at stake was the rebirth of this hypothesis. If the thing that Sarkozy is the name of
succeeds in imposing the necessity of abandoning any idea of a rebirth of this kind, if
human society is a collection of
individuals pursuing their self-interest, if this is the eternal reality, then it is certain that the
philosopher can and must abandon the human animal to its sad destiny. But we shall not let a triumphant Sarkozy
dictate the meaning of our existence, or the tasks of philosophy. For what we are witnessing in no way imposes such a renunciation of the
communist hypothesis, but simply a consideration of the moment at which we find ourselves in the history of this hypothesis.
Cartels
Drug cartel containment is working now, even with limited legalization
Elish 14 Yale Globalist Notebook blogger covering Latin American politics and culture
Paul, “21 Drugs –Legalization, Marijuana, and Cartels.” Yale Globalist, 2014,
http://tyglobalist.org/onlinecontent/blogs/21-drugs-legalization-marijuana-and-cartels/
An article from The Washington Post about “How marijuana legalization will affect Mexico’s cartels, in charts” is also a
useful resource on the subject, especially if one is seeking evidence downplaying the effect on cartels. The article cites a Stanford expert’s pie
chart that shows marijuana representing 17% of cartel revenues. The chart makes it evident that cartels don’t live on pot alone, so cocaine,
methamphetamines, and non-drug activities (e.g. human smuggling and kidnapping) could help them weather legalization. What’s more,
Colorado and Washington hardly put a dent in marijuana cash flow compared to “bigger” places like
Texas. Ultimately, the wait-and-see approach appears to be the order of the day with reference to the consequences of
legalizing pot in the U.S. and abroad, and with reference to the changing dynamics of the War on
Drugs. At the moment, things generally seem to be on the up-and-up. Mexican President Peña Nieto is
triumphantly tweeting about the capture of El Chapo and resulting possibilities for smaller-scale
cartels, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is getting psyched about extra dough rolling in from pot taxes, and I’m contenting myself with
my unquestionably legal, questionably advisable escapades in New Haven’s bar scene. Even so, I, along with many policy-makers, will be
interested to see what we’re saying on the subject of drug reform in the near and distant future.
Nationwide legalization will increase drug cartel violence in new markets—net worse
for their impacts
Francis 14, editor-at-large for the Fiscal Times; MA degree from Georgetown Univ.
David “Legalizing Pot Makes Mexican Cartels Even More Dangerous” January 7,
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/07/Legalizing-Pot-Makes-Mexican-Cartels-Even-MoreDangerous
Legalizing Pot Makes Mexican Cartels Even More Dangerous.
The growing movement to legalize marijuana is radically altering the way Mexican drug cartels do
business, forcing them to seek other revenue streams through increased illegal activity. Right now, only
Washington State and Colorado have decriminalized pot. Taken together, they account for just a small portion of the American marijuana
market. But that’s just the start of a trend that’s growing like a weed. Peter Reuter, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public
Policy and Department of Criminology, said he expects the decriminalization movement to grow rapidly in the coming years. “I’ve always been
quite skeptical that anything would come of these movements” to decriminalize pot, he said. “I think now that in five years half the country will
be living in states that have decriminalized marijuana.” Wider
decriminalization would push the price of pot down,
taking away a key revenue stream for cartels like Los Zetas and La Familia. It’s pushing them to dive
deeper into illegal markets for other drugs. It’s also forcing them to adopt tactics used by militant groups in
Africa, upping the ante with the Mexican government and putting them at odds with powerful energy
interests. A 2012 study by the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness says legalization in Colorado will cost cartels $1.425 billion annually,
while Washington State’s legalization would cost cartels $1.372 billion. The study also found that legalization in these two states would push
the cartels’ annual revenues down 20 to 30 percent, and cut revenue to the Sinaloa cartel by 50 percent. Related: Why Legalizing Marijuana Is a
Smart Fiscal Move In two separate reports — one in 2010 and one from last September — Rand
Corp. dismissed these numbers as
that the biggest domino to fall would be California, a state where oneseventh of all pot in the United States is consumed. Reuter said he expects California to decriminalize pot in the coming
overstated. These reports found
years. He said the only reason a 2010 referendum to legalize marijuana failed was because it was poorly worded. “These two states account for
5 percent of U.S. pot consumption. It’s not a big deal. If California legalizes, that changes things,” he said. Reuter added that the lack of
pushback from conservative interest groups also makes wider decriminalization more likely. Just one group — Smart Approaches to Marijuana,
headed by former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who has struggled with substance abuse — is vocally opposed to decriminalization. Other conservative
groups have been oddly quiet, Reuter said. “One of the fascinating things is how little real criticism there’s been from the right,” he said. “Social
conservatives have not made much of this.” That could change since a new study from Northwestern University shows teenagers who smoke
marijuana daily may suffer changes in brain structure that resemble schizophrenia. George W. Grayson, an expert on Mexican cartels at The
College of William & Mary in Virginia, said, “Mexican
syndicates are diversifying their sources of revenue beyond marijuana,
cocaine and heroin. They are heavily involved in kidnapping — number one in the world — extortion,
prostitution, migrant smuggling,” he said. “In addition, the cartels are ever-more active in stealing and exporting
opioids such as Oxycontin and Roxicodone. Even cigarette smuggling is on the rise.” Kidnapping has become so
common that some have even been caught on tape. According to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography,
more than 105,000 people were kidnapped in 2012. Grayson also said that the cartels are stealing from energy
companies, a practice more common in West Africa than Latin America. For instance, in 2012, the Mexican Army estimated that 538,000
gallons of fuel were stolen in May in Veracruz alone. “Los Zetas, in particular, are stealing lots of oil, gas, explosives and solvents from Pemex,
the state oil company. Pemex uses the chemicals for hydraulic fracking; Los Zetas for cooking methamphetamines.”
Data disproves hegemony impacts
Fettweis, 11
Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or
Restraint? Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316–332, EBSCO
It is perhaps worth noting that there
is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the relative level of U.S.
activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest the opposite may be
true. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was
spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense hawks and
believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national and global security. “No serious analyst of
American military capabilities,” argued Kristol and Kagan, “doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s
responsibilities to itself and to world peace.”52 On the other hand, if the pacific trends
were not based upon U.S. hegemony
but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an increase in global
instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful while the
United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered by a lesscapable United States military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No
militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms
races, and no regional balancing
The economy won’t collapse—it’s more resilient than ever—multiple warrants
Bloomberg 13
Klimasinska, Kasia, and Chandra Shobhana. "America Resilient Five Years After Great
Recession." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 17 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 May 2014.
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/america-resilient-five-years-after-greatrecession.html>.
“My boss at the time said to me: ‘Well, we know it’s going to be a devastating event, and therefore they’re not going to let it happen.’ And I
said: ‘Well, I don’t know; maybe they will,’” said Harris, now co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Corp. (BAC) While
Harris’s premonition proved true -- Lehman’s bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15, 2008, exacerbated the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression -- the
economy, with help from the Federal Reserve, has emerged from the ruins “in much better health,”
is picking up and some economists
predict the expansion, now in its fifth year, may last longer than most. The signs of resilience are
everywhere: Households continue to spend. Businesses are investing and hiring. Home sales are
rebounding, and the automobile industry is surging. Banks have healthier balance sheets, and credit is
easing. All this coincides with the economy shedding the excesses of the past, such as unmanageable
levels of consumer and corporate debt. “We are in a much better place than we were five years ago,” said Mark Zandi, chief
he said. The U.S. is weathering federal budget cuts and higher payroll taxes, growth
economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “Consumers are feeling much, much better; certainly investors are.”
Confidence is hovering around a five-year high, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has climbed 80 percent since the 18month recession ended in June 2009. This month, the share of Americans who say jobs are currently hard to get
decreased to 33 percent, the lowest since September 2008, the month of Lehman’s collapse, according to a report today
from the Conference Board. “Considering the trauma we went through and the panic in the markets, the economy has really done pretty well,”
and is “strong enough to support higher equity prices,” said John Carey, a portfolio manager at Pioneer Investment Management Inc. in Boston,
which manages about $200 billion. “Stocks look attractive relative to bonds,” and shares of consumer-related and regional banks will benefit
the most from growth in spending and demand for credit.
Hemp
Hemp biofuel industry will take forever- No infrastructure, boom bust cycle, Low
Yields
Wishnia 13
[Steven Wishnia, Alternet Writer, SATURDAY, FEB 16, 2013 08:00 AM MST, “Can hemp save the
economy?”
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/16/politicians_are_pushing_to_bring_back_the_hemp_partner/,
\\wyo-bb]
One problem for the industry is that hemp’s decades of illegality have left almost no infrastructure
for growing, processing and selling it.
As no hemp has been grown legally in the U.S. since 1957, says Murphy, many parts of
the industry would have to be re-established virtually from scratch. To begin with, all the seed stock is gone, except for feral ditchweed.
“You’d have to breed again for varieties that work well here,” he says. Kentucky was once a major hemp producer, and
it also provided seeds for strains better suited to different latitudes, such as Wisconsin. There were also strains bred for fiber or for larger seeds
that yielded more oil. Currently, Murphy says, Canada uses mostly Russian and European stock. Those seeds could also be cross-bred with local
feral strains. This lack of infrastructure has been a major barrier to producing hemp clothing and paper. Building a
new decorticator mill for hemp paper would cost more than $100 million, says Murphy. Several small companies are using hemp for specialized
products such as archival-quality, filter, or cigarette papers, but its most likely general use will be when mixed with recycled paper, says
Steenstra. “Blend in 10 to 15 percent hemp, and it’s great for making better-quality recycled paper,” he says. When paper gets recycled, he
explains, its fibers get shorter, and the long fibers of hemp strengthen it. There are similar issues with clothing. Though Calvin Klein, Ralph
Lauren, Giorgio Armani, and several lesser-known manufacturers are using hemp in clothes, “the whole textile industry is built on short-fiber
cotton and synthetics,” says Steenstra. “There’s no infrastructure for processing hemp fiber into textiles.” Hemp
oil for biofuel,
another use dreamed of in the ‘90s, is unlikely to be practical. At 50 gallons per acre, even if every
acre of U.S. cropland were used for hemp , it would supply current U.S. demand for oil for less than
three weeks.
On the other hand, the hemp-food industry is “pretty well settled,” says Murphy. If hemp growing were legalized in the
U.S., he adds, a lot of Canadian processors would probably open facilities here. Legalization would also help hemp food break out of its nichemarket status. If it received “GRAS” (Generally Recognized As Safe) status from the Food and Drug Administration, major brands would be less
reluctant to use it. Until then, he says, Coca-Cola won’t put hemp milk in Odwalla Future Shakes, and we’re not likely to see hempseed Clif Bars.
Canada’s experience illustrates the problems of developing a new industry, says Murphy. Hemp
farming there has been through two boom-and-bust cycles since it was legalized in 1998. The nation’s
production leaped to 35,000 acres in 1999 and plummeted to about 4,000 in 2001, according to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture and
Rural Development in Alberta, Canada’s main hemp-producing province. It
soared to 48,000 acres in 2006 and fell to less
than 10,000 two years later.
No impact to warming
Mendelsohn 9
Robert O., the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
Yale University, June 2009, “Climate Change and Economic Growth,” online:
http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/gcwp060web.pdf
The heart of the debate about climate change comes from a number of warnings from scientists and others that give the
impression that human-induced climate change is an immediate threat to society (IPCC 2007a,b; Stern 2006).
Millions of people might be vulnerable to health effects (IPCC 2007b), crop production might fall in the low latitudes (IPCC 2007b), water
supplies might dwindle (IPCC 2007b), precipitation might fall in arid regions (IPCC 2007b), extreme events will grow exponentially (Stern 2006),
and between 20–30 percent of species will risk extinction (IPCC 2007b). Even worse, there may be catastrophic events such as the melting of
Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets causing severe sea level rise, which would inundate hundreds of millions of people (Dasgupta et al. 2009).
Proponents argue there is no time to waste. Unless greenhouse gases are cut dramatically today, economic growth and well‐being may be at
risk (Stern 2006). These
statements are largely alarmist and misleading . Although climate change is a serious problem that
deserves attention, society’s
immediate behavior has an extremely low probability of leading to
catastrophic consequences .
2NC
Cartel Shift Turn
Mexican cartels effectively contained now—arrest and death of key leaders.
Johnson 14
[Tim Johnson, reporter for McClatchy Newspapers based in Mexico City, “Will Mexican cartels go the
way of Colombia crime syndicates?” McClatchy Newspapers, 2/24/14, http://news.msn.com/indepth/will-mexican-cartels-go-the-way-of-colombia-crime-syndicates // wyo-cjh]
But even as the internal jockeying intensified, experts predicted that the arrest of the legendary crime boss over the
weekend would prove to be a watershed event likely to usher in the breakup of Mexico's huge crime
syndicates. "The fragmentation we've seen here in Colombia will be replicated in Mexico," said Jeremy McDermott, a former British army
officer based in Medellin, Colombia, who's a co-director of InSightCrime, a research group. "The capture of Chapo will
accelerate that process in Mexico of criminal fragmentation. The days of big cartels are gone." Considered the world's No. 1
crime lord, Guzman was snared in a messy bedroom in an oceanfront condo in Mazatlan early Saturday. Mexican and U.S. counter-drug agents
had tracked him over several weeks, tracing him to safe houses in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, and then staying on his trail to Mazatlan when he
disappeared through a series of tunnels and drainage pipes. Guzman, whose Spanish nickname means "Shorty," built
the Sinaloa Cartel into
one of the world's biggest narcotics-trafficking groups, with a reach deep into Latin America, across the Atlantic to Africa and
Europe, and into major U.S. cities. He operated the cartel with the help of at least two other reputed crime chieftains, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Juan Jose "El
Azul" Esparragoza, both in their 60s and allegedly with decades of experience in smuggling narcotics to the United States. Guzman has worked with Zambada since
an earlier drug gang, the Guadalajara Cartel, was divided up in the late 1980s, and shared management with Esparragoza of the Sinaloa Cartel, which sometimes is
called a federation because of its loose organization. Potential rivals are watching closely to see whether they might make a move on Sinaloa Cartel turf or on its
leadership, said Sylvia Longmire, a security consultant who's the author of the 2011 book "Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug War." " There
will be
a lot of wait-and-see going on by a lot of groups: rivals like Los Zetas, smaller trafficking groups that are members of
the federation who are weighing their options, and cocaine suppliers who want to make sure the federation is a stable client," Longmire said. "El Mayo
and El Azul need to work fast to exude confidence and power to friends and foes alike," she added. If the two aging leaders don't move fast, the criminal underworld
that the Sinaloa Cartel controlled may begin to crumble. "When
there's no control, what was organized crime becomes
disorganized crime," McDermott said. The cartel's biggest rival in Mexico, Los Zetas, fractured after the killing in
October 2012 of its undisputed leader, Heriberto Lazcano, and the arrest last July of his successor, Miguel Trevino Morales. In significant
ways, Mexico might be following the course of Colombia, which was the epicenter of the global cocaine
trade in the 1980s and 1990s under the Medellin and Cali cartels but began to take a lesser place as a crime headquarters
after the leaders of those cartels were slain or imprisoned. A plethora of weaker successor groups with names such as the
Urabenos, the Rastrojos and La Oficina became wholesale suppliers to the more powerful Mexican groups, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel.
Cartel culture breaking down now and violence is decreasing—intergroup violence and
police raids.
Barrett 6/24
[Claudia Barrett, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “THE BREAKDOWN OF
CARTEL CULTURE,” COHA, June 24, 2014, http://www.coha.org/the-breakdown-of-cartel-culture/ //
wyo-cjh]
The Mexican drug war has been punctuated by police success
the arrest of
head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel
heightened the morale of Mexican and
U.S. authorities.
in arresting high-profile narcotics traffickers. Last February,
Joaquin El Chapo (Shorty),
, made international headlines and
elusive figure
both
Nevertheless, for many Mexican citizens, there is significant doubt that El Chapo’s arrest will have a substantial detrimental impact on the operations of the Sinaloa cartel, or on the brimming inventory of other drug traffickers that continue to
wreak havoc in Mexico.[1] The organizations have proven to be a force as relentless as the mythological hydra; chop off the head, and two more grow back in its place. This situation was best demonstrated with the July 2013 arrest of the particularly violent drug lord Miguel Ángel
Treviño, leader of Los Zetas, another Mexican cartel. Hailed as a major success by the Mexican military, Los Zetas quickly recovered its balance, choosing Omar Treviño Morales as its new successor. Unfortunately for the Zetas, the younger Morales brother lacks the leadership skills and
legitimacy of the deceased kingpin and has floundered in the midst of police take downs of Los Zetas members and serious competition elsewhere in the criminal world. [2] *Like most criminal organizations, Los Zetas has a complex network of individuals propping up the illicit cartels in
Los Zetas has retained a stronghold
the organization is losing its
grasp of events along the United States-Mexico border
High profile arrests tend to enable the rise of third
party groups
case one of its leaders falters. Although
in 11 of Mexico’s 31 states even through numerous captures,
, particularly in the area surrounding Nuevo Laredo in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas. It would appear that the bulk of the
threats to Los Zetas come from within the drug trafficking network and criminal world, not from the government or its security forces.
, which consequently have the effect splintering, or dividing the cartels into smaller bodies. This splintering, which was on ce a beneficial manner of evading capture has now caused Los Zetas to fall prey to these smaller, but brutally violent, imitation
gangs[3]. For example, one splinter group, Los Legionarios, has successfully managed to threaten Los Zetas by driving the remnants of the cartel out of its territory and interfering with their shipment routes[4]. Therefore, the loss of the group’s leader is not t he biggest hindrance for such
cartels; rather, the largest risk can be attributed to other trafficking groups becoming adept at mimicking tactics, and subsequently using them to challenge established trafficking organizations. To make matters worse, the v ery means through which the U.S. and Mexican governments
combat the cartels is not necessarily conducive to long-term prevention of drug trafficking. In Colombia, splintering can be observed with Los Rastrojos, a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking grou p that has been losing influence for some time, especially after 46 of its about 1,500
members were arrested in late May [5]. As a defensive strategy against anticipated government raids, they have decentralized. Additionally, they have found rivals in ins urgent groups, such as the drug trafficking organization Los Urabeños, who have gained more cohesiveness as a group
Looking at Colombia
where drug trafficking is in
decline
rival gangs have been able to weaken cartels. When their leaders were arrested
Colombian cartels were
disempowered
The
remaining members
fragment
which put them at the mercy
of leftist insurgency groups
The same
pattern of splintering cartels is presently happening in Mexico. government pressure
seems to serve as a catalyst for the collapse of cartels
and thus are able to effectively sell and transport products while waging a violent street war against the scattered Rastrojos[6].
as a case study, a country
, it is evident that
, the
only slightly
, as the drug lords were able to continue to run the business from prison (the case of the famous Pablo Escobar from the Medellin Cartel comes to mind).
realized that the large cartel was more vulnerable to government attack and therefore chose to
into smaller divisions,
like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC[7]. This breakdown of Colombian cartels enabled similar Mexican groups to take the lead in the drug trafficking world.
While
from Mexico City and Washington
, decentralization is the most debilitating factor as it allows third party actors to attack the remains of the drug organization. In Colombia,
many suspect that the mass arrests’ close proximity to the country’s presidential elections that intensified on May 25 was an effort to increase President Juan Manuel Santos’ popularity[8]. Major busts frequently occur in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), which provides funding, police training, and even conducts raids. This suggests that local forces save their drug busting energies for appeasing the American government while often turn a blind eye to traffickers on a daily basis. The threat of arrest and product confiscation exists
Police raids have the initial effect of punching holes in cartels
groups are at greater risk from other criminal gangs.
and causes multiple fractures among drug trafficking organizations.
may
but ultimately
these
Indeed, U.S., Colombian, and Mexican policies of backing “ally” cartels have failed to create an entirely inhospitable environment for drug
traffickers. Proportionally lower rates of incarceration among the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel members can be linked to the preferential treatment they normally receive from the authorities. For several years, Mexican authorities have encouraged the Sinaloa Cartel to antagonize the Gulf
Cartel and Los Zetas, who are perceived to be more threatening.[9] Therefore, the authorities’ actions have escalated an already brutal street war over territory and power[10]. According to El Universal and Time Magazine, the United States is reported to have met with the leadership of
the Sinaloa Cartel over 50 times between 2000 and 2012, permitting them to carry on its business unhindered by the DEA in exchange for information about rival organizations[11]. The Sinaloa Cartel has grown substantially more powerful and, as a result has managed to control police
through threats and bribes.[12] Instead of working to weaken the cartels comprehensively, the Mexican government is disabling one cartel while unintentionally building up another. This is a short-sighted strategy that will do little to de-incentivize drug trafficking in the long term. Drug
the cartel culture that has been so pervasive for the last 30 years is gradually
weakening.
it is likely that this trend of cartel decentralization
will pave the way for an increasingly stable situation that can be more adequately handled by police
and other security forces.
trade continues to be highly profitable in Latin America, yet
After the patterns of violence that seem to inevitably follow the breakdown of the cartel system diminish,
US can limit cartel violence now, but legalization pushes both sides over the brink
Friedman 08 founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the
private intelligence corporation STRATFOR
George, “The Geopolitics of Dope,” January 29, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/
geopolitics_dope#axzz38ialMhgD
Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United
States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling
drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary.
Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of
organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted
practice. The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader,
geopolitical context. The U.S. border with Mexico has been intermittently turbulent since the U.S. occupation of northern Mexico. The
annexation of Texas following its anti-Mexican revolution and the Mexican-American War created a borderland, an area in which the political
border is clearly delineated but the cultural and economic borders are less clear and more dynamic. This is the case with many borders,
including the U.S.-Canadian one, but the Mexican border has gone through periods of turbulence in the past and is going through one right
now. There
always have been uncontrolled economic transactions and movements along the border.
Both sides understood that the cost of controlling and monitoring these transactions outstripped the
benefit. Long before NAFTA came into existence, social and economic movement in both directions -- but particularly from Mexico to the
United States -- were fairly uncontrolled. Borderland transactions in particular, local transactions in proximity to the border region (retail
shopping, agricultural transfers and so on), were uncontrolled. So was smuggling. Trade in stolen U.S. cars and parts shipped into Mexico, labor
from Mexico shipped into the United States, etc., were seen as tolerable costs for an open border. A low-friction border, one that easily could
be traversed at low cost -- without extended waits -- was important to both sides. In 2006, the United States imported $198 billion in goods
from Mexico and exported $134 billion to Mexico. This makes Mexico the third-largest trading partner of the United States and also makes it
one of the more balanced major trade relationships the United States has. Loss of Mexican markets would hurt the U.S. economy substantially.
The U.S. advantage in selling to Mexico is low-cost transport. Lose that through time delays at the border and the Mexican market becomes
competitive for other countries. About 13 percent of all U.S. exports are bought by Mexico. Not disrupting this trade and not raising its cost has
been a fundamental principle of U.S.-Mexican relations, one long predating NAFTA. Leaving aside the contentious issue of whether illegal
immigration hurts or helps the United States, the steps required to control that immigration would impede bilateral trade. The United States
therefore has been loath to impose effective measures, since any measures that would be effective against population movement also would
impose friction on trade. The
United States has been willing to tolerate levels of criminality along the border.
The only time when the United States shifted its position was when organized groups in Mexico both
established themselves north of the political border and engaged in significant violence. Thus, in 1916, when
the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa began operations north of the border, the U.S. Army moved into Mexico to try to destroy his base of
operations. This
has been the line that, when crossed, motivated the United States to take action,
regardless of the economic cost. The current upsurge in violence is now pushing that line.
Legalization decreases drug revenues for cartels—increases cartel violence.
Bond et al. 10
[Beau Kilmer, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Brittany M. Bond, Peter H. Reuter, “Reducing Drug Trafficking
Revenues and Violence in Mexico Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help?” Rand Corp, 2010,
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf // wyo-cjh]
The DTOs can be defined as consisting of the following: (1) a set of hierarchical relationships that allow higher-level members to command their subordinates to
commit violent and risky actions, (2) a reputation for providing above-market earning opportunities to low-skilled workers willing to take particular kinds of risks, (3)
a network of relationships with corrupt law enforcement officials, (4) a network of suppliers and customers for various drugs, and (5) ready access to capital for
illegal ventures. Presumably, the DTO demand for labor will decline, at least at the aggregate level. Given the lack of specialization, one
would think almost all the individual DTOs will suffer some decline. One question is whether those “reductions in force” can be achieved through “natural attrition”
or whether they will require “layoffs,” to use familiar industrial jargon. Large-scale
dismissals might carry a peculiar risk, both for
the organization and for society in general. Those who are fired may try to create their own
organizations, so DTO managers may have to think strategically about whom to dismiss. Also, those leaving have probably become
accustomed to earning levels they cannot attain in legal trade. Since the whole industry would be
affected by the downturn, other DTOs will not be hiring. Thus, the fired agents might attempt to
compete with their former employers. Hence, in the short run, there could be additional violence resulting
from at least three sources: • conflict between the current leaders and the dismissed labor • within
DTOs. Even after the firing of excess labor, the earnings of the leadership most likely will decline. One way the individual
manager might compensate for this is to eliminate his or her superior, generating systemic internal violence from senior
managers who become more suspicious in the face of the overall decline in earnings. • between DTOs. The leadership of an individual
DTO may try to maintain their earnings by eliminating close competitors. However, there is at least one countervailing
factor that might reduce violence in the short run. Given that the signal of market decline will be strong and unambiguous,
experienced participants might accept the fact that their earnings and the market as a whole are in decline.
This could lead to a reduced effort on their part to fight for control of routes or officials, since those areas of control are now less valuable. Of course, that
does presume strategic thinking in a population that appears to have a propensity for expressive and
instrumental violence.9 The natural projection in the long run is more optimistic. Fewer young males will enter the drug trade, and the incentives for
violence will decline as the economic returns to leadership of a DTO fall.10 However , the long run is indeterminably measured: probably
years, and perhaps many years. The outcome, either in the short or long term, of a substantial decline in the U.S. market for
Mexican marijuana in 2011 is a matter of conjecture. One view is that, in the short run, there could be more violence as
the DTO leadership faces a very disturbing change in circumstances. The fact that a decline in their share of the marijuana
market would come after a period in which there has been rapid turnover at the top of their organizations and much change in their relationships with corrupt
police could make it particularly difficult for the DTOs to reach a cooperative accommodation to their shrunken market. However, if the Mexican government
lessens pressures and signals its willingness to reach an accommodation with a more collaborative set of DTOs, the result could be a reduction in violence.
Legalization decreases revenue from weed—causes increased violence from
competition.
O.A.S 13
[Organization of American States, THE ECONOMICS OF DRUG TRAFFICKING, 2013,
http://www.cicad.oas.org/drogas/elinforme/informeDrogas2013/laEconomicaNarcotrafico_ENG.pdf]
The impact that the loss of marijuana revenues—in the event that they were large—would have on drug traderelated violence in Mexico is even more uncertain. Empirical evidence on how violence changes with illicit drug profits is mixed and
thus offers little guidance.78 In any case, a large loss in marijuana revenues would affect some drug trafficking
organizations more than others. For example, Sinaloa revenues could fall by as much as 50 percent, whereas the Zetas would be less affected.79
This raises the possibility that Sinaloa’s rivals would take advantage of its weakened position by
attempting to seize control of some of its territory, generating increased violence in the short to medium term. A
large decline in marijuana revenues could also generate violence within drug trafficking organizations
by spurring members to compete over dwindling profits and a declining number of jobs. On the other hand, a
decline in profits could reduce violence in the long run, as the returns to entering and fighting over control of the drug trade would be lower. Even if effects on
violence are non-trivial, they may be difficult to distinguish against a backdrop of other changes. Any changes in cannabis markets will take time to develop and may
occur simultaneously with other changes that also affect violence rates in Mexico.
Cartels shift into more violent markets makes them comparably worse post plan.
Felbab-Brown No Date
[Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the
Foreign Policy program at Brookings and expert on international and internal conflicts and
nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence and illicit
economies, “Mexico’s Drug Wars: A Live Web Chat with Vanda Felbab-Brown,”
http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/template=/altcast_cod
e=1a6bdab501/ipod=y // wyo-cjh]
1:08 Comment From Dale: What impact do you think the legalization of drugs, such as California's vote this November on marijuana, would have on drug violence in
Mexico? Some people are saying it could drastically reduce violence in Mexico. 1:09 Vanda Felbab-Brown: The legalization question entails two different parts: one
is what
if the US/California legalizes, the second one is what if Mexico legalizes. And indeed, the voices for the legalization of marijuana in Mexico are
growing, and include, for example, former President Vicente Fox. 1:11 Vanda Felbab-Brown: Countries may have a good reason to
legalize. These could include shifting the focus of law enforcement from users to organized crime or better using public health tools to deal with addiction rates
(though legalization is likely to increase use to some extent; how much is the big and difficult to estimate issue) or with secondary public health problems. 1:12
Vanda Felbab-Brown: But
there are good reasons to be skeptical that legalization in either the US or Mexico would
reduce the violence. In fact, it can make it worse. Indeed, Mexico's legalization - if it were to take place -- would be more viable if increase
of law enfrocement capacity and the suprpession of violence and capacity to corrupt or intimidate the state and society took place. 1:12 Vanda Felbab-Brown: Why?
1:15 Vanda Felbab-Brown: There
are reasons to doubt that the DTOs would simply go bankrupt or just take the
loss of up to 60% of their income lying down. Instead, they would try to develop their own marijuana fields in areas that the state in
Mexico does not control or where its presence is limited & impose smaller taxes to undercut legal production in Mexico or in the US. But if
either place legalized, imposing strong taxes would be one way to mitigate the increase in consumption -- in the same way that cigarettes are treated,
example, thus setting an opportunity for a grey/illegal economy along side the legal one - just as we have w/ stolen cars or smuggled cigarettes. 1:17 Vanda FelbabBrown: The
DTOs would also intensify their struggle -- often violent over the smuggling of other illegal
commodities, such as other drugs - cocaine and meth for example- and undocumented migrants. And very
dangerously, they'd be even more motivated than now to take over the informal economy , franchise it, and
extort the legal economy. All of which would keep their money flows and could greatly increase their political
power while not reducing violence. 1:18 Vanda Felbab-Brown: Legalization is not a panacea. It is not an escape from the institutional
development of its law enforcement that mexico needs to do, nor from devising a social policies that integrates into the state and its formal institutions the vast
segments of the population that still persists in poverty and its marginalized in its social access and advancement, These mexicans need to come to see that hope
and better future lies with the mexican state, not outside it.
Increased cartel violence spurs mass migration to the US and destabilizes Latin
America
LA Times 7-6-14 Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
“Addressing The Border Crisis,” http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-immigration20140706-story.html, July 6, 2014
Tens of thousands of Central American children, some accompanied by adults but most traveling alone, have surged across the U.S.-Mexican
border in recent months. The flood has swamped the border security infrastructure as well as the youth housing facilities maintained by the
Department of Health and Human Services. Under federal law, HHS must take charge of unaccompanied and undocumented minors 72 hours
after they are detained by immigration agents. Now the Obama administration is asking Congress — which can't agree on what day it is, let
alone enact a law — to spend an additional $2 billion to improve the government's ability to handle the growing problem. The president also
wants Congress to change the 2008 federal law that automatically routes minors to immigration court; instead, he wants to let border agents
quickly deport those children who can't make a prima facie case for why they should be let in, a move designed to both lessen the burden on
the system and serve as a deterrent to those still hoping to enter. This humanitarian crisis, which is how President Obama has described it, is
both divisive and frustrating, and finding long-term solutions will require a broad and nuanced understanding of the problem. As the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has argued, this is a regional crisis that demands regional solutions — not just more guards at the
border or more lawyers in the immigration courts. The United States should be involved in those solutions because it is more than just a
wealthy country that attracts illegal immigrants; it bears some responsibility of its own for the violence and instability in Central America.
According to a recent report by the independent, nonprofit International Crisis Group, rivalries between drug traffickers and an absence of
governmental control along the Guatemala-Honduras border have made the area among the most violent in the world. Where are the drugs
heading? Primarily to the U.S., where most of the demand for marijuana and cocaine comes from. Similarly, the most powerful street gangs in
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are transnational and have their roots in U.S. cities, including Los Angeles. And while drugs are being
smuggled north, guns are being smuggled south. More than a quarter-million guns are slipped across the U.S.-Mexico border each year,
according to a 2013 study by the University of San Diego's Trans-Border Institute. Why does this matter? Because those
who have
spent time interviewing the unaccompanied minors showing up at the U.S. border report that the vast
majority of them say they are fleeing violence and instability in their home countries — primarily Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador. The children have described the conscriptions of boys by gangs, and retaliation
against the families of those who refuse, including, in some cases, rape. Ironically, U.S. deportations of foreign-born criminals
help feed the gangs that are prompting the flow of minors north. It's important to distinguish between why someone flees a city and his or her
decision on where to go. Once fear of gangs and violence seals the decision to run, the vast majority are choosing the U.S. as a destination,
often hoping to reunite with family members who are already there. Many also are lured by misinformation spread by coyotes and traffickers
suggesting that children, and mothers with children, can get permisos — permits — to stay. Some misinterpret the June 2012 Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers temporary status to some children who arrived before 2007, thinking that they too will be allowed
to stay. But in fact, new arrivals are not eligible for the program. And insufficient space in detention centers and youth housing facilities has led
immigration authorities to release some young detainees into the custody of relatives or other sponsors, with an appearance ticket for a later
court hearing. Thus the rumors of permisos spread. Significantly,
it's not just children fleeing the instability. The U.S.
has been a sevenfold increase since 2009 in
undocumented migrants of all ages seeking entry because they face a "credible fear" of being the
victim of violence if returned to their home countries, most of them from Mexico and Central America. So violence as a
Citizenship and Immigration Services reported last week that there
catalyst for migration has been a long-unfolding problem. The Obama administration is right to seek humane ways of dealing with the influx,
including adding immigration judges, lawyers and others crucial to a speedier deportation process. Sending people back more quickly would
also help blunt the rumors of permisos for children. But in addition, the
government needs to consider the connections
between the American drug users who create the demand that feeds the violent drug cartels, the multinational street
gangs and the free flow of illicit weapons across the border. What can be done? Reducing drug demand and the
southward flow of guns would help, as would an increase in U.S. assistance designed to stimulate economic development in Central America,
and thus job prospects. The U.S. could expand its work with gang-intervention programs in the Central American barrios. Homeland Security
recently moved 60 additional investigators to its anti-smuggling efforts along the Texas border, efforts that should continue and, if needed,
increase to break up the human trafficking networks. Everard Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute, suggests
treating the
violence surrounding the drug traffickers and street gangs "like the regional armed conflict that it
actually is" rather than as a U.S. immigration problem. Washington can, and should, try to stop illegal immigration at the
border, but it would be wiser, and more humane, to find ways to stabilize the communities from which immigrants are running. Any solutions
must come with the full involvement and engagement of the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico, a challenge given
the endemic corruption in those governments. But the U.S. is in the best position to bring the players together and forge the strategic, regional
approach to ending this humanitarian crisis.
Flooded borders foster terrorism
Camarota 02 Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in public policy analysis with a
master’s degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania
Steven A. May 2002, “The Open Door: How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and Remained,” Center
for Immigration Studies, http://cis.org/node/52
If we are to reduce the chance of another terrorist attack, we must carefully examine how these
terrorists entered and remained in the United States in the past, including attacks prior to 9/11. The
findings indicate that terrorists have used almost every conceivable means of entering the country.
Thus, any set of solutions must address our entire immigration system and not focus on just one part of
the system. The Immigration System is Overwhelmed. One of the main problems with the current immigration system is
that the INS and State Department are simply overwhelmed by the number of applicants they must process. This fact is not in dispute. The
General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in May 2001 that the receipt of new INS applications (for green cards, citizenship, temporary work
permits, etc.) has increased 50 percent over the past six years and that the backlog of unresolved applications has quadrupled to nearly four
million. The crush of work has created an organizational culture wherein “staff are rewarded for the timely handling of petitions rather than for
careful scrutiny of their merits,” in the words of a January 2002 GAO report. The pressure to move things through the system has led to
“rampant” and “pervasive” fraud, with one official estimating that 20 to 30 percent of all applications involve fraud. The GAO concludes that
“the goal of providing immigration benefits in a timely manner to those who are legally entitled to them may conflict with the goal of
preserving the integrity of the legal immigration system.” Things are not much better at the State Department. Assistant Secretary of State
consular
officers around the world are stretched just about as thin as they can possibly be. We do not have the
Mary Ryan, who is in charge of visa processing, said in an November 2001 interview in the St. Petersburg Times that, “I think
personnel resources that we need to do the job the way it should be done.” Putting caps on or reducing the caps that exist for foreign students
and guestworkers, and cutting permanent immigration back to the spouses and minor children of American citizens, eliminating the visa lottery,
and limiting employed-based immigration to only a few highly skilled individuals would be a good start.
The only way to give the
State Department and the INS the breathing space they need to implement much-needed reforms is to reduce
their workload. It is simply not reasonable to expect the INS in particular to deal with a constantly increasing workload, make significant
process in the huge backlogs that exist, and at the same time fundamentally restructure and reform itself.
Uncontrolled terrorism risks nuclear war
Ayson 10 Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic
Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington
Ronald, “After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,
Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in the first place, would not necessarily
represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded
as belonging in the category of truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn here with the global catastrophe that would come from a
massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in significant numbers. Even the worst
terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would
have wrought in the Cold War period. And it must be admitted that as long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds and even
thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated
entirely by state possessors themselves. But these two nuclear worlds—a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear
exchange—are not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear
terrorism,
could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the
states that possess them. In this context, today’s and tomorrow’s terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War
years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers
started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the socalled n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear
terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it
might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be
fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in
supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest
themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear
terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution
of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the
debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be “spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable
and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most
important … some indication of where the nuclear material came from.”41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete
surprise, and American
officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at
all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and
France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps
Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in
this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in
Washington’s relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would
officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring would
only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were
confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well
apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the
United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible
perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washington’s
early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil
might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For
example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president
might be expected to place the country’s armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In
such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible
that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and possibly
nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be
admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response. As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear
terrorism (as discussed earlier) Washington
might decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or
against the leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to support that group. Depending on the identity
and especially the location of these targets, Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far too close for their
comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty. One fardisarming attack
fetched but perhaps not impossible scenario might stem from a judgment in Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the
terrorist action resided somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection with what Allison claims is the “Chechen insurgents’ … longstanding interest in all things nuclear.”42 American pressure on that part of the world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that
might require a degree of advanced consultation from Washington that the latter found itself unable or unwilling to provide. There is also the
question of how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear terrorism on another member of that special club. It could
reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, both Russia and China would extend immediate sympathy
and support to Washington and would work alongside the United States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one,
where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases than in others. For example, what would happen if the United States
wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for some reason, Washington
found the
responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither “for us or against us”) might it also suspect that
they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major
exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in Russia and China, or existed in
areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or
Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then
draw about their culpability? If Washington decided to use, or decided to threaten the use of, nuclear weapons, the responses of
Russia and China would be crucial to the chances of avoiding a more serious nuclear exchange. They might surmise, for example, that while the
act of nuclear terrorism was especially heinous and demanded a strong response, the response simply had to remain below the nuclear
threshold. It
would be one thing for a non-state actor to have broken the nuclear use taboo, but an
entirely different thing for a state actor, and indeed the leading state in the international system, to do so. If Russia and
China felt sufficiently strongly about that prospect, there is then the question of what options would lie open to
them to dissuade the United States from such action: and as has been seen over the last several decades, the central
dissuader of the use of nuclear weapons by states has been the threat of nuclear retaliation. If some
readers find this simply too fanciful, and perhaps even offensive to contemplate, it may be informative to reverse the tables. Russia, which
possesses an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads and that has been one of the two most important trustees of the non-use taboo, is
subjected to an attack of nuclear terrorism. In response, Moscow places its nuclear forces very visibly on a higher state of alert and declares
that it is considering the use of nuclear retaliation against the group and any of its state supporters. How would Washington view such a
possibility? Would it really be keen to support Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, including outside Russia’s traditional sphere of influence? And if
not, which seems quite plausible, what options would Washington have to communicate that displeasure? If
China had been the
victim of the nuclear terrorism and seemed likely to retaliate in kind, would the United States and
Russia be happy to sit back and let this occur? In the charged atmosphere immediately after a nuclear
terrorist attack, how would the attacked country respond to pressure from other major nuclear
powers not to respond in kind? The phrase “how dare they tell us what to do” immediately springs to
mind. Some might even go so far as to interpret this concern as a tacit form of sympathy or support for
the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint
Immigration drives growth in CO2 emissions
By Steven A. Camarota, Leon Kolankiewicz August 2008, “Immigration to the United States and
World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Center for Immigration Studies,
http://cis.org/GreenhouseGasEmissions
The findings of this study indicate that future levels of immigration will have a significant impact on
efforts to reduce global CO2 emissions. Immigration to the United States significantly increases world-
wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the
United States, which is a higher-polluting country. On average immigrants increase their emissions
four-fold by coming to America. Among the findings: •The estimated CO2 emissions of the average
immigrant (legal or illegal) in the United States are 18 percent less than those of the average native-born
American. •However, immigrants in the United States produce an estimated four times more CO2 in the
United States as they would have in their countries of origin. •U.S. immigrants produce an estimated
637 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually — equal to Great Britain and Sweden combined.
•The estimated 637 tons of CO2 U.S. immigrants produce annually is 482 million tons more than they
would have produced had they remained in their home countries. •If the 482 million ton increase in
global CO2 emissions caused by immigration to the United States were a separate country, it would rank
10th in the world in emissions. •The impact of immigration to the United States on global emissions is
equal to approximately 5 percent of the increase in annual world-wide CO2 emissions since 1980. •Of
the CO2 emissions caused by immigrants, 83 percent is estimated to come from legal immigrants and
17 percent from illegal immigrants. •Legal immigrants have a much larger impact because they have
higher incomes and resulting emissions, and they are more numerous than illegal immigrants. •The
above figures do not include the impact of children born to immigrants in the United States. If they
were included, the impact would be much higher. •Assuming no change in U.S. immigration policy, 30
million new legal and illegal immigrants are expected to settle in the United States in the next 20 years.
•In recent years, increases in U.S. CO2 emissions have been driven entirely by population increases as
per capita emissions have stabilized.
That’s the biggest factor worsening global warming
Dave Chandler, Co-chair of the Colorado Green Party and editor of www.Earthside.com, May 29,
2009, Accessed 7/25/2009, http://www.earthside.com/earthside/our_envirnoment_earthside/
As 'ecological footprint' statistics presented below indicate, it is people living here that are most
responsible for the global climate change that is threatening the eco-system of the Earth. It would,
therefore, be the height of irresponsible to add to the numbers of Americans. Indeed, as the first few
reports here demonstrate, we should be very concerned that growing human population is
encroaching such on the rest of the environment that the sustainability capacity of the planet may
have already passed the tipping point. When species necessary for human survival, like bats and bees,
are under new survival threats themselves, then key indicators about the health of the environment
may have been presented.
Global warming leads to extinction
David Stein, Science editor for The Guardian, 7-14-2008, “Global Warming Xtra: Scientists warn about
Antarctic melting,” http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/14/02463.html
Global Warming continues to be approaches by governments as a "luxury" item, rather than a matter of
basic human survival. Humanity is being taken to its destruction by a greed-driven elite. These elites,
which include 'Big Oil' and other related interests, are intoxicated by "the high" of pursuing ego-driven
power, in a comparable manner to drug addicts who pursue an elusive "high", irrespective of the threat
of pursuing that "high" poses to their own basic survival, and the security of others. Global Warming and
the pre-emptive war against Iraq are part of the same self-destructive prism of a political-militaryindustrial complex, which is on a path of mass planetary destruction, backed by techniques of massdeception."The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let
alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending
tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves, melting ice and threatened polar
bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming leading to human
extinction", reported Bill Henderson in CrossCurrents. If strict global environmental security measures
are not immediately put in place to keep further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the
atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all
probability the end of humankind's several million year old existence, along with the extinction of
most flora and fauna beloved to man in the world we share.
T
extend the Bacca evidence – Hemp is distinct from Marihuana - Hemp Industries
Association v. DEA, ruled that marijuana is “all parts of any Cannabis sativa L. plant, except for defined
exceptions, which could be assumed to be what the United States government defines as “hemp.” “Such
exceptions include fibers from cannabis stalks and products derived from sterilized cannabis seeds”
Hemp ethanol is made from the plant stalk or sterilized seeds
Hemp.com NDG [http://www.hemp.com/hemp-education/uses-of-hemp/hemp-fuel/,
wyo-sc]
The basics: Hemp can provide two types of fuel.¶ 1. Hemp biodiesel – made from the oil of the
(pressed) hemp seed.¶ 2. Hemp ethanol/methanol – made from the fermented stalk.
Even if hemp is scientifically marihuana it has been legally exempted
Bacca 14
[Angela Bacca, editor of Cannabis Now Magazine, Alternet, What’s the Difference Between Hemp and
Marijuana?, June 8, http://sandiegofreepress.org/2014/06/whats-the-difference-between-hemp-andmarijuana/#.VAqG42OKXpc]
What is the difference between hemp and marijuana? The short answer: semantics. The long answer:
the difference is a largely misunderstood distinction that now has two correct answers, a legal one and a
scientific one.
And like all things proven by scientists, it is somehow up for public and political debate. Thanks to nearly 80 years of
federal cannabis prohibition, public knowledge on the topic is limited to rumors and misinterpretations perpetuated online—everything from
“hemp plants are male and marijuana plants are female” to “one is a drug and the other is not.” The legal
definitions also have
muddied the water as legislators have passed laws at both the federal and state levels defining hemp
in the pursuit of both fiber and medicine.
1NR
Cartels
Existing carbon triggers the impact—CO2 is internal
Daniel Rirdan 12, founder of The Exploration Company, “The Right Carbon Concentration Target”, June
29, http://theenergycollective.com/daniel-rirdan/89066/what-should-be-our-carbon-concentrationtarget-and-forgetpolitics?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+
posts%29
James Hansen and other promi-nent cli-ma-tol-o-gists are call-ing to bring the CO2 atmos-pheric level to 350 parts per million. In
fact, an orga-ni-za-tion, 350.org, came around that ral-ly-ing cry. This is far more radical than
most politicians are willing to
entertain. And it is not likely to be enough. The 350ppm target will not reverse the clock as far back as one
may assume. It was in 1988 that we have had these level of car-bon con-cen-tra-tion in the air. But wait, there is more to the story. 1988-
levels of CO2 with 2012-levels of all other green-house gases bring us to a state of affairs equiv-a-lent to that around
1994 (2.28 w/m2). And then there are aerosols. There is good news and bad news about them. The good news is that as long as we keep
spewing mas-sive amounts of particulate matter and soot into the air, more of the sun’s rays are scattered
back to space, over-all the reflec-tiv-ity of clouds increases, and other effects on clouds whose over-all net effect is to cool-ing of the Earth
sur-face. The bad news is that once we stop polluting, stop run-ning all the diesel engines and the coal plants of the world,
and the soot finally settles down, the real state of affairs will be unveiled within weeks. Once we fur-ther get
rid of the aerosols and black car-bon on snow, we may be very well be worse off than what we have had around 2011 (a pos-si-ble
addi-tion of 1.2 w/m2). Thus, it is not good enough to stop all green-house gas emis-sions . In fact, it is not even close
to being good enough. A carbon-neutral econ-omy at this late stage is an unmit-i-gated disaster. There is a need for a
carbon-negative economy. Essentially, it means that we have not only to stop emitting, to the tech-no-log-i-cal extent
pos-si-ble, all green-house gases, but also capture much of the crap we have already out-gassed and lock it
down. And once we do the above, the ocean will burp its excess gas, which has come from fos-sil fuels in the first
place. So we will have to draw down and lock up that carbon, too. We have taken fos-sil fuel and released its con-tent;
now we have to do it in reverse—hundreds of bil-lions of tons of that stuff.
Legalization at the federal level violates international law and disrupts the entire
international drug policy framework.
Eiden et al. 11
[Chad Murray, Ashlee Jackson, Amanda C. Miralrío, Nicolas Eiden, George Washington University,
“Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization,”
Elliott School of International Affairs/Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission: Capstone Report,
April 26, 2011, https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexicomarijuana-071111.pdf // wyo-cjh]
There are several international obligations that would prevent the United States from federally
legalizing marijuana, and have led to the current incoherence in state and federal statutes that will be
discussed later in this report. This is why, if legalization were to be implemented, it would certainly be
accomplished only on a state, and not on the federal level. There are three main treaties on
international drug policy: the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the 1988 Convention
against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and the United Nation‟s 1961
Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The best-known of these treaties is the U.N‟s 1961 Convention on
Narcotic Drugs. This treaty is used by the American government to pressure for eradication in
countries that produce marijuana and other drugs. The 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances
created specific „schedules‟ or levels of international restrictions associated with certain types of
drugs. Under this convention, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, meaning that marijuana policies are to be
subject to the “most restrictive” international controls.7 Were the United States to pursue marijuana
legalization on the federal level, it could well be in violation of its own International Drug Control
Certification Procedures. The 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances presents a further stumbling block to any potential efforts to federally legalize marijuana.
This is because it specifically targets, in its Article 3, consumers of marijuana and other “Psychotropic
Substances” and mandates all parties of the treaty to adopt domestic legislation that, “establishes as
criminal offenses… [the] production, manufacture…distribution sale” and “possession or purchase of any
narcotic drug or Psychotropic Substance.”8 Thus, marijuana legalization on the national level would
force the United States to reevaluate and renegotiate its entire international drug policy framework,
and would have far reaching implications on U.S. diplomacy beyond the realm of drug policy. This
potential fallout is among the more prominent reasons why the White House and Congress have largely
been so unwilling to even consider federal legalization of marijuana.
Legalization in Colorado and Washington violated international law and weakened the
IDCR—contrived legal justifications and defensive posturing hold us on the brink now.
Kleiman 14
[Mark Kleiman, Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, “Bureaucratic politics 101: the U.S. adjusts its position
on the drug treaties,” April 3, 2014, http://www.samefacts.com/2014/04/internationalaffairs/bureaucratic-politics-101-the-u-s-adjusts-its-position-on-the-drug-treaties/ // wyo-cjh]
Historically, the United States was the chief architect of the prohibition-oriented international drug control
regime, and among the most “hawkish” of the signatories (along with Sweden, France, Russia, Japan, and Singapore, and much of the Arab
world). The U.S. did a bunch of finger-wagging at the Dutch for their relatively liberal policies. And the Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department (“INL” in Alphabet-speak, informally “Drugs and Thugs”) has long been one of the more
hawkish players in internal drug-policy debates. The treaties, on their face, require the criminalization of not
only drug dealing but drug use. One of the arguments made against the tax-and-regulation
approaches adopted by initiative in Colorado and Washington State was that their adoption would put the country out of
compliance with its treaty obligations. There are legal loopholes: the treaties acknowledge that their
obligations apply to each signatory only insofar as consistent with its domestic institutional
arrangements. Since the U.S. federal government, the party bound by the treaties, lacks the constitutional power to
require criminalization at the state level, it’s not clear that the actions by Colorado and Washington State voters can be said to have been illegal under international law.
Uruguay has gone further, legalizing at the national level. The Uruguayan government argues that even that is allowed by the treaties, because the treaties recite the reduction of illegal drug
Whatever the merits of that
argument legally – personally, I don’t think it passes the giggle test, though as a policy matter I’m glad Uruguay is making the experiment and hope it succeeds – it is one
that the United States could once have been counted on to scorn. And yet, when the U.N. Commission on Narcotic drugs met in
trafficking and the protection of public health among their stated goals, and the Uruguayan law is designed to accomplish those goals.
Vienna last month, and some member countries got up to criticize the Uruguayan move (which the International Narcotics Control Board, the referee set up by the treaties, promptly
denounced) the U.S. had no comment on that issue. In part that reflects changing U.S. public opinion about cannabis, and the more liberal stance of the Obama Administration compared to its
in part it reflects the fact that INCB also blasted Colorado and Washington State, putting INL
in the position of having to defend the permissibility under international law of those regimes and of
the accommodating stance toward them adopted by the Justice Department. So the voters in those two states
in effect forced a change in our national stance in international fora. Here’s Ambassador William Brownfield, the Assistant Secretary
predecessors. But
of State in charge of INL, explaining the new stance: the treaties, we are now told, are “living documents,” allowing “flexibility” in how different nations choose to meet their obligations, and
we should seek a new consensus about what that means. Obvious, once it’s happened. (It might not have happened in, say, the Romney Administration.) But, as far as I know, not predicted in
advance by anyone, least of all by me.
International Law is key to prevent multiple scenarios for extinction.
Krieger 2
David, September 29, pg. http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2002/09/29_krieger_bush-assault.htm.
International law is essential in the twenty-first century because powerful technologies and
integrated economies cannot be constrained by national boundaries. The adverse effects of pollution,
disease, and weapons of war are uncontrollable without standards contained in law. The sanctity of
the earth’s biosphere, including human survival, has become dependent upon the strengthening of
these standards. Sadly, however, the United States under the Bush administration has initiated an
intense assault on international law in order to pursue short-term and short-sighted interests that avoid,
evade, ignore, or violate the standards painstakingly developed by the international community,
including the United States, over many decades.