1AC
1AC Plan Text
Plan: The United States should legalize marijuana in the United States.
1AC Cartels
CONTENTION 1 IS DRUG VIOLENCE:
Violence in Mexico is rising---cartels are fragmenting and using more violent methods
David James Cantor 14, Director, Refugee Law Initiative, School of Advanced Study, University of
London, “The New Wave: Forced Displacement Caused by Organized Crime in Central America and
Mexico”, Refugee Survey Quarterly (2014), first published online 6/10/14,
http://rsq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/06/10/rsq.hdu008.full.pdf+html
Drug-smuggling organizations also have a long history in Mexico. Traditionally, like Central American transportistas,
the Mexican cartels were rooted in strategically-important areas of the country and led by particular local families. Yet, from the 1990s, a
process of increasing fragmentation and militarisation has produced a new modus operandi in which
each cartel seeks to establish exclusive control over territories through which drugs are trafficked
(plazas), on which they then levy a tax (piso).48 As well as moving drugs through Mexican territory, these cartels
have increasingly assumed a dominant regional role as drug owners and managers.49 Many – especially the
newer cartels – are also diversifying their interests in controlled territories to include extortion and charging piso on other local criminal
activities.50 This new mode of operations appears to have provoked forced displacement on a significant scale since the mid-2000s.¶ The
wave of violence experienced in Mexico over the past decade results largely from disputes for the
control of plazas by these ruthless and heavily-armed criminal organizations. In affected parts of the country,
much of the intense violent confrontation occurs outside the major cities, in the rural zones through which drug transportation takes place.
Rural zones in states such as Sinaloa are also a focal point for armed dispute over the production of heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines
there.51 However, the
confrontations are not exclusively confined to rural areas but have increasingly
extended to nearby cities, which provide attractive opportunities for diversifying into extortion and control of the local drug-dealing
market.52 In the last few years, disputes over control of drug-smuggling routes have also spread with the
cartels to Mexico’s southern neighbours .¶ The growing militarisation of the Mexican cartels has not
only exacerbated their fragmentation, but also altered the way in which they interact with inhabitants
of such territories. Most notably among the newer cartels, a bloody and uncompromising mind-set prevails in
which intimidation and extreme spectacles of violence are used to control inhabitants (and officials) or to dominate
new territories.54 The deployment of such tactics has raised the stakes for other cartels, which have not hesitated to respond
in kind. In urban areas,55 violent Mexican street gangs are also sometimes employed by rival cartels as a means of waging war by proxy,
thereby further fracturing the control and discipline of the cartels.¶ While the cartels’ extensive territories are comparable to those of
transportistas, their pursuit of exclusive territorial control via intimidation and extreme violence is thus more similar to the strategy now
favoured by the maras. Yet their
power, resources, and positioning in the regional drug trade put their
capacity for violence in a league far above that of other criminal organizations in the region.
Marijuana prohibition sustains this---artificially inflates prices---legalization is key
Paul Armentano 09, Deputy Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws,
an expert in the field of marijuana policy, health, and pharmacology, has served as a consultant for
Health Canada and the Canadian Public Health Association, “How to End Mexico's Deadly Drug War”,
1/18/09, The Foundation for Economic Education, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/how-to-endmexicos-deadly-drug-war
The U.S. Office of Drug Control Policy (more commonly known as the drug czar’s office) says more than 60 percent of the profits reaped by
Mexican drug lords are derived from the exportation and sale of cannabis to the American market. To anyone who has studied the marijuana
issue, this figure should come as no surprise. An estimated 100 million Americans age 12 or older—or about 43 percent of the country—admit
to having tried pot, a higher percentage, according to the World Health Organization, than any other country on the planet. Twenty-five
million Americans admit (on government surveys, no less) to smoking marijuana during the past year, and 15
million say that they indulge regularly. This high demand, combined with the drug’s artificially inflated
black-market value (pot possession has been illegal under federal law since 1937), now makes cannabis America’s top
cash crop.¶ In fact, according to a 2007 analysis by George Mason University professor Jon Gettman, the annual retail value of
the U.S. marijuana market is some $113 billion.¶ How much of this goes directly to Mexican cartels is difficult to quantify, but
no doubt the percentage is significant. Government officials estimate that approximately half the marijuana consumed in the United States
originates from outside its borders, and they have identified Mexico as far and away America’s largest pot provider. Because
Mexicangrown marijuana tends to fetch lower prices on the black market than domestically grown weed (a
result attributed largely to lower production costs—the Mexican variety tends to be grown outdoors, while an increasing percentage of
American-grown pot is produced hydroponically indoors), it
remains consistently popular among U.S. consumers,
particularly in a down economy. As a result, U.S. law officials now report that some Mexican cartels are moving to the
United States to set up shop permanently. A Congressional Research Service report says low-level cartel members are now
establishing clandestine growing operations inside the United States (thus eliminating the need to cross the border), as well as partnering with
domestic gangs and other criminal enterprises. A March 23 New York Times story speculated that Mexican drug gangs or their affiliates are now
active in some 230 U.S. cities, extending from Tucson, Arizona, to Anchorage, Alaska.¶ In short, America’s
multibillion-dollar
demand for pot is fueling the Mexican drug trade and much of the turf battles and carnage associated
with it. ¶ Same Old “Solutions”¶ So what are the administration’s plans to quell the cartels’ growing influence and surging violence?
Troublingly, the White House appears intent on recycling the very strategies that gave rise to Mexico’s
infamous drug lords in the first place.¶ In March the administration requested $700 million from Congress to “bolster existing
efforts by Washington and Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s administration to fight violent trafficking in drugs . . . into the United States.”
These efforts, as described by the Los Angeles Times, include: “vowing to send U.S. money, manpower, and technology to the southwestern
border” and “reducing illegal flows (of drugs) in both directions across the border.” The administration also announced that it intends to clamp
down on the U.S. demand for illicit drugs by increasing funding for drug treatment and drug courts.¶ There are three primary problems with this
strategy.¶ First, marijuana
production is a lucrative business that attracts criminal entrepreneurs precisely
because it is a black-market (and highly sought after) commodity. As long as pot remains federally prohibited
its retail price to the consumer will remain artificially high, and its production and distribution will
attract criminal enterprises willing to turn to violence (rather than the judicial system) to maintain their slice of
the multi-billion-dollar pie.¶ Second, the United States is already spending more money on illicit-drug law enforcement, drug
treatment, and drug courts than at any time in our history. FBI data show that domestic marijuana arrests have increased from under 300,000
annually in 1991 to over 800,000 today. Police seizures of marijuana have also risen dramatically in recent years, as has the amount of taxpayer
dollars federal officials have spent on so-called “educational efforts” to discourage the drug’s use. (For example, since the late 1990s Congress
has appropriated well over a billion dollars in anti-pot public service announcements alone.) Yet despite these combined efforts to discourage
demand, Americans use more pot than anyone else in the world.¶ Third, law
enforcement’s recent attempts to crack down
on the cartels’ marijuana distribution rings, particularly new efforts launched by the Calderón administration in Mexico, are
driving the unprecedented wave in Mexican violence—not abating it. The New York Times states: “A crackdown
begun more than two years ago by President Felipe Calderón, coupled with feuds over turf and control of the organizations, has set off an
unprecedented wave of killings in Mexico. . . . Many of the victims were tortured. Beheadings have become common.” Because of this
escalating violence, Mexico now ranks behind only Pakistan and Iran as the administration’s top international security concern.¶ Despite the
rising death toll, drug war hawks at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) remain adamant that the United States’ and Mexico’s
“supply side” strategies are in fact successful. “Our view is that the violence we have been seeing is a signpost of the success our very
courageous Mexican counterparts are having,” acting DEA administrator Michele Lionhart said recently. “The cartels are acting out like caged
animals, because they are caged animals.” President Obama also appears to share this view. After visiting with the Calderón government in
April, he told CNN he intended to “beef up” security on the border. When asked whether the administration would consider alternative
strategies, such as potentially liberalizing pot’s criminal classification, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano replied that such an option
“is not on the table.”¶ A New Remedy¶ By contrast the Calderón administration appears open to the idea of legalizing marijuana—or at least
reducing criminal sanctions on the possession of small quantities of drugs—as a way to stem the tide of violence. Last spring Mexican
lawmakers made the possession of personal-use quantities of cannabis and other illicit substances a noncriminal offense. And in April Mexico’s
ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, told
CBS’s Face the Nation that legalizing the marijuana trade
was a legitimate option for both the Mexican and U.S. governments. “[T]hose who would suggest that some of
these measures [legalization] be looked at understand the dynamics of the drug trade,” Sarukhan said.¶ Former Mexican President Vicente Fox
recently echoed Sarukhan’s remarks, as did a commission of former Latin American presidents. “I believe it’s
time to open the
debate over legalizing drugs,” Fox told CNN in May. “It can’t be that the only way [to try to control illicit drug use] is for the state to
use force.”¶ Writing recently on CNN.com, Harvard economist and Freeman contributor Jeffrey Miron said that ending drug prohibition—on
both sides of the border—is the only realistic and viable way to put a permanent stop to the rising power and violence associated with Mexico’s
drug traffickers. “Prohibition
creates violence because it drives the drug market underground,” he wrote. “This
means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so
they resort to violence instead. . . . The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs .”
Marijuana’s key---legalization weakens the cartels sufficiently to allow current
operations to succeed—takes out a financial lifeline
Ioan Grillo 12, author, journalist, writer and TV producer based in Mexico City, has reported on Mexico
and Latin American since 2001, “Hit Mexico’s Cartels With Legalization”, 11/1/12, NYT,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/opinion/hit-mexicos-cartels-with-legalization.html
Marijuana is just one of the drugs that the cartels traffic. Chemicals such as crystal meth may be too venomous to ever be legalized. But
cannabis is a cash crop that provides huge profits to criminal armies , paying for assassins and guns south of the Rio
Grande. The scale of the Mexican marijuana business was illustrated by a mammoth 120-hectare plantation busted last year in Baja California.
It had a sophisticated irrigation system, sleeping quarters for 60 workers and could produce 120 metric tons of cannabis per harvest.¶ Again,
nobody knows exactly how much the whole Mexico-U.S. marijuana trade is worth, with estimates ranging
from $2 billion to $20 billion annually. But even if you believe the lowest numbers, legal marijuana would take
billions of dollars a year away from organized crime. This would inflict more financial damage than
soldiers or drug agents have managed in years and substantially weaken cartels.¶ It is also argued that
Mexican gangsters have expanded to a portfolio of crimes that includes kidnapping, extortion, human smuggling and
theft from oil pipelines. This is a terrifying truth. But this does not take away from the fact that the marijuana trade
provides the crime groups with major resources. That they are committing crimes such as kidnapping,
which have a horrific effect on innocent people, makes cutting off their financing all the more urgent.¶
The cartels will not disappear overnight. U.S. agents and the Mexican police need to continue battling hit squads
that wield rocket-propelled grenades and belt-driven machine guns. Killers who hack off heads still have to be locked away. Mexico needs to
clean up corruption among the police and build a valid justice system. And young men in the barrios have to be given a better option than
signing up as killers.¶ All these
tasks will be easier if the flow of money to the cartels is dramatically slowed
down . Do we really want to hand them another trillion dollars over the next three decades?
Specifically, the aff undercuts the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels, the most powerful and
influential cartels---sustain the drug trade
Chad Murray 11, M.A. student in the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program @ George
Washington, supervised and sponsored by the OAS and Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission,
“Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization”,
4/26/11, https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexico-marijuana071111.pdf
While Los
Zetas and La Familia have recently dominated the media coverage of the drug war in Mexico, they might not be
objectively termed the strongest cartels in the country. They are the most active in attacking government forces and
setting up narco bloqueos in major cities.59 However, they do not have the financial strength, military prowess, territorial reach, or tactical
discipline of Mexico‟s largest DTO, the Sinaloa cartel. 60 This DTO and the Tijuana cartel are
major traffickers of
marijuana, and their territories are the major marijuana production areas in Mexico. They have near exclusive control of
the so called “Golden Triangle” region of Mexico where the mountainous areas of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua states
meet. This makes sense, because according to sources in the Drug Enforcement Agency these two DTOs likely make a majority
their revenue from marijuana.¶ The amount of marijuana trafficked by the Sinaloa cartel is evident by
the scale of recent drug busts. In October of 2010 Mexican police and military forces seized more than 134 metric tons of marijuana
in one Sinaloa facility. This was equal to almost $200 million according to Mexican authorities.63 The very next month 30 tons of marijuana was
retrieved by law enforcement on both sides of the border after a Tijuana drug smuggling tunnel was discovered.64 The DTO behind this
operation has not been determined, but based on the location it is likely to be either the Sinaloa cartel or Arello Felix Organization. These
seizures represent only a proportion of the amount marijuana trafficked into the United States from Mexico through the San Diego-Tijuana
corridor in 2 months. There are other drug transport corridors that likely receive more marijuana traffic. ¶ Although the Sinaloa cartel does
is the most violent DTO in terms of overall casualties . It has targeted hundreds of
police officers and its leader, “El Chapo” Guzmán, is widely thought to have caused a recent upsurge in
violence after breaking a truce with the other major criminal groups in the country.66 The feud between the Sinaloa and Juarez
organizations is the reason that Juarez is the most violent city in Mexico, and according to some accounts, the entire world. 67 The Sinaloa
cartel’s huge financial resources make it a major threat to the government , because they are able to corrupt
large numbers of local, state, and federal government officials. This was revealed in several high profile cases in recent years.68The Sinaloa
cartel is constantly trying to expand its territory into that traditionally held by other cartels, particularly in
Juarez, and this is a major cause of much of the violence.¶ The Sinaloa cartel has the greatest capacity to
wage „all-out war‟ because they have far more money than the other DTOs. Guzmán is also more focused on
winning the favor and tacit protection of the populace, and thus is more involved in the drugs trade than kidnapping, and
prefers to bribe rather than confront authorities.69 However, in many ways this makes the Sinaloa cartel more dangerous to the
Government in Mexico. Its use of bribes can make local state and even federal law enforcement unreliable.
not often target civilians, it
Furthermore, the Sinaloa organization’s outreach to the civilian population makes it even harder for the government to gain information about
Guzmán. In addition, the massive strength of the Sinaloa cartel makes an eventual peace all the more allusive. In
the event that the government would try to reduce the violence through talks with cartels, the Sinaloa organization would be unlikely to take
them seriously. The government has little to offer big organizations like Sinaloa, which already enjoy near uncontested control over the areas in
which they operate.¶ The Tijuana cartel is also a powerful, though often underrated organization. This group was infamous in 2008 and 2009,
when it destabilized much of Tijuana with its attacks on the police and rival cartels. 71As with the Sinaloa cartel, the Tijuana cartel is
a
very important organization with networks mainly in the Tijuana and the San Diego area. This DTO is
famous for both its violence and the brutality. Most notoriously, Teodoro García Simental’s war for control of Tijuana led to
hundreds being tortured and killed until his arrest in 2010. ¶ The main areas where the Sinaloa and Tijuana cartels tend to cultivate
marijuana include Sonora, Michoacán, and Sinaloa states. They focus on trafficking in marijuana because it is easy to grow,
profitable for wholesale, and cheap to pay laborers . In 2010 farmers received only 15 to 20 dollars for a pound of
marijuana. 73 This price is just barely above the amount farmers could get for corn and other produce. Therefore, if the price farmers
were to be paid for marijuana were to fall much further, it is not unlikely that many would turn to
more legitimate crops.¶ These cartels represent a huge part of the Mexican organized criminal
structure . Dealing a major blow to these groups could give the Mexican government a leg up. The Sinaloa
cartel currently has the ability, due to its huge monetary reserves, to project its influence and carry out violence acts across vast swathes of
Mexico. The Tijuana cartel holds large parts of its namesake city through violence and coercion. The following chapter will explore what effect,
if any, the legalization of marijuana would have on the revenue, operational capacities, overall strength, and ability to wage violence for these
two cartels.
Plan solves enforcement-- disrupts cartel revenues and independently frees up law
enforcement resources to focus on other sources of revenue---creates long-term
peace
David Shirk 11, director of the Trans-Border Institute and associate professor of political science at the
University of San Diego, conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexico relations, and law
enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexico border, currently the principal investigator for the
Justice in Mexico project, a binational research initiative on criminal justice and the rule of law in
Mexico, “Drug Violence and State Responses in Mexico”, last date cited was 2011, http://iisdb.stanford.edu/evnts/6716/Shirk-Drug_Violence_and_State_Responses_in_Mexico.pdf
In evaluating Mexico’s efforts to address these challenges, it seems clear that inter-cartel
dynamics and the government’s
own efforts to decapitate top leadership structures has contributed to the fractionalization of
organized crime groups, more severe and disorganized violence, and a diversification of organized criminal activities. If current trends
continue, my estimation is that we are likely to see a reconfiguration of international drug trafficking networks —with a continued shift to
Central America— and a gradual diminishing, but greater dispersion of crime and violence in Mexico. For some, this result will seem like a
victory, since it would achieve the Calderón administration’s stated goal of eliminating drug trafficking organizations as a national security
threat. However, in my view, this result would merely illustrate the utter failure of counter-drug efforts, in that it would perpetuate the pattern
of displacement —the so-called balloon effect— that has characterized the war on drugs for over 40 years. Meanwhile, little
real
progress has been made with regard to the two factors of greatest concern to ordinary people: significantly reducing
drug violence and the accessibility of psychotropic substances. In fact, in both areas, the traditional strategies associated with
the drug war —the disruption of cartel leadership structures, the concentration of interdiction efforts at the border, and
the overall emphasis of a law enforcement approach to the shared problem of drug consumption— have arguably
produced more harm than good. ¶ Still, the policy options available to Mexico partly reflect the policies and priorities of the United
States, which is presently opposed to any alternative to the criminalization of drugs and strongly supports counter drug efforts in Mexico. What
most ordinary U.S. and Mexican citizens don't realize is that the vast majority of counter-drug efforts currently focus on the drug that is most
marijuana represented 98% of the bulk tonnage seized by authorities at
the U.S. Mexican border , although even the most generous estimates suggest that this represented no
more than 5-10% of the total volume of marijuana flowing across the border. Meanwhile, more than half
of U.S. drug arrests—and roughly 6% of all arrests in the United States — are related to the illegal possession,
consumption, or sale of cannabis.¶ Efforts to restrict cannabis flows and consumption does little damage to drug cartels, since
marijuana sales in the United States represent 20-25% of proceeds from exports by Mexican drug traffickers, at
best. Some observers stress this point to argue that legalization of marijuana would do little to sway the fight
against organized crime. Given that the repeal of marijuana prohibition would cause drug traffickers to lose
roughly a fifth of their U.S. proceeds almost overnight, they are probably wrong . Indeed, repealing
marijuana prohibition would likely do far more than our current, costly restrictions to deprive organized crime
groups of profits, and it would also free up badly needed law enforcement resources to fight organized crime
groups on other fronts and reduce consumer dependence on high risk drugs like cocaine and heroin.
Marijuana legalization is therefore a potential first step toward a more rationale and effective
approach to combating organized crime.
widely used: marijuana. Indeed, last year
That’s key--conflict in Mexico crushes Mexican economic growth
Otto Raul Tielemans 14, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Authoritarianism
on the Rise: The War on Drug’s Erosion of Mexican Democracy”, 6/16/14, Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, http://www.coha.org/authoritarianism-on-the-rise-the-war-on-drugs-erosion-of-mexicandemocracy/
*Edited for ableist language*
As if the burgeoning Latin American country has not suffered enough, the
War on Drugs has progressively managed to
disintegrate the country’s ever-frail democracy . Through the enactment of estados de excepción (states of exception),
Mexico’s executive branch has enabled itself to rule by decree, effectively circumventing Congress and
bypassing the nation’s constitution [3]. Freedom of press, speech, and movement have all been left handicapped, with the
military being able to operate freely outside of its constitutional confinements. These infringements on democracy will be addressed
throughout the course of this essay in order to highlight the danger that human rights periodically face in this most troubled Latin American
country.¶ Restoring Public Safety: Mexico Fights Back¶ Responding to crippling levels of violence, President Felipe Calderon
swept into
office in 2006 with the intention of combatting organized crime. His declaration of a “war” on drugs
was met with the deployment of Mexican military personnel to combat the country’s numerous criminal organizations.
At the end of 2008, some 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers were involved in the fight against drug trafficking [4].¶ Although
President Calderon’s decision to use the armed forces was highly controversial domestically, his administration was
quick to
obtain support abroad. The United States, Mexico’s largest trade partner, pledged $400 million USD for military assistance in 2008 [5].
Since then, the Americans have given an excess of $1.3 billion USD, an exuberant amount that continues
to grow under both Republican and Democrat presidencies [6]. Ironically, Washington has been extremely hospitable to an influx of another
cohort of Mexican citizens, all of whom are soldiers that stay temporarily to be educated on American
military tactics, necessary to execute counterinsurgency operations in their own country [7].¶ The pooling
together of these assets (i.e. U.S.-trained military personnel, foreign financial assistance, etc.) has enabled the Mexican authorities to
orchestrate systematic counternarcotic operations in which soldiers attempt to apprehend criminals involved in drug production and
trafficking.¶ While drastic in its goal to tackle organized crime, the drug war has shown considerable success in the apprehension of more than
121,000 criminals [8]. With less than 9,000 convictions made, the government has shown some success in crippling the production and
trafficking of narcotics—even if the impact on criminal organizations is only temporary.¶ An Imperial Presidency Restored¶ When
commencing the War on Drugs, the Mexican government aspired to freely persecute those it believed
to be part of the illicit drug trade. However, the country’s 1917 constitution, designed to safeguard civilians from an
overbearing government, prevented the government from initiating broad military campaigns .¶ In 2009, President
Calderon submitted a bill to the Mexican Congress that would effectively enable the executive branch
to circumvent the nation’s various constitutional restraints and legislative “checks .” Although the Calderon
administration legitimized its power grab by emphasizing the need to restore public safety, the bill catalyzed the erosion of
various democratic institutions that resulted in the consequences analyzed below.¶ ¶ Circumventing Congress:
The Waning Power of Mexico’s Legislature¶ To his credit, President Calderon followed the constitutional procedures required to enlarge his
powers as chief executive. His actions, while damaging to civil liberties and the country’s democracy, did obtain the required legislative
approval.¶ That being said, President Calderon’s 2009 bill
endowed the executive with the ability to have his Consejo
Security Council), an entity filled with presidential appointees, declare estados de
excepción [9]. This power, previously reserved for Congress, abandons legislative approval and allows the
executive to suspend civil liberties systematically with little to no opposition coming from the country’s major political
ranks.¶ Even more damaging is the fact that through estados de excepción, the country’s executive has been able to govern
through decree [10]. Allowing the president to circumvent congress, the executive is able to pass bills without consulting the country’s
elected representatives. Most recently, President Peña Nieto has initiated various reforms concerning taxation and
water regulation, demonstrating his ability to manipulate current political instability in order to
implement reforms in areas not relevant to the War on Drugs [11].¶ ¶ The Siege of Civil Liberties: Mexico’s Suspension
of Human Rights¶ By means of declaring multiple estados de excepción in “states” throughout the country, the Mexican government
has acquired the power to restrict basic human rights. Freedom of speech, movement, and assembly
are all suspended upon the request of the government [12]. Much like the U.S. National Security Agency, government
de Seguridad Nacional (National
officials also have the option of engaging in the systematic monitoring of citizens’ private communications [13]. Those perceived to be involved
in drug trafficking face even greater scrutiny – especially since habeas corpus is suspended under estados de excepción and suspected criminals
can be kept in prison for 80 days without being presented with specific charges [14].¶ Although the Mexican government has a legitimate
conflict to address, the
suspension of previously guaranteed civil liberties not only cripples civil society, but also leaves
citizens vulnerable to the mercy of government officials. In a country whose police force has 50 percent of its officers
engaging in corrupt activities, it is disturbing that common citizens may be extorted or brutalized on a daily basis ,
with no one to turn to for help [15].¶ Estados de Excepción: A Golden Ticket For The Mexican Military¶ Mexico’s military has played an
extensive role throughout the country’s history, particularly in its governance. In order to prevent the armed forces from endangering the
nation’s democracy, Mexico’s constitution confines the military to a role that is separate from the political process. While this confinement is
beneficial in safeguarding the country’s democracy, Mexico’s
military lacks transparency in its operations and is known to
be indiscriminate in its acts of aggression.¶ Under estados de excepción, the armed forces have been given sweeping powers to
quell violence and demolish organized crime [16]. Allegations have surfaced by two mothers that soldiers abducted their two sons, atrociously
torturing one and brutally beating the other one to death [17]. Reports of
more than 70 individuals having been
tortured, raped, and/or murdered by members of the military add to the seemingly unending list of
atrocities committed by government forces that claimed to be protecting the public [18].¶ While calls by the
public to have soldiers prosecuted in civilian courts have emerged, the country’s judicial system has been active in ensuring that the Mexican
military is shielded from public scrutiny. The Supreme Court of Mexico validated the authority of military courts to judge soldiers involved in
crimes against civilians in August 2009 [19]. This strategic move not only further bolstered the strength of the armed forces, but also assigned
them with the approval to conduct mass violence against those they perceive to be enemies of the state without fearing any retaliation by the
country’s judicial system.¶ In addition to their exception from the law, evidence has surfaced implicating various military figures in corruption
scandals with narcotic trafficking organizations. Most notably, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was found to have accepted bribes from drug
traffickers in 1997 [20]. Under the presidency of Vicente Fox, 2,600 federal law officers were fired or suspended for bribery and corruptionrelated charges [21]. In 2008, both the head of the Sub-Prosecutor for Special Investigations into Organized Crime (SIEDO) and two heads of
Interpol in the country were investigated for receiving bribes from a Sinaloa drug cartel [22]. The list of corrupt military and state officials
appears almost endless.¶ It should be noted that an excess of 120,000
Mexican soldiers, many of whom were trained in the United
deserted the military in order to pursue a lucrative career with drug cartels [23]. Effectively, this
leaves the government in a fight against a self-created enemy that contains vast insight into the
military’s operations and tactics.¶ ¶ Violence and Poverty: Setting The Stage For Authoritarianism?¶ Mexico’s progressive shift
States, have
towards authoritarianism is not simply the result of the executive and military actively pursuing greater power; it is also the net result of a
crippling economic environment and violent social atmosphere.¶ Following a series of bank crises and global financial meltdowns, Mexico
has been plagued with having to battle a series of economic catastrophes. Its economy has been estimated
to have an annual GDP of $1.2 trillion USD, which is limited in its ability to expand due to the high cost of security
that is needed for economic enterprises to operate within the country. According to some scholars, security
expenditures add an additional 8 to 15 percent to business operations [24]. And although the Mexican
government has been on an aggressive campaign to attract foreign investors to the country’s burgeoning
manufacturing sector, the fact of the matter is that the danger and high costs of business operations handicap [hurt]
economic prosperity. This, in combination with an increased level of militarized warfare, is estimated to decrease economic growth by
approximately 1% [25]. The combination of these factors inhibits the government from creating jobs that would
otherwise help employ some of the county’s 6 million unemployed citizens.¶ ¶ With more than 52 percent of the
population living in extreme poverty, financial disparity makes the country’s impoverished persons prime bait
for drug cartels [26]. While dangerous, the hefty salary paid by organized crime ensures the loyalty and steady supply of countless
workers. As it stands, drug cartels employ over half a million people in Mexico alone [27]. Their growing network of well-paid criminals not only
ensures a steady flow of narcotics to North America and Europe, but also guarantees the perpetuation of the War on Drugs by having citizens
feed into the very system that the Mexican government is attempting to dismantle.¶ Due
to the increasing scope of the
conflict, the government is likely to restrict civil liberties and continue to endow the executive and
military with relatively unchecked powers in order to resolve the issue at hand. This erosion of liberal democratic values,
regardless of good intentions, will ensure the growth of authoritarianism in a country whose history is blotched with right-wing dictatorships
and vast periods of oppression.¶ The War on Drugs is approaching a decade of violence with increasing evidence that the endless violence is
setting the stage for antidemocratic governance to engulf the country. With reports citing an approximate 1.6 million people as having been
displaced, momentum has grown within the public to equip the government with the power necessary to end the drug cartels’ reckless actions
[28].¶ Polls from 2012 demonstrate that 80 percent of the Mexican population supports using the army to combat drug violence [29]. Studies
show that almost three in every four individuals (73 percent) viewed the military positively in 2012. Moreover, trust in national government
leaped from 54 to 65 percent between 2011 and 2012 [30]. With the average citizen demonstrating an increased sense of trust in their
government and the armed forces, civil society has overwhelmingly rejected the notion of defending human rights and basic liberties. As a
matter of fact, the argument could be made that the Mexican public has decided to trade basic liberties for security. Especially with one-third of
the population being in favor of having the United States send troops to Mexico, sovereignty and civil liberties are viewed as insignificant by a
considerable number of the Mexican populace when it comes to combating unmanageable levels of violence [31].¶ Finally, ambitious politicians
and power-hungry military leaders are not the only catalyst in Mexico’s reactionary shift towards an illiberal democracy. The government’s
failure to create an adequate number of jobs, in addition to prolonged
warfare between government forces and
criminal organizations, has driven desperate citizens into fostering a climate that favors the
deterioration of democratic values in exchange for a perceived sense of security.¶ Prospects For A Better
Tomorrow?¶ Mexico is cursed by its geography. Although blessed with vast oil reserves, the fact that the country is nestled between the United
States (the world’s largest consumer of illegal drugs) and South America (a region of vast narcotic production) ensures that it is constantly
battling with drugs trafficking across its borders [32]. Needless to say, U.S. pressures to dismantle the operations of drug producers, in addition
to social unrest, puts the Mexican government in a difficult position.¶ While everyone who loves Mexico wants to see it flourish as a developed
country, the fact is until
Mexico can attract investments, create a greater number of jobs, and restore social
tranquility; it is inevitable that criminal organizations will continue to prey on impoverished and
poorly educated persons. These shortcomings will only add to the conflict, resulting in continued
violence and countless fatalities .¶ It is highly unlikely that Mexico’s War on Drugs will be resolved in the near future. If
violence does subside, then the country will have a much easier task addressing issues of wealth
disparity, lackluster education, and poor labor conditions. Sadly, the reality of the situation is that violence will continue
and the government will actively attempt to grant itself with greater, unchecked powers to combat the problem. Doing so will inevitably
dismantle what remains of the country’s democratic fabric and condemn the nation and its people to oppression by corrupt government
officials.
Current growth is insufficient—poverty, black market
Duncan Wood 14, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center,
former professor and director of the international relations program at the Instituto Tecnológico
Autónomo de Méxcio (ITAM) in Mexico City, “Gauging Economic and Democratic Progress in Mexico”,
7/17/14,
https://umshare.miami.edu/web/wda/hemisphericpolicy/Task_Force_Papers/Wood%20and%20Putnam
%20Paper.pdf
Mexico’s economic transformation has deepened since then thanks to the extraordinarily successful legislative
reform agenda of the Peña Nieto administration. Reforms of labor markets, education, telecommunications, finance and energy in 2013
carry the promise of moving Mexico’s economy ahead once more while providing an environment that should significantly raise both national
productivity and foreign direct investment. The energy reform in particular is a game-changer, promising to create a parallel revolution in the
hydrocarbons sector to that which occurred in the manufacturing sector after NAFTA.¶ The
Mexican economic transformation,
however, has not been without problems, and it unclear whether the recent reforms will be able to
solve them . Per capita income has risen steadily in the country over the past 30 years, yet Mexico remains one of the most
unequal economies in the world where, according to Mexican government statistics, over 45 percent of the
population still lives in poverty. Almost 12 million people, 10 percent of the population, live in extreme poverty. This stands in stark
contrast with the fact that Mexico has the highest concentration of billionaires per capita in the world, and the world’s second richest person,
Carlos Slim. Mexico
also suffers from the problem of an informal economy that employs more people
than the formal sector. Owing in large part to the long-term impact of layoffs in the formal sector after the economic crises of the
1980s and 1990s and the subsequent liberalizing reforms, 60 percent of the Mexican labor force now works in the
informal economy. These individuals neither pay income tax, which reduces government revenue, nor
receive any form of benefits or social security, which harms productivity and creates heightened individual and
family vulnerability. As such, a major challenge for the government of Mexico remains the incorporation of the informal sector into the formal
economy, which was not addressed by the 2013 reforms.¶ Another
lingering problem for Mexico, which first beset the PAN
governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, and now the PRI government of Enrique Peña Nieto, has been the challenge of
achieving high growth rates in the economy. Although there have been some periods of higher growth, the average GDP
growth rate was 2.2 percent during the 2000-2006 Fox administration and 1.8 percent during the 2006-2012 Calderón government. The drop in
growth in the Calderón era was due in part to the economic recession (which consisted of a contraction of 6 percent of GDP in 2009) caused by
the United States’ financial turmoil in 2008-09, but was perceived by the Mexican electorate as a failure on the part of the PAN government to
provide sufficient economic opportunities.
Mexico’s key to the US economy---continued drug violence causes decline
Stephanie Buck 12, Program Assistant in Latin America and the Caribbean @ Center for International
Private Enterprise, “Why You Should Care About Mexico”, 6/20/12,
http://www.cipe.org/blog/2012/06/20/why-you-should-care-about-mexico/#.VAoF2vldWSo
Mexico today is one of the world’s most open economies, the thirteenth largest by GDP, and the United States’ third largest
trading partner. While many Americans associate Mexico with words like “drugs,” “violence,” “immigrants,” or maybe “Cancun,” the
truth is that the US economy is inextricably linked to Mexico’s, and vice versa: economic, civil, social, or
political unrest on one country greatly affects the other, both directly and indirectly.¶ The aim of this threepart blog series is to look at the bigger picture: Mexico is far more important to the US, and the US to Mexico, than
conventional wisdom suggests — and in many more ways.¶ A recent New York Times article discusses the importance of Mexico’s
rapidly approaching presidential elections to the state of Texas. However, these elections will affect more than just the border states. The
economies of more than a dozen other states, including Nebraska, Iowa, and Michigan depend heavily on exports
to Mexico. Mexican companies are now the largest suppliers of cement, baked goods, and dairy products to the US market. Mexico is
also the second largest supplier of oil to the US, after Canada.¶ In addition to providing each other with important export
markets, the Mexican and US economies are becoming increasingly integrated in ways that blur
traditional understandings of trade. The regional supply chains of US companies criss-cross the USMexico border, meaning that Mexico and the US work together to manufacture goods that are eventually sold on the global market. For
example, cars built in North America may cross the border as many as eight times as they are being produced.¶ In other words, the US and
Mexico are more than just neighbors. Economic
interdependence, shared cultural heritage, and grim security
issues that both countries must face together mean that what happens in Mexico affects the US in more
ways than just immigration and drug trafficking. Mexico’s economic, political, institutional, social, and security
challenges are all interconnected: whoever wins the Mexican presidential elections on July 1 will have to face a myriad of complex
problems. He or she will help set policies that will both directly and indirectly affect everyone from US business leaders to migrant workers to
white suburban teenagers.¶ A Mexico that is fully equipped with leaders who can help navigate the process to the reforms the country needs is
an even more important economic and political ally that can help increase prosperity throughout the region.¶ This is not a zero-sum game.
If
Mexico flourishes, the US will also flourish .
Mexico’s key to the global economy
Shannon K. O'Neil 14, Senior Fellow of Latin American Policy for CFR, "Mexico on the Brink", 2/19,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/19/mexico_on_the_brink
Mexico is doing better than many analysts expected, but is still not reaching its potential pace of advancement.
While the recent 3 to 4 percent GDP growth is welcome news, it is below the rate the country needs to
move up the global economic ranks -- and more important, to break out of the "middle-income trap" that leaves few resources available to improve the quality of life
for the have-nots. Opening the economy to the global winds was necessary , but not sufficient to assure long-term development.¶ Mexico is
All told,
now at a crossroads . It could continue down a path of growth and social change to become a leading democracy
with an energetic middle class. Or it could become bogged down by its many challenges: violence, interest-group politics, and the corrupting call of
crony capitalism. Much rides on the outcome, especially for many of Mexico's 112 million citizens who do not yet enjoy the
living standards of other OECD countries. But in an ever more integrated global economy, what happens
to Mexico's matters to the rest of the world and, in particular, to the United States.
Economic decline causes nuclear war
Geoffrey Kemp 10, Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in the White
House under Ronald Reagan, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior
director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Former Director,
Middle East Arms Control Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010, The East
Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East, p. 233-4
The second scenario, called Mayhem and Chaos, is the opposite of the first scenario; everything that can go wrong does go wrong. The
world economic situation weakens rather than strengthens, and India, China, and Japan suffer a major
reduction in their growth rates, further weakening the global economy. As a result, energy demand falls and
the price of fossil fuels plummets, leading to a financial crisis for the energy-producing states, which
are forced to cut back dramatically on expansion programs and social welfare. That in turn leads to
political unrest: and nurtures different radical groups, including, but not limited to, Islamic extremists. The
internal stability of some countries is challenged, and there are more “failed states.” Most serious is the
collapse of the democratic government in Pakistan and its takeover by Muslim extremists, who then
take possession of a large number of nuclear weapons. The danger of war between India and
Pakistan increases significantly. Iran, always worried about an extremist Pakistan, expands and weaponizes its nuclear
program. That further enhances nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and
Egypt joining Israel and Iran as nuclear states. Under these circumstances, the potential for nuclear terrorism
increases, and the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack in either the Western world or in the oilproducing states may lead to a further devastating collapse of the world economic market, with a
tsunami-like impact on stability. In this scenario, major disruptions can be expected, with dire
consequences for two-thirds of the planet’s population.
Robust studies prove
Jedidiah Royal 10, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the US Department of Defense,
“Economic Integration, Economic Signalling and the Problem of Economic Crises”, chapter in Economics
of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215
First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson’s (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms
in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody
transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crisis could usher in a
redistribution of power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of
miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for
conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also show that global economic
cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium, and small powers, although he suggests
that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown.¶ Second, on a dyadic level.
Copeland's (1996. 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding
economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long
as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace
items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources.
Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by
interdependent states.4 ¶ Third, others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level.
Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly
during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and
mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a
recession lends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-rein force each other. (Blomberg & Hess. 2002. p. 89)
Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg. Hess. & Weerapana, 2004), which has the
capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. ¶ Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government.
"Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments
have increased
incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect . Wang (1996), DeRouen
(1995), and Blombcrg. Mess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly
correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999). and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater
for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from
office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods
of weak economic
performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of
force.
Drug violence spills over—destabilizes Central America and the Caribbean
David Shirk 11, director of the Trans-Border Institute and associate professor of political science at the
University of San Diego, conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.-Mexico relations, and law
enforcement and security along the U.S.-Mexico border, “The Drug War in Mexico Confronting a Shared
Threat”, March 2011, Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/mexico/drug-warmexico/p24262
Mexican stability serves as an important anchor for the region. With networks stretching into Central America, the Caribbean, and
the Andean countries, Mexican DTOs undermine the security and reliability of other U.S. partners in the hemisphere, corrupting high-level
officials, military operatives, and law enforcement personnel; undermining due process and human rights; reducing public support for counter-drug efforts; and even
provoking hostility toward the United States. Given the fragility of some Central American and Caribbean states, expansion of
DTO operations and violence into the region would have a gravely destabilizing effect .
Third,
Instability causes bioterror attacks
Stephen Flynn 1, Founding Co-Director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland
Security, Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, “Terrorism, Porous Borders, and Homeland Security: The Case for U.S.-Caribbean
Cooperation”, 10/21/01, http://www.cfr.org/border-and-port-security/terrorism-porous-bordershomeland-security-case-us-caribbean-cooperation/p4844
linkages between drug trafficking and terrorism are clear in
countries like Colombia and Peru, and such connections have similar potential in the Caribbean. The security of major industrial
complexes in some Caribbean countries is vital. Petroleum refineries and major industrial estates in Trinidad, which host more than 100 companies that produce the majority of
Terrorist acts can take place anywhere. The Caribbean is no exception. Already the
the world’s methanol, ammonium sulphate, and 40 percent of U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), are vulnerable targets. Unfortunately, as experience has shown in Africa, the Middle
terrorists are likely to strike at U.S. and European interests in Caribbean countries.¶ Security
issues become even more critical when one considers the possible use of Caribbean countries by terrorists as bases
from which to attack the United States. An airliner hijacked after departure from an airport in the northern Caribbean or the Bahamas can be flying
over South Florida in less than an hour. Terrorists can sabotage or seize control of a cruise ship after the vessel leaves a
East, and Latin America,
Caribbean port. Moreover, terrorists with false passports and visas issued in the Caribbean may be able to move easily through passport controls in Canada or the United States. (To help
counter this possibility, some countries have suspended "economic citizenship" programs to ensure that known terrorists have not been inadvertently granted such citizenship.) Again,
Caribbean countries are as vulnerable as anywhere else to the clandestine manufacture and deployment of biological
weapons within national borders.
Cartels in Mexico working with external terrorists short-circuits existing checks and
makes attack likely
Terence Rosenthal 13, political consultant and contributor at the Center for Security Policy, July 10,
“Los Zetas and Hezbollah, a Deadly Alliance of Terror and Vice”,
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/07/10/los-zetas-and-hezbollah-a-deadly-alliance-ofterror-and-vice/
When Americans think about the illegal drug trade and black markets in Mexico, it is probable that
they do not associate them with terrorism
However, there is proof that Hezbollah
are functioning with cartels like Los Zetas
The combination of power hungry cartels
like Los Zetas, and terrorist organizations like Hezbollah
should not remain unnoticed.¶
, or Islamic fundamentalism. One would think that drug cartels like Los Zetas, the most sophisticated and second most powerful drug cartel in Mexico would have
enough allies and connections not to need the assistance of an organization like Hezbollah based half way across the world in Lebanon.
force
, as well as elements of the Iranian Quds
, the most sophisticated drug cartel in Mexico.
who want a presence in North America, in or near the United States inhibit U.S. companies from wanting to conduct business in
Mexico, and
The question is, how did this deadly alliance come into existence? For decades, immigrants, legal and illegal, have been arriving in Mexico from Lebanon. This population has been growing
steadily, and has a certain level of favorability with Hezbollah. One of the creations of Hezbollah in Mexico is that of well-connected global drug dealers, like Ayman Joumaa. Joumaa, indicted in 2011 is of Lebanese heritage, and has been linked to Hezbollah, and Mexico’s Los Zetas cartel.
With the help of the Los Zetas, and companies like The Lebanese Canadian Bank, Ayman Joumaa has laundered between $850 and $900 million. ¶ Joumaa is known among Israeli intelligence as being in contact with Hezbollah elite forces, and was connected to senior operatives handling
Hezbollah drug operations. He has received bulk payments of U.S. dollars in Mexico City after coordinating drug shipments from South America to the Los Zetas cartel, receiving a cut for laundering and camouflaging funds. Drug and contraband profits were disguised through the trading
and selling of used cars through an exchange in Africa with the help of Beirut exchange houses. Eventually, similar fraud rings connected to Joumaa were discovered throughout North and South America, and the Middle East. Various methods of investment fraud are typically used by drug
dealers to cover their tracks. Many fraud rings use creative investment tactics that can pass as legal activity if not scruti nized. One such operation involved the selling of thorough-bred horses to cover up the trade of millions of dollars in fraudulent drug money.¶ Since 2005, Iran and
Hezbollah have developed a presence in Latin America, opening 17 cultural centers, and forming relations with the Mexican drug cartels. 200,000 immigrants from Lebanon and Syria, many of whom are illegal residents, live in Mexico, and have established residence with the help of drug
cartels like Los Zetas, the most technically advanced of Mexico’s drug cartels. Those who are sympathetic to Islamic extremist movements make perfect recruits for the drug trade because they understand how illegal activity in the Americas empowers whoever wishes to weaken the
power of U.S. sovereignty. As shown by the increase of Islamic missionaries in Mexico, as well as the growing influence of Hezbollah and Iran, it is clear that Islamists are trying to win the hearts and minds of the Mexican people. However, beneath these seemingly peaceful developments
Hezbollah has
training bases and sleeper cells in Mexico and South America
Hezbollah
created tunnels on the American border that are extremely similar to those dividing Gaza and Egypt.
These tunnels are perfect for the transport of illegal conventional and biological weapons to contacts
in the U S
¶
an attack on
U.S. personnel installations by Hezbollah is possible
The relationship between Hezbollah and Los Zetas has almost touched down on American soil
Why is the combination of well-connected drug dealers, terrorist
organizations like Hezbollah, and the Zetas such a dangerous combination? It is a money laundering
operation that has the power to supersede local government, weaken communities, and make people
subject to criminal tyranny. It is highly possible that this threat could become a reality in the United
States.
¶
lie the fact that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Quds forces are partnering with major Mexican drug cartels. They are learning Mexican culture, as well as Spanish, and are starting to blend in with native-born Mexicans. ¶
. They also assist drug cartels with skills in bomb-making and explosives.
nited
tates. Weaponry created by Hezbollah is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people in major U.S. cities.
has also
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega believes that
. It is known that they have expanded from their operations in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, and are gaining ground in Central America and
Mexico.
. Los Zetas was
to be paid to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and the Saudi and Israeli embassy in Argentina.
In 2011, Iran’s Quds forces attempted an assassination against the Saudi Ambassador to the United States enlisting the use of the Los Zetas cartel. Luckily, this plot was thwarted by agents in the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
The Los Zetas Cartel is a
deadly crime machine that diversifies in illegal drugs, human trade, money laundering, and the exchange of illegal weaponry. Many of its mem bers were recruited from police and armed forces in Mexico. Techniques involving ambushes, defensive positions, and intelligence used by the
military are now applied by Mexico’s criminal syndicates. Los Zetas is prominent in 6 Mexican states, and actively infringes on government solvency in northeastern Tamaulipas. Many view the Mexican state of Guerrero as one where the power of Los Zetas narco-criminals is equal to that
of the local authorities. Los Zetas has even siphoned $1billion dollars in fuels from state-run oil producer, Pemex through their pipelines. In Tamaulipas, five people were killed as Los Zetas sought to take control of a Pemex well. Some of Los Zetas’ allies are among the most powerful
cartels in the world, including Beltrán-Leyva, the Juarez and Tijuana cartels, Bolivian drug clans, and ’Ndrangheta. ¶ It is understandable why the Mexican government would be apprehensive about marginalizing the power of Mexican drug cartels. They have seen many of their people die
as a result of the war against the cartels. The Mexican economy also benefits greatly from the high profit margins of illicit drugs and other forms of illegal contraband. Latin America is home to one of the largest underground economies in the world. 600,000-800,000 people are smuggled
The lure of
criminal activity and the drug trade, coupled with the presence of Hezbollah and Iranian Quds forces
in neighboring Mexico present the United States with a major threat at its borders
Hezbollah’s ties to Latin American drug smugglers poses a
“significant” threat for U.S. national security and
having a militant
organization like Hezbollah on
our border
does pose a threat
through international borders every year, generating $16 billion each year in human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Thes e staggering financial statistics have won over many law officers in Mexico who initially fought against the cartels. ¶
. Dr. Matthew Levitt, senior fellow and director of
terrorism studies at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as reported in CNS News.com in 2010 stated that
“In the event the nuclear confrontation with Iran gets worse rather than better,
, and even within
- it certainly
”. The obvious question is whether or not the United States is taking the necessary
precautions to counter what is likely to become an even larger problem if left undeterred.
Extinction
Nathan Myhrvold 13, founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and chief
technology officer of Microsoft Corporation, has been awarded hundreds of patents and has hundreds
of patents pending, former postdoctoral fellow in the department of applied mathematics and
theoretical physics at Cambridge University, “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action”, July 2013,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382
Even more so than with nuclear weapons,
the cost and technical difficulty of producing biological arms has dropped precipitously in
recent decades with the boom in industrial molecular biology. A small team of people with the necessary technical training and some cheap equipment can create weapons far more terrible than any nuclear bomb. Indeed, even a
single individual might do so.¶ Taken together,
these trends utterly undermine the lethality-versus-cost curve that existed throughout all of human history. Access
to extremely lethal agents—even to those that may exterminate the human race—will be available to nearly anybody. Access to mass death has been democratized; it has spread from a small elite of superpower leaders to nearly
anybody with modest resources. Even the leader of a ragtag, stateless group hiding in a cave—or in a Pakistani suburb—can potentially have “the button.”¶ Turning Life Against the Living¶ The first and simplest kinds of biological
weapons are those that are not contagious and thus do not lead to epidemics. These have been developed for use in military conflicts for most of the 20th century. Because the pathogens used are not contagious, they are
considered controllable: that is, they have at least some of the command-and-control aspects of a conventional weapon. Typically, these pathogens have been “weaponized,” meaning bred or refined for deployment by using
artillery shells, aerial bombs, or missiles much like conventional explosive warheads. They can be highly deadly. ¶ Anthrax is the most famous example. In several early- 20th-century outbreaks, it killed nearly 90% of those infected
by inhaling bacterial spores into their lungs. Anthrax was used in the series of mail attacks in the United States in the fall of 2001. Even with advanced antibiotic treatment, 40% of those who contracted inhalational anthrax died
during the 2001 attacks.1¶ That crime is believed to have been the work of a lone bioweapons scientist who sought to publicize the threat of a biological attack and boost funding for his work on anthrax vaccines. This conclusion is
consistent with the fact that virtually no effort was made to disperse the bacterium— indeed, the letters carrying the spores thoughtfully included text warning of anthrax exposure and recommending that the recipient seek
immediate treatment. Despite this intentional effort to limit rather than spread the infection, a surprising amount of trouble was caused when the fine anthrax powder leaked from envelopes and contaminated other mail. Before
this episode, nobody would have guessed that letters mailed in New Jersey to addresses in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., could kill someone in Connecticut, but they did. And no one would have predicted that a domestic
bioterrorist launching multiple attacks, including one against the U.S. Congress, would elude the FBI for years. But that is what happened.¶ What if such an attack were made not by some vigilante trying to alert the world to the
dangers of bioweapons but instead by a real sociopath? Theodore J. Kaczynski, better known as the “Unabomber,” may have been such a person. He was brilliant enough to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of
Michigan yet was mentally disturbed enough to be a one-man terrorist cell: His mail bombs claimed victims over nearly two decades. Kaczynski certainly had enough brains to use sophisticated methods, but because he opposed
advanced technology, he made untraceable low-tech bombs that killed only three people. A future Kaczynski with training in microbiology and genetics, and an eagerness to use the destructive power of that science, could be a
threat to the entire human race.¶ Indeed, the world has already experienced some true acts of biological terror. Aum Shinrikyo produced botulinum toxin and anthrax and reportedly released them in Tokyo on four separate
occasions. A variety of technical and organizational difficulties frustrated these attacks, which did not cause any casualties and went unrecognized at the time for what they were, until the later Sarin attack clued in the authorities.2
Had the group been a bit more competent, things could have turned out far worse. ¶ One 2003 study found that an airborne release of one kilogram of an anthrax-spore-containing aerosol in a city the size of New York would result
in 1.5 million infections and 123,000 to 660,000 fatalities, depending on the effectiveness of the public health response.3 A 1993 U.S. government analysis determined that 100 kilograms of weaponized anthrax, if sprayed from an
airplane upwind of Washington, D.C., would kill between 130,000 and three million people.4 Because anthrax spores remain viable in the environment for more than 30 years,1 portions of a city blanketed by an anthrax cloud
might have to be abandoned for years while extensive cleaning was done. Producing enough anthrax to kill 100,000 Americans is far easier to do—and far harder to detect—than is constructing a nuclear bomb of comparable
lethality.¶ Anthrax, moreover, is rather benign as biological weapons go. The pathogen is reasonably well understood, having been studied in one form or another in biowarfare circles for more than 50 years. Natural strains of the
bacterium are partially treatable with long courses of common antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin if the medication is taken sufficiently quickly, and vaccination soon after exposure seems to reduce mortality further.5¶ But
bioengineered anthrax that is resistant to both antibiotics and vaccines is known to have been produced in both Soviet and American bioweapons laboratories. In 1997, a group of Russian scientists even openly published the recipe
for one of these superlethal strains in a scientific journal.6¶ In addition, numerous other agents are similar to anthrax in that they are highly lethal but not contagious. The lack of contagion means that an attacker must administer
the pathogen to the people he wishes to infect. In a military context, this quality is generally seen as a good thing because the resulting disease can be contained in a specific area. Thus, the weapon can be directed at a well-defined
many biological agents are communicable and so can spread beyond the people initially infected to
Infectious pathogens are inherently hard to control because there is usually no reliable way to stop an epidemic once it starts. This property makes such
target, and with luck, little collateral damage will result. ¶ Unfortunately,
affect the entire population.
biological agents difficult to use as conventional weapons. A nation that starts an epidemic may see it spread to the wrong country—or even to its own people. Indeed, one cannot target a small, well-defined population with a
contagious pathogen; by its nature, such a pathogen may infect the entire human race.¶ Despite this rather severe drawback, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Imperial Japan, investigated and produced
contagious bioweapons. The logic was that their use in a military conflict would be limited to last-ditch, “scorched earth” campaigns, perhaps with a vaccine available only to one side. ¶ Smallpox is the most famous example. It is
highly contagious and spreads through casual contact. Smallpox was eradicated in the wild in 1977, but it still exists in both U.S. and Russian laboratories, according to official statements.7 Unofficial holdings are harder to track, but
a number of countries, including North Korea, are believed to possess covert smallpox cultures. ¶ Biological weapons were strictly regulated by international treaty in 1972. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to
develop such weapons and to destroy existing stocks. The United States stopped its bioweapons work, but the Russians cheated and kept a huge program going into the 1990s, thereby producing thousands of tons of weaponized
anthrax, smallpox, and far more exotic biological weapons based on genetically engineered viruses. No one can be certain how far either the germs or the knowledge has spread since the collapse of the Soviet Union.¶ Experts
estimate that a large-scale, coordinated smallpox attack on the United States might kill 55,000 to 110,000 people, assuming that sufficient vaccine is available to contain the epidemic and that the vaccine works.8, 9 The death toll
may be far higher if the smallpox strain has been engineered to be vaccine-resistant or to have enhanced virulence.¶ Moreover, a smallpox attack on the United States could easily broaden into a global pandemic, despite the U.S.
stockpile of at least 300 million doses of vaccine. All it would take is for one infected person to leave the country and travel elsewhere. If New York City were attacked with smallpox, infections would most likely appear on every
continent, except perhaps Antarctica, within two weeks. Once these beachheads were established, the epidemic would spread almost without check because the vaccine in world stockpiles and the infrastructure to distribute it
would be insufficient. That is particularly true in the developing world, which is ill equipped to handle their current disease burden to say nothing of a return of smallpox. Even if “only” 50,000 people were killed in the United
States, a million or more would probably die worldwide before the disease could be contained, and containment would probably require many years of effort.¶ As horrible as this would be, such a pandemic is by no means the
worst attack one can imagine, for several reasons. First, most of the classic bioweapons are based on 1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the United States and most
other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline, were never on the cutting edge of biological research. Third and most important,
the
science and technology of molecular biology have made enormous advances, utterly transforming the field in the last few decades. High school
biology students routinely perform molecular-biology manipulations that would have been impossible even for the best superpower-funded program back in the heyday of biological-weapons research. The biowarfare methods of
in 2001,
Australian researchers working on mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox does in humans), accidentally discovered that a
simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11 Instead of producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the
the 1960s and 1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era. Tomorrow’s terrorists will have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from. ¶ Consider this sobering development:
naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover, was unaffected by any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late
2003, found a way to improve on it: Buller’s variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals
from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that the genetically altered virus is no longer contagious. Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. ¶ Strong reasons
exist to believe that the genetic modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow chickenpox or another poxvirus that
infects humans to be turned into a 100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? I’ve asked this question of experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldn’t
Many more are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal
Nature published a controversial study done at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in which virologists enumerated the changes one
would need to make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14¶ Biotechnology is advancing so rapidly that it is hard
be done.¶ This case is just one example.
to keep track of all the new potential threats. Nor is it clear that anyone is even trying. In addition to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters can be played with, given that the infectious power of an epidemic depends
on many properties, including the length of the latency period during which a person is contagious but asymptomatic. Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and thus makes the
virus harder to stop.¶ This dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV, which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even then, the infection rate is low. The
balancing factor is that HIV can take years to progress to AIDS, which can then take many more years to kill the victim. What makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have lots of opportunities to infect others. This property
has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far, and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain future.15¶ A virus genetically engineered to infect its host quickly, to
generate symptoms slowly—say, only after weeks or months—and to spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV . It could silently penetrate the population to unleash its deadly
effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost impossible to combat because most of the infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious.¶ A technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such
a virus and kill a large part of humanity with it. Indeed, terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details.¶ Given the rate at which biologists are making discoveries about
viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future,
someone may create artificial pathogens that could drive the human race
to extinction . Indeed, a detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a scientific journal.¶ The ostensible purpose of that particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria
mosquito, but similar techniques could be directed toward humans.16 When I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be fought with biotech
remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas.¶ Modern biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about the demise of
the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient number of people to end high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem
far-fetched, but keep in mind that
it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency been accessible to so few, so easily. Even more
dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to
extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo sapiens—will be available to anybody with a solid background in biology, terrorists included. ¶ The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had
sufficient education to enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed Atta attended a German university, where he earned a master’s degree in urban
planning—not a field he likely chose for its relevance to terrorism.
A future set of terrorists could just as easily be students of molecular biology who
enter their studies innocently enough but later put their skills to homicidal use. Hundreds of universities in Europe and Asia have curricula sufficient to train people in the skills necessary to make a sophisticated biological weapon,
and hundreds more in the United States accept students from all over the world. ¶ Thus it seems likely that sometime in the near future a small band of terrorists, or even a single misanthropic individual, will overcome our best
defenses and do something truly terrible, such as fashion a bioweapon that could kill millions or even billions of people. Indeed,
the creation of such weapons within the
next 20 years seems to be a virtual certainty . The repercussions of their use are hard to estimate. One approach is to look at how the scale of destruction they may cause
compares with that of other calamities that the human race has faced.
1AC Hemp
CONTENTION 2 IS HEMP
Commercial hemp is on hold—momentum for legal reform is in place, but new federal
action is key to industry development
Jeff Siegel 6/11, financial consultant, author, managing editor of Energy and Capital and contributing
analyst for the Energy Investor, an independent investment research service that focuses primarily on
stocks in the oil and gas, modern energy, and infrastructure markets 6/11/14, This is Better Than Drug
Money!, Energy & Capital, http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/investing-in-hemp/4455
But while
the ban obliterated hemp cultivation except for a few special cases requiring federal permits, Americans were allowed to import
hemp products, oil, and seeds. In 2011, the U.S. imported some $11.5 million worth of hemp products, oil, and seeds, much of which was further processed into
cooking oils, animal feeds, even granola bars. ¶ A
new farm bill enacted earlier this year would open up the field once
again. “This is big!” exclaimed Eric Steenstra, president of advocacy group Vote Hemp. “We've been pushing for this a long
time.Ӧ Advocates estimate hemp could develop into a $100 million a year industry, which could grow into a $10 billion a year market if the loosening of hemp
cultivation laws is a stepping-stone to the legalization of marijuana nationwide.¶ Steenstra anticipates precisely that. “This is part of an overall look
at cannabis policy, no doubt,” he affirms.¶ Still, the heavy hand of the federal government will not move
easily.¶ As the Associated Press reported last week, federal authorities ordered nearly 300 pounds of hemp seeds from Italy
detained by U.S. customs officials in Louisville. In order to get the seeds released, Kentucky State agriculture authorities had to take their case
to court, suing the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and even Attorney General Eric Holder. ¶ Also
worth noting is that while
fifteen states have availed themselves of the new farm bill by removing hemp
production barriers, in only two states — Colorado and Kentucky — have farmers taken to cultivating it.¶ The
hemp industry is in for a period of slow growth as it awaits other federal agencies to loosen their
restrictions on seed imports.¶ That being said, I'm...¶ Bullish on the Return of Hemp¶ As an industrial crop, it's quite impressive.One acre of hemp
can produce four times more paper than one acre of trees.Hemp fiber is ten times stronger than
cotton, can be used to make clothing, and doesn't require nearly as much in the way of pesticides as
cotton.Hemp can serve as a substitute for wood in building materials. Not only is it stronger than
wood, but it's cheaper to produce.Hemp produces more biomass than any other plant that can be
grown in the U.S.Hemp can be grown anywhere in the United States, requires only moderate water,
and is frost tolerant.When we think about the legalization of marijuana, we often think about the
massive profit potential. And rightly so. With the legalization of marijuana will come an enormous
opportunity for savvy investors and entrepreneurs.Yet when you step back and look at the big picture,
you'll find that when it comes to cannabis, the real money's going to be in industrial hemp.¶ Unfortunately,
with special interests controlling the federal government, it's going to take some time before hemp
comes back strong enough to be a safe investment. That being said, the folks in Kentucky and Colorado who are actively
moving forward with the cultivation of hemp are embarking on a journey that could ultimately prove
to be insanely lucrative. And I wish them well.
Plan is key to the regulatory framework—that’s necessary to guide industry
development and resolves conflicting demands
Doug Fine 14, investigative journalist, bestselling author, reported from five continents for The
Washington Post, Wired, Salon, The New York Times, Outside, National Public Radio, and U.S. News &
World Report. His work from Burma was read into the Congressional Record and he won more than a
dozen Alaska Press Club awards for his radio reporting from the Last Frontier , LA Times, 2014, Teach
Your Regulators Well, Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution,
pg 93-95
For hemp to once again take off in the United States, history tells us that two more elements have to fall into
place.¶ First, the industry pioneers must work with regulators to craft domestic standards. l learned this
from the saga of American biodeisel pioneers Kelly antl Bob King. They were in biofuels so early, their Pacific Biodiesel website
is biodeisel.com.¶ According to Business World Magazine, Pacific Biodeisel shared its pro-launch study results with regulators and
even competitors because the world frankly didn't know how to make an industry of waste restaurant oil. Today
their oil fuels a good deal of Hawaii, and they consult the world over. You can fill up at gas pumps on two Aloha State islands, and municipalities
use the fuel for backup generators.¶ Similarly, the
initial Canadian hemp players, several of whom are still in the industry,
worked with regulators on everything from field-testing hemp varieties to THC analysis, right from the
beginning. As we've discussed, this actually started several years before Canada's official 1993 reboot. ¶ As Hermann put it, "Even if
President Obama and Congress legalize hemp tomorrow, there's still a lot of work ahead for the U.S.
market and anyone who wants to be a player"¶ The initial U.S. state hemp legislation generally nods toward the¶ Canadian
model; Colorado, in addition to unlimited commercial¶ cultivation for registered farmers who grow hemp with that inert 0.3¶ percent THC limit,
is making a vocal statement of top-level support¶ by allowing those ten-acre development test plots wherein THC levels won‘t be tested until a
cultivar is ready for the commercial market. Similarly, Hawaii's step one looks to be a hundred-acre state-sponsored research project. Pacific
Biodeisel's Kelly and Bob King are big supporters of that project, because, in the end, the french fries that today drive their business are finite.
“Hawaii is close to legislation allowing for a test hemp plot that we hope will remediate a few centuries of sugarcane monoculture soil and
provide energy feedstock," Kelly King told me.¶ Now ,
patiently developing a regulatory framework and official
cultivars would seem to be essential . But there is another fairly loud opinion out there, and I'd be remiss not to mention it. It
goes like this; The original American hemp farmers planted what they had on hand in their wagons after crossing wild rivers and unnamed
mountain passes, And they managed, before interstates, let alone NAFTA to build a world-lending industry.¶ In other words, some
hemp
activists make the case for starting now with that ditch weed (or, if you prefer, the "heirloom cultivars") easily found out
by the railroad tracks in the heartland. This Let Darwin choose what we want plant philosophy is running up against the We live in a
lab coat-and-hairnet era because of uniformity and product safety demands line of thinking. ¶ Hermann's view
on this comes with too much in-the-field experience to ignore, and it's basically this: Once she's expanded
beyondselling carrots at the farmer's market, any farmer has to be savvy about her choice of variety.¶ “Every Walmart already carries hemp oil,
Nature's Path hemp cereal, and hemp twine,” she said. "A
mature industry has to be ready for the professionalism
that level of reach demands.”¶ She’s talking about standards, testing processes, and certification
paperwork. Humanity's oldest plant is about to grow up. “We have food and health inspectors certifying our industry in
Canada." she reminded me. Burritos in Front of the Phish show this is not. Still, this first to-do item is standard business stuff.
It can be easily checked off.
And it solves perception-- ambiguous standards in the CSA result in investor confusion
that deters the hemp industry
Melinda Fulmer 02, award-winning financial writer and media strategist, Vice President of Public
Relations for City National Bank, former Times Staff Writer, 1/16/02, Hemp Imports Run Afoul of DEA
Rule, LA Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jan/16/business/fi-hemp16
Kenex contends the rule is discriminatory to Canadian
producers, who provide the bulk of hemp products to the U.S.
because Americans are banned from growing the plant.¶ "Our company has invested a significant amount of money in
Canada and the U.S. to develop these markets for the past three years, and it has been one stumbling block after another ,"
said Jean Laprise, Kenex president. "They're squashing an emerging industry."¶ The Kenex case adds more heat to a debate
over the provision of NAFTA that allows private investors to sue governments for taking actions that restrict trade. Since NAFTA was enacted,
15 such cases have been filed.¶ Critics argue the provision gives companies too much power and undermines the ability of governments to
protect their citizens.¶ But Laprise says it's necessary to protect companies' rights when the law is discriminatory.¶ DEA officials refuse to
comment on the issue because of the pending litigation. But DEA
Administrator Asa Hutchinson put forward the
agency's position recently when he said that "many Americans do not know that hemp and marijuana are
both parts of the same plant and that hemp cannot be produced without producing marijuana."¶ The
DEA says consumers have until Feb. 6 to dispose of these items or be subject to penalty.¶ Although hemp and marijuana come from the plant
species, cannabis, the variety grown for industrial hemp contains much lower amounts of THC, a point the DEA acknowledges. The
burning
issue for the DEA is: When can cannabis legally be sold as hemp, and when is it still a drug? Hemp oil and
seeds can't make people high, but they do contain minuscule amounts of THC, much as poppy seeds contain trace
amounts of opium.¶ "The leaves and flowers on industrial hemp, when you smoke them, it gives you a headache," said John Roulac, president
of Nutiva in Sebastopol, Calif., which makes snack bars and chips out of hemp. "If you smoke more, you just get a bigger headache."¶
If
there weren't a cloud hanging over the industry from this regulation, manufacturers say, it would
grow exponentially over the next several years as demand for functional foods grows.¶ However, confusion over
the new rule, and high-profile seizures of hemp-containing products such as birdseed, should keep many
companies from using the controversial ingredient, Roulac said.¶ Many, however, say they plan to continue to sell their
products.¶ Food companies that use hemp ingredients hope that the industry and government can come
up with guidelines that will allow the industry to grow as it was expected to before the rule was published.¶ Without
them, they say, the DEA's ambiguous standards will make that difficult.
The US is looking to revolutionize the biofuels industry—only the plan solves the
switch from corn to hemp and an effective biofuels transition—solves sustainable
fertizlier requirements
Nicole M. Keller 13, J.D. Drake University, Associate Attorney at Goodman Law, 2013, THE
LEGALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR INDIANA'S BIOFUEL INDUSTRY,
Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, LexisNexis Academic
Among the products derivable from the industrial hemp plant, and the product most relevant to this Note, is hemp as
a biofuel. In a time of high gas prices, political instability, and increasing concerns over the
environmental effects of fossil fuel consumption, it is natural to seek an alternative. Globally, the use
of biofuels as an alternative to petroleum products is gaining momentum. n48 The United States alone consumed approximately
11.7 million gallons of ethanol in 2011 n49 and over 549 [*560] million gallons of biodiesel in the first 9 months of 2011. n50 In Canada,
hemp biofuel research is underway to produce cellulosic ethanol. n51 Cellulosic ethanol is ethanol produced from the
non-food parts of feedstock and is a more efficient source of energy. n52 Currently, the majority of feedstock for biofuels
comes from corn, soybeans, or wheat. n53 However, in addition to being an inefficient source of fuel,
the diversion of these commodities for fuel production is at the expense of the world food supply. n54
The United States has recognized the issue and has "announced a $ 510 million initiative meant to spur
development of a new US bio-fuel industry that utilizes non-food crops[.]" n55 The initiative is meant to examine sources
such as algae or wood chips; n56 however, there is a more efficient source: industrial hemp. "When compared to
other plant species of active interest in biofuel production, Hemp derives 100% more cellulose than species
under active investigation." n57 Furthermore, "[h]emp is Earth's number one biomass resource; it is capable of
producing 10 tons per acre in four months." n58 Hemp biomass fuel products require a minimal amount
of specialization and processing and "[t]he hydrocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources,
from fuel pellets to liquid fuels and gas." n59 These facts alone make industrial hemp the ideal source for both
ethanol and biodiesel production. Yet, industrial hemp, in addition to its fibrous plant matter, also produces seeds
wherein lies a rich source of hemp
fuel capabilities and
desirability is further enhanced by the fact that "[i]ndustrial hemp can be grown in most climates and on marginal soils.
It requires little or no herbicide and no pesticide[.]" n61 The hemp plant is also known to improve soil conditions for
rotational crops, n62 and it is a clean-burning fuel, contributing no greenhouse gases. n63 Yet, industrial hemp is
not seriously considered as a feedstock input, n64 largely because industrial hemp is illegal to grow in the
United States. ¶ III. Industrial Hemp History in the United States¶ Industrial hemp was not always illegal in the United
States. n65 In fact, before 1937 it was grown and manufactured into many products. n66 The public sentiment surrounding the plant was
[*561] oil, and this oil can also be used for fuel. n60 Industrial hemp's
social acceptance of a staple in the American household. n67 It was used most often for clothing, paper, rope, and lamp oil. n68 Respected
presidents were proponents of industrial hemp: "George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that
made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper[,]" n69 and "Abraham Lincoln use[d] hemp-seed oil to
fuel his household lamps." n70 But in 1937, right when mechanical processes that would turn hemp into a truly industrialized commodity were
about to explode on the American scene, n71 Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. n72 The Act was aimed at eliminating the use of
marijuana as a drug but had the effect of making all industrial hemp varieties illegal as well. n73¶ [*562] ¶ The Act placed a $ 1 tax on anyone
who "imports, manufactures, produces, compounds, sells, deals in, dispenses, prescribes, administers, or gives away marihuana." n74 Although
legislative history shows that industrial hemp was not an intended target of the law, and "Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) (the predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)), told the Senate Committee that those in the
domestic industrial hemp industry 'are not only amply protected under this act, but they can go ahead and raise hemp just as they have always
done it[,]'" n75 the wording of the law effectively prohibited industrial hemp cultivation. n76 Specifically, §1(b) of the Act says,¶ The term
"marihuana" means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of
such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds, or resin- but shall not include
the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound,
manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the
sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination. n77¶ It is clear that Congress tried to exclude industrial hemp from the
legislation (i.e. "but shall not include the mature stalks of such plant" n78 ), but for practical purposes there is no way for a farmer to produce
the "mature stalks of such plant" without growing "the seeds thereof." n79 After
the passage of the Act, hemp farmers
were confused about the impact the Act would have on their operations. n80 Letters were sent to the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics asking what should be done about the hemp that had been harvested but
not yet sold. n81 People wanted to know if even having it was a violation of the new law. n82 The
letters also urged the Bureau to conduct [*563] research on the benefits of the hemp plant. n83 Officials,
unsure about the exact properties of hemp, gave conflicting answers and enforced the new law inconsistently. n84 Moreover, there was never
any formal research to determine if hemp was a viable crop for big industry and if it could be produced without the psychoactive effect found in
marijuana. n85 Thus, for some time, the hemp industry mostly died in America. n86¶ Several years later in 1942, at the
request of the Department of Agriculture, US farmers were enlisted to grow hemp in an effort to support the war. n87¶ Despite the existence of
the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the result of the "Hemp for Victory" Campaign was that "thousands of farmers grew hundreds of thousands of
acres of hemp for wartime needs." However, by the end of WW II, the government's allowance of industrial hemp cultivation also ended and by
1957, "prohibitionists had reasserted a total ban on hemp production." n88¶ Time
passed, and American culture changed
and evolved throughout the 1960's when drug use escalated amidst the country's freedom movement. n89 As a result of the increased use
of recreational drugs, in 1970 Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which lays out definitions, offenses, and charges related to
narcotic drugs in the United States. n90 In it, Cannabis sativa is defined just as it was in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, lumping industrial hemp
into the category of Schedule I: Hallucinogenic Substances, n91 despite hemp not having high enough THC levels to have any narcotic effect.
n92¶ Over
the past ten years, many states have realized the economic and environmental potential of
industrial hemp and have passed legislation legalizing its cultivation. n93 However, because of its narcotic
classification a [*564] DEA permit is also required. n94 Unfortunately, the DEA has refused to grant any permits, n95
which makes production still illegal at the federal level and effectively voids any efforts the states have taken
to legalize industrial hemp.¶ On February 14, 2013, "[Senator] Rand Paul and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, both of
Kentucky, joined Oregon Democratic [Senators] Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden in introducing legislation to allow American
farmers to cultivate and profit from industrial hemp." n96 The legislation, which is a companion bill to H.R. 525, also
known as the "Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013" would explicitly exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana in the Controlled
Substances Act, thus giving regulation of the crop to the States. n97 Currently the bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. n98 The
existence of this bill demonstrates
the importance and potential of the industrial hemp industry. It
illustrates the people's desire to move away from the draconian enforcement of outdated laws that fail to
change and adapt with the demands of society.
Legalization is key for the industry to hit critical capacity—any other policy fails
Matt Snyders 13, Award Winning Journalist, Dec/Jan 2013 Issue, The Hemp Connoisseur,
http://issuu.com/thcmag/docs/thcissue5
"One dollar a gallon generates $300 per acre for the farmer," he says. "But remember, that just from the seed. That doesn't factor in the fibers, the hurds, the main
organic material that goes into fiber, paper, concrete, what have you." Some experts put the figure at 50 cents. Others higher. No one has a crystal ball, but the
main point to take away is that the
current price of hemp is artificially inflated, its demand artificially suppressed.
Compare that to the our current biofuel crop-of-choice. Corn is a grain of very little use outside of
food and fuel— and yet its production is not only allowed, but subsidized, by the federal government.
Hemp is capable of providing everything maize does, ethanol included, and then some. But that's not the only
advantages. Ed Lehrburger, President and CEO of PureVision Technologies—a Colorado-based renewable energy company which focuses on converting biomass into
fuel—has long touted the advantages of hemp, not just in terms of its excellent cellulose content for processers, but the ease and affordability with which farmers
"This is a plant requires less water and less fertilizer than most, easy to harvest, grows in many
soil types, you don't have to replant every year, you can harvest not only the biomass, but the seeds to make different products," he
says. "But the main point I want to emphasize is you can't get high from industrial hemp." ¶ That said, you can get pretty much everything else from it. Virtually
every material of human use today every can be made from hemp: fabrics, plastics, concrete, oil, food, paper, cosmetics,
soaps, medicine. Glass is about the only material hemp is can't provide . Any state or that nation harnesses the full potential of
industrial hemp for these uses is going to be left with a stockpile of waste material that can be
converted into fuel, according to Das and Lehrburger, at which point the term "energy independence" moves from politicized buzzword to
grow it. ¶
concrete attainable reality. ¶ Hemp's versatility is why Henry Ford had it in mind when he designed his first cars— at the time hemp production was not only
allowed but encouraged by the United States government and hemp materials were comparatively cheaper and more readily available. The first Model-T Fords not
only featured hemp-based bodies which boasted greater collision impact than their steel counterparts despite being lighter and more fuel efficient, but indeed ran
on hemp-based ethanol. In fact Ford never intended his vehicles to run on gasoline. ¶"The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like the sumach out by the
road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust—almost anything," he told the New York Times in 1925. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented.
There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years." ¶A couple of caveats:
don't expect hemp to revolutionize the biofuel industry in the immediate short term. Until and unless
the federal government lifts its impossible-to-justify ban on the most vital cash crop in human history,
it will be next to impossible for the industry to hit critical mass . Hemp's sizeable infrastructure and
start-up requirements will deter investors and large-scale farmers from jumping on board until they
can produce at full capacity without having to worry about armed agents banging down their door
and seizing their life savings. ¶"It's not like opening up a little dispensary retail storefront and taking your chances with the feds," points out
Lehrburger. "You're talking thousands of acres. That's not a small deal. Which is why there needs to be a law at the federal level that
legalizes hemp before things really rev up. That's the bottom line.”
Increasing production now is key—failure locks in new fuel standards that destroy
cellulosic biofuels
Nicholas Zeman 14, Energy and Transportation Correspondant for Engineering News Record, former
Associate Editor for BBI International—a biofuels magazine, May/June 2014 Issue, The Final Push,
Biofuels International Journal, http://dyadic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Final-Push.pdf
If three cellulosic ethanol plants can start up and turn profits this year it will change not only the entire
ethanol market, but the future of world consumption. Several companies are closer than ever, construction
projects are booming and the time is now. But the US petroleum industry does not want to see ethanol’s market
share grow. ¶ With three global construction and engineering companies in the throes of the final stages of construction for different
cellulosic ethanol plants in the US Midwest, the situation suggests fierce angling to have the next commercial facility up and running.¶ DuPont
Chemical, Abengoa Bioenergy and Poet-DSM are all driving hard to bring the final stages of their facilities home. Becoming the next 'first of its
kind' plant on a new technological scene could mean gaining the lion's share of government backing and investor confidence.¶ The
cellulosic industry has not been able to achieve the production targets that the Envirorvnental Protection
Agency (EPA) has set for it, with Mississippi-headquartered next generation renewable fuels company Kior - a
company once thought to be a major player in cellulosic ethanol - recently announcing it may have to
seek bankruptcy.¶ This 'lack of performance' gave the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest
trade association for the oil and gas industry, a chance to attack the volume requirements for
cellulosic ethanol in the Renewable Fuel Standard. API filed suit against the EPA in a US Court of Appeals over the agency’s
2013 RFS, saying the rules mandate significantly more cellulosic ethanol than currently available in the
marketplace. ¶ With the production tax credit for cellulosic biofuels expired since the end of 2013, the Energy Information Administration
predicts that production of cellulosic biofuels will remain below statuary targets through 2040. EPA requirements for cellulosic renewables
were originally set at 1.75 billion gallons. The agency has instead proposed to set only 17 million gallons. The
RFS requires oil
companies to include a specified volume of biofuels in its reservoir - this drives the market. ¶ What
bothers cellulosic ethanol companies about the proposed RFS reduction is that it would likely cut into corn ethanol demand and reduce profits.
This situation has had a dual effect on the ethanol market. Ethanol prices are high due to supply concerns and rail congestion, but
investment in clean energy companies has been put in danger over the uncertainty of the regulatory
environment. The ethanol industry needs investment to continue to innovate, especially to open up its
feedstock sources. This Is the primary issue for the ethanol market in 2014.
That solves environment ag—key to solve food shortages and ag efficiency
Marc R. Deeley 2, MA in Environmental Studies from the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of
Environmental Studies, "Could Cannabis Provide an Answer to Climate Change?," Journal of
Industrial Hemp, Vol. 7(1), http://www.internationalhempassociation.org/pdf/J237.pdf
Moreover, there exists at present much of the technology to translate this into a pragmatic climate change mitigation option with higher
energy efficiency and lower unit capital costs than conventional methods of energy production (IPCC, 1996b). This is especially significant given
that “analysis of future global trends in greenhouse gas emissions has shown that reducing emissions from fossil fuels will have the greatest
effect on atmospheric carbon concentrations between 1990 and 2100” (Adger and Brown 1994, p. 229).¶ According to a paper published in
Biomass and Bioenergy, “Assessing the Ecological and Economic Sustainability of Energy Crops” which considers the viability of
nine
possible biomass contenders1 via comprehensive life cycle assessments, Hanegraaf et al. (1998, p. 351) conclude
that, “hemp comes out as one of the best options for energy cropping.” I would be inclined to go further.
An ideal approach to climate change mitigation would include the following objectives:¶ •
Sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and/or reduced fossil fuel consumption.¶ • Prevent the destruction of
natural ecosystems (biodiversity).¶ • It would not burden developing countries with costly socio-economic
regulations.¶ • It would not require significant changes to current land use (i.e., displacing people or activities).¶
• It would have a minimal environmental impact and/or address other environmental/pollution problems.¶ • It would also provide
(socially equitable) economic incentives for global implementation .¶ (Adapted from UNFCCC, 1992 and IPCC 1990,
1996a, 1996b)¶ Cannabis cultivation has the potential to satisfy all of the above criteria . While farmers
would find the cultivation of another annual crop easier than trying to integrate perennials, the adoption of Cannabis as a key
rotation crop ( irrespective of farm size) would also yield several direct benefits including the reduction of
pesticides while increasing the yield of crops following from it in rotation (Roulac, 1997) thereby
assisting the goal of achieving sustainable agricultural systems. It is also the case that years of mono-culture
(and, relative to Cannabis, protein deficient)2 cereal production will require alternative and rotational crops rather than for instance genetically
modified crops to, “allow control of those weeds, pests and diseases that still cannot be controlled in the cereal crops themselves, and perhaps
more importantly [would] help restore organic matter to the soil following years of depletion by cereal crops” (Forbes and Watson, 1992, p.
257).¶ Cannabis
cultivation could, therefore, be used to promote environmentally beneficial
methods of agriculture (especially via rotation cultivation) which could actually help secure a
long-term strategy of land management, ensuring that food shortages do not occur. This
would be greatly enhanced by taking advantage of the multiplicity of possible uses Cannabis
presents us with according to local economic, social and environmental needs. For example, depending on these local variables
Cannabis could be used for either food (see footnote 2 above), fibre or as a bioremediation crop to restore
unproductive land (especially that degraded by the overuse of chemicals high in heavy metals) back to
agricultural productivity while at the same time providing industrial quantities of cellulose for
fuel and/or energy production. According to Ranalli (1999, p. 69) Cannabis is “able to extract heavy metals from the soil in
amounts higher than many other agricultural crops” and it is the case that agricultural land shortages are arguably far more likely to occur in
areas where there is a deficit of suitable land due to intensive agricultural practices combined with inadequate land management (IPCC,
1996b).¶ However, the
greatest advantage for Cannabis cultivation as a method of climate change
mitigation is in terms of logistics and the comparative ease with which this particular form of
biomass could be integrated into the existing fossil fuel economy. With the ability to be grown at all but the
very coldest latitudes, Cannabis could form the basis of an internationally distributed (yet locally determined)
fuel industry. The chemical composition (high cellulose) and physiology of Cannabis make it an
ideal feedstock for ethanol production in comparison to the starch based crops currently
used in the US and South America (Lorenz and Morris, 1995). Ethanol is not only a complementary product to
the oil economy (combining ethanol with gasoline increases quality of gasoline and produces significant environmental benefits) but
can also be used as a direct replacement requiring only modest alterations to industrial
operations.¶ The key determining variable is global land use and contrary to popular belief there is more than enough available cropland
to satisfy the World’s rapidly growing population. Taking into account the unsuitability of some soils and terrain, the FAO considers there to be
3000 Mha of potential cropland of which only about 50 percent is at present cultivated (around 1450 Mha)(IPCC, 1996b, p. 809). In light of this,
many of the analyses (Hall et al., 1994 and IPCC, 1996b) that consider between 10 and 15 percent of total global cropland to be available for
biomass production specifically for energy (and transport) applications represent conservative assumptions. When taken along with the
potential use of Cannabis as a bioremediation crop for land suffering “light” to “moderate” degradation, (750 Mha and 910 Mha, respectively)
much of which is caused by the over cropping of erodible soils, unsustainable land use conversions (i.e., forest to livestock) and over use of
chemical inputs (IPCC, 1996b) the possibilities have even more practical relevance for future development, especially in the agricultural sectors
of developing countries.¶ The
World urgently needs a replacement for fossil fuels and while there are
many overtly technological options the only realistic possibility rests in finding a
comparatively similar substitution feedstock. Cellulose derived ethanol would appear to be
an ideal industrial successor to fossil fuels with Cannabis appearing to be the most
environmentally sound and economically viable feedstock for ethanol production . In addition we
should consider all the products ranging from plastics to building composites currently dependent on fossil fuels which the utilisation of highly
versatile cellulose such as Cannabis could replace. In effect we
would be replacing an unsustainable industrial
feedstock for one which is not only sustainable but addresses some very serious
environmental and socio-economic issues. There is certainly enough supportive evidence to get such projects underway–
the rest is politics.
Food shortages cause nuclear world war 3
FDI 12, Future Directions International, a Research institute providing strategic analysis of Australia’s
global interests; citing Lindsay Falvery, PhD in Agricultural Science and former Professor at the
University of Melbourne’s Institute of Land and Environment, “Food and Water Insecurity: International
Conflict Triggers & Potential Conflict Points,” http://www.futuredirections.org.au/workshop-
papers/537-international-conflict-triggers-and-potential-conflict-points-resulting-from-food-and-waterinsecurity.html
There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century will most likely be fought over a
lack of resources.¶ Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian revolutions
as conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts are said to have been
inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the general sense among those that attended
FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be significantly greater as a result of
population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm inputs, and increased affluence in the developing world.¶ In his
book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay
Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March 2012 workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses
the problem and why countries across the globe are starting to take note. .¶ He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the
state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law and order and migration result.” ¶ “Hunger feeds anarchy.”¶ This view is also shared by Julian
Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the
decades that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow.” ¶ He continues: “An increasingly credible
scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating
chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge
armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over dwindling
resources.Ӧ As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources, either to protect or to gain the resources for
themselves.¶ Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are going hungry.¶ A
study by
the International Peace Research Institute indicates that where food security is an issue, it is more
likely to result in some form of conflict. Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such
wars. Governments, especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon. ¶ The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA,
the US C enter for S trategic and I nternational S tudies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a
potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war .
Peak phosphorus is approaching—increased efficiency through hemp solves
James Wellstead 12, Analyst at Potash Investing News, financial consultant with government and
academic experience, 6/28/12, Food or Fuel? Peak Phosphate is a Risk to Both, Potash Investing News,
http://potashinvestingnews.com/5688-food-or-fuel-peak-phosphate-is-risk-to-both.html
Peak phosphate garnered press after a 2009 report by the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative
announced that the world could hit the top of global phosphorus production by around 2034. Projecting a
peak output of about 28 million tonnes per year, and with global phosphate rock reserves of about 2.358 billion tonnes, the Research Initiative
raised a rather grim spectre.¶ However, in 2010 the International Fertiliser Development Center published research based on new reserve
estimates by the US Geological Survey. Its conclusion was that phosphate rock reserves will be able to produce fertilizer for the next 300 to 400
years, rather than the next 30 to 40 years. the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative still disagrees with the 300-year projection and maintains
that peak phosphate will occur within this century.¶ Though
a hard and fast date has yet to be asserted, the
implications of phosphorus and phosphate fertilizer shortages are critical because phosphor is
essential to plant – and hence food – production. But with biofuels being integrated into energy
systems in places like Europe and North America, the possibility that peak phosphate is imminent could create challenges
for crop-based global fuel supplies.¶ Food or fuel?¶ Phosphate is one of the three core nutrients required by plants, the others being nitrogen
and potassium. Both modern food and biofuel production require the mineral to be continuously applied as it is trucked off when crops are
removed from the land. While phosphorus does accumulate in agricultural soils, and thus does not require a complete re-application each year,
large yearly doses of phosphorus are needed as material is removed from the phosphate-cycle through waste and through deposits made to
sanitation systems (i.e. excrement).¶ As
fortunes rise for many people in Asia, Africa, and South America, the
need to produce greater quantities of food has pushed global crops and farming into a massive
expansionary mode. Currently, global food production stands at around 4 billion tonnes per day for a
population of 7 billion people. By 2050, projections estimate a global population of 9 billion; an increasing proportion of those people will have
more income to put toward eating greater quantities of more resource-intensive foods.¶ Marc
Sadler of the World Bank’s
Agricultural Finance and Risk Management Team recently said that “[i]n a world of finite resources
we need to be more efficient, and to get these goals we need to invest more. The more resources
that we put into food, the more we will get [out].” ¶ “This is a global reality–not only is the population increasing, but we
are also seeing changing consumer patterns. It’s obvious that a lot of these changes are linked to higher income and the higher consumption of
protein,” Sadler added.¶ Phosphate application rates currently stand at about one ton of phosphate to 130 tons of grain, with approximately
170 million tons of phosphate rock mined every year for global crops. Industrial farmers lay down about 18 million metric tons of mined
phosphorus each year.¶ Not to be outdone, a report released this past April on global biofuel consumption noted the market grew by 10.5
percent in 2011 and is forecast to increase by another 81.4 percent by 2016.¶ What
is critical is that phosphate has no
alternative in the food production process. While it can be recycled and reused if efficient methods
are implemented, maintaining phosphate application is necessary to continue food production levels.
On the other hand, biofuels are just one of a series of alternative fuel or energy sources.
Independently the plan solves the biggest output of phosphorus
Tom Philpott 10, cofounder of Maverick Farmers , a center for sustainable food education, formerly a
Columnist on Grist whose work appeared in Newsweek, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, 4/22/10,
Foreign Policy mag spotlights ‘peak phosphorous’, Grist, http://grist.org/article/2010-04-21-foreignpolicy-mag-spotlights-peak-phosphorous/
Where your food comes from: a phosphate mine in Florida run by the fertilizer giant Mosaic. Mosaic is twothirds owned by Cargill, the globe’s largest agribusiness company, with interests in meat, feed, biofuels, and more. Photo: Susan Dracket, via
FlickrAs Grist’s recent special series showed, our reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has serious ecological, geopolitical, public-health, and
agricultural consequences.¶ Yet N isn’t our only fertilizer problem.
To grow robustly, plants need sufficient access to
three key macronutrients: N,P, and K, or nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.¶ In non-industrial and
organic farming systems, recycling these nutrients is a paramount task. Think compost, which harvests
the nutrients in plant waste and returns them to the soil–along with a nice dash of soil-building
organic matter. In industrial ag, the idea is to introduce huge new amounts of isolated NPK every
growing season.¶ One main problem with N, of course, is that isolating it in a form plants can use is incredibly energy intensive.
Here in the United States, the globe’s most voracious per-capita user of N, we rely on natural gas as our main fuel for N production–even
though natural gas is increasingly scarce and harvesting it is increasingly ecologically devastating. (In China, the world’s largest overall user of N,
they rely mainly on coal for N production: a chilling fact to consider.)¶ While N production consumes massive amounts of fossil energy, the
other two main fertilizer elements, phosphorous and potassium, are literally mined. Thus, like our transportation system, our food system
depends on finite resources.¶ Think
about that next time you hear someone call ethanol made from industrial
corn–far and away our biggest gulper of N, P, and K–a “renewable fuel.” It’s also worth remembering when some
industry hack or USDA chieftain insists that industrial agriculture is the only way to “feed the world.” “Oh, yeah?” you should reply; “for how
long?”¶ From what I can tell, potassium–known as potash in its fertilizer form–isn’t in short supply. (It should be
noted, however, that when fertilizer prices spiked in 2008, industrial-ag powerhouse Brazil was considering cutting through “environmental red
tape” to mine potassium under the Amazon rainforest.)¶ Unfortunately,
though, phosphorous is in short supply, as
recent articles in Foreign Policy and Der Spiegel make clear.¶ Here’s Foreign Policy:¶ By 2008, industrial
farmers were applying an annual 17 million metric tons of mined phosphorus on their fields. Demand
is expanding at around 3 percent a year — a rate that is likely to accelerate due to rising prosperity in
the developing world (richer people consume more meat) and the burgeoning bioenergy sector, which also requires
phosphorus to support crop-based biofuels.¶ But there’s a problem….¶ Our supply of mined phosphorus is running out.
Many mines used to meet this growing demand are degrading, as they are increasingly forced to
access deeper layers and extract a lower quality of phosphate-bearing rock (phosphate is the chemical form in
which nearly all phosphorus is found). Some initial analyses from scientists with the Global Phosphorus Research
Initiative estimate that there will not be sufficient phosphorus supplies from mining to meet
agricultural demand within 30 to 40 years.¶ Moreover, like oil, mine-friendly phosphate rock is geographically concentrated–
indeed, even more so than petroleum.¶ Nearly 90 percent of the world’s estimated phosphorus reserves are found in five countries: Morocco,
China, South Africa, Jordan, and the United States. In comparison, the 12 countries that make up the OPEC cartel control only 75 percent of the
world’s oil reserves.¶ Already,
geopolitical tensions are rising. Morocco is the site of 37 percent of the
globe’s known phosphate rock reserves. Not a great situation, FP observes:¶ Many of Morocco’s phosphate mines are in
Western Sahara, a disputed independent territory that is occupied by Morocco and the site of growing
international human rights concerns. Reflecting these concerns, U.N.-sanctioned export restrictions on phosphate and other
resources are now in place, though the efficacy of the bans is incomplete.
Peak phosphorus causes extinction
Ray Weil 14, Professor of Soil Science at the University of Maryland, PhD in Soil Ecology from Virginia
Tech, 5/26/14, Peak Phosphorus – Even More Important Than Peak Oil!, On Pasture,
http://onpasture.com/2014/05/26/peak-phosphorus-even-more-important-than-peakoil/#sthash.rFvqsLDC.dpuf
improving the efficiency of phosphorus use in farming is not only essential for profitable
agriculture, but is a moral obligation to future generations that will have to depend on Earth’s limited phosphorus supplies.
The immediacy of this concern is not shared by everyone, but the importance of conserving phosphorus is based on two
facts that are quite indisputable: 1) phosphorus has no substitute and 2) it is not a renewable
resource.¶ All living things require phosphorus as it is literally in their DNA. Humans need phosphorus
in their own diets. Soils need phosphorus if they are to support the plants and animals we use for
food. There is no substitute for phosphorus in these roles. Economists tell us that generally goods will be replaced by
Many scientists argue that
something else if scarcity drives up prices. For example, if copper becomes too expensive, fiber optic cables might replace copper wires; or if
fossil fuels become too expensive, people may invest in wind power to replace oil and gas in generating electricity. Since phosphorus is a basic
chemical element in the structure of many essential cellular components (DNA, RNA, membranes, ATP), no such substitution will be possible.¶
Phosphorus is a non-renewable resource—and one that is in quite limited supply, both in absolute
global amounts and in geographic distribution. The vast majority of the world’s mineable phosphorus is in the North African
country of Morocco. Historical examples and current resource theory suggest that as the best, easiest to mine deposits get used up first, the
remaining resources get harder and more expensive to mine and refine. Thus accelerating
resource exploitation to meet
growing demand will eventually be limited first by escalating costs and then by dwindling absolute
supply, resulting in a maximum or peak rate of production when just over half of the total resource has been used up (Figure 14.32). The
remaining deposits will continue to be mined for decades beyond that time, but in ever smaller amounts and at ever greater expense. While
there is considerable disagreement about the actual size of world phosphate reserves and how long
they will last (estimates range between 100 and 400 years to exhaustion), the data suggest peak
production will come much sooner than once thought – perhaps by the middle of this century. Hence there is growing
sense of urgency among many scientists and policy makers (see for example the European effort).a
Plan solves deforestation—legalization displaces wood use—industry willingness
Andy Kerr 5, lectured at all of Oregon's leading universities and colleges, as well at Harvard and Yale,
Founding Member and Treasurer, of the North American Indusial Hemp Council,lectured at all of
Oregon's leading universities and colleges, as well at Harvard and Yale 2005, The Environmental Benefits
of Using Industrial Hemp, Larch Company, http://www.naihc.org/KerrIHbenefits.pdf
Hemp has beneficial characteristics not offered by other plants. North American Industrial Hemp Council board
member Jeff Gain was the chair of the Agriculture Research and Commercialization Corporation, a USDA
corporation seeking to promote the "bio-besed" economy. He has also served as chief executive officer of both the American Soybean
Association and of the National Corn Growers. He believes
industrial hemp is the next soybean. ¶ Hemp—because of
its very long fibers, rapid growth, and the versatile oil from seed—can be manufactured into many
products. It can competitively—both economically and technically—replace industrial feedstocks, which are inherently polluting and
unsustainable. Hemp fiber can be used to make bio-based plastics and construction materials. The long fibers of hemp can be used in making
composite plastics, which, while not as strong as fiberglass, is strong enough for many applications.
There are also worker safety
benefits, it's recyclable and is priced lower than glass. ¶ SHORTENING THE CARBON CYCLE ¶ In marked contrast to petroleum,
growing our fuel from annual plants means that the carbon that is released into the atmosphere is captured by next year's growth. Long-term
build-up of carbon in the atmosphere from fuel burning ends if we switch to annual plants. Because of its fast growing nature, hemp may be a
major contender in the processing of bio-based fuels. ¶ Industrial
hemp has great potential to displace much of the
wood currently being used for fiber in this nation. In the Upper Midwest and South, it appears that hemp fiber can
be grown less expensively than wood fiber for use in Papa. ¶ One of the largest paper companies has told
NAIHC Board Chair Bud Sholts, that if hemp can be grown in Wisconsin, they will be using it for 45% of their
feedstock at their mill on the Fox River within five years. Similarly, Another huge paper company intends to move
90% of their world feedstock to non-forest sources within 10 years and see hemp as a major
component of that. Being international, if they can't grow hemp in the US, they will grow it where they can. ¶ NAJHC Board Member
William Miller retired as the Technical Director of the Forest Resources Division of Union Camp. He believes that hemp can supplant
wood and make better composite construction products.
Deforestation causes extinction
Rebecca Lindsey, NASA Earth Observatory, 3-30-07, Tropical
Deforestation, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Deforestation/deforestation_update.html
Stretching out from the equator on all Earth’s land surfaces is a wide belt of forests of amazing diversity and productivity.
Tropical forests include dense rainforests, where rainfall is abundant year-round; seasonally moist forests, where rainfall is
abundant, but seasonal; and drier, more open woodlands. Tropical forests of all varieties are disappearing rapidly as
humans clear the natural landscape to make room for farms and pastures, to harvest timber for construction and fuel,
and to build roads and urban areas. Although deforestation meets some human needs, it also has profound,
sometimes devastating, consequences, including social conflict, extinction of plants and animals, and climate
change—challenges that aren’t just local, but global. NASA supports and conducts research on tropical forests from spacebased and ground-based perspectives, helping provide the information that national and international leaders need to develop
strategies for sustaining human populations and preserving tropical forest biodiversity. Impacts of Deforestation: Biodiversity
Impacts Although tropical forests cover only about 7 percent of the Earth’s dry land, they probably harbor about half of all
species on Earth. Many species are so specialized to microhabitats within the forest that they can only be found in small
areas. Their specialization makes them vulnerable to extinction. In addition to the species lost when an area is totally
deforested, the plants and animals in the fragments of forest that remain also become increasingly vulnerable,
sometimes even committed, to extinction. The edges of the fragments dry out and are buffeted by hot winds; mature
rainforest trees often die standing at the margins. Cascading changes in the types of trees, plants, and insects that can survive in
the fragments rapidly reduces biodiversity in the forest that remains. People may disagree about whether the extinction of other
species through human action is an ethical issue, but there is little doubt about the practical problems that extinction
poses. First, global markets consume rainforest products that depend on sustainable harvesting: latex, cork, fruit, nuts, timber,
fibers, spices, natural oils and resins, and medicines. In addition, the genetic diversity of tropical forests is basically the
deepest end of the planetary gene pool. Hidden in the genes of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria that have
not even been discovered yet may be cures for cancer and other diseases or the key to improving the yield and
nutritional quality of foods—which the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be crucial for feeding the
nearly ten billion people the Earth will likely need to support in coming decades. Finally, genetic diversity in the planetary
gene pool is crucial for the resilience of all life on Earth to rare but catastrophic environmental events, such as
meteor impacts or massive, sustained volcanism. Soil Impacts With all the lushness and productivity that exist in tropical forests, it
can be surprising to learn that tropical soils areactually very thin and poor in nutrients. The underlying “parent” rock weathers
rapidly in the tropics’ high temperatures and heavy rains, and over time, most of the minerals have washed from the soil. Nearly all
the nutrient content of a tropical forest is in the living plants and the decomposing litter on the forest floor. When an area is
completely deforested for farming, the farmer typically burns the trees and vegetation to create a fertilizing layer of
ash. After this slash-and-burn deforestation, the nutrient reservoir is lost, flooding and erosion rates are high, and
soils often become unable to support crops in just a few years. If the area is then turned into cattle pasture, the
ground may become compacted as well, slowing down or preventing forest recovery.
2AC
AT Plank CP
Still links to politics- the groups that would fight the plan would also fight the CP
because they think hemp will undermine enforcement against illicit marijuana
Jonathan P. Caulkins et al, 12, Prof of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, Dr.
Angela Hawkin, Associate Prof of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, Dr. Beau Kilmer, Co-Director of
the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, and Dr. Mark Kleiman, Prof of Public Policy at UCLA, MARIJUANA
LEGALIZATION: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW, p 227
Could the United States allow industrial hemp without legalizing marijuana?¶ Certainly. Many nations
legalized industrial hemp production¶ in the 1990s while continuing prohibition of marijuana as a¶ psychoactive drug.¶ Different strains of
cannabis—and different parts of any¶ given plant—produce very different levels of the plant's psy-¶ choactive agents. Typically, laws allowing
industrial hemp¶ require the use of very-low-THC strains (less than 1 percent or¶ even 0.3 percent THC, compared to the 4-18 percent¶
characteristic of cannabis produced and sold as a drug). So¶ there's a reasonably bold line between industrial hemp and¶ intoxicating
marijuana.¶ But
it's hard to imagine that the passionate advocacy of industrial hemp is unrelated to its
link to drug policy Groups such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana¶ Laws (NORML) have picked up
the hemp crusade in order to claim the benefits of industrial hemp as an advantage of mari- juana
legalization.¶ Politics makes strange bedfellows, and the politics of mari-juana are no exception. Oddly,
the Drug Enforcement¶ Administration ( DEA ) and other advocates of continued prohibition agree with hemp
advocates in linking the industrial- hemp and drug-legalization questions. But they do so from the
opposite perspective, arguing that industrial hemp should not be legalized because it would
complicate efforts to enforce prohibition against use as an intoxicant. ¶ One DEA concern is that
farmers could line the outside of their fields with low-THC (industrial) cannabis while growing highTHC (intoxicating) cannabis in the middle. Since relatively few acres would be needed to supply the intoxicant market,
allowing free cultivation of industrial hemp could indeed pose an enforcement challenge . (Even the upper
estimate of 5,000¶ metric tons of intoxicating cannabis consumed in the United¶ States could be supplied by less than a third of the acreage¶
Canada cultivates for industrial hemp.)
Congressional CSA modification solves federal-state patchwork
Douglas Farr 9, JD from BYU, "Up in Smoke: Federal Preemption and Medicinal Marijuana ID Cards in
County of San Diego v. San Diego NORML", 3/1,
digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=jpl
IV. Conclusion
The inconsistencies
between federal drug laws and state drug laws remain. Federal and state courts
have yet to resolve these inconsistencies. Federal courts have affirmed Congress's right to regulate
medicinal marijuana under the Commerce Power, and state courts have affirmed the stale's police
power to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. San Diego NORML, was one of the few cases lo get past the standing issue and
affirmatively attack the constitutionality of state laws that contradict and pose an obstacle to federal laws. But because the counties in San Diego NORML, were only
permitted to challenge the provisions that imposed specific duties, federal preemption was largely avoided. Currently,
the inconsistencies
between federal and state law are harming individuals who live on the fence obeying and disobeying the law at the
same lime. It is a disservice to the people affected by these laws to allow the inconsistencies to remain. Of
all the possible solutions, congressional modification of the CSA faces the fewest impediments and is
the most likely to succeed. A simple modification would allow the federal government and state
governments to fight the "War on Drugs" together. The DOJ and the State of California are worried about abuse of the CUA and the MMP. If
federal drug laws did not conflict with California's laws, a joint effort enforcing these laws would be
much more effective .¶ Peter Tosh may have realized the challenges facing the legalization of marijuana when he encouraged his listeners to
is unlikely that he foresaw the battle between federal and state laws. As for now,
medicinal marijuana is simultaneously legal in thirteen states and illegal in all fifty states . But California
"legalize it."1" but it
counties are nonetheless required to provide medicinal marijuana ID cards to any person with a valid prescription, even though these ID cards assist Californians in
affirmatively violating federal law.
Congress could threaten the states if just states legalize
Jonathan P. Caulkins et al, 12, Prof of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, Dr.
Angela Hawkin, Associate Prof of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, Dr. Beau Kilmer, Co-Director of
the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, and Dr. Mark Kleiman, Prof of Public Policy at UCLA, MARIJUANA
LEGALIZATION: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW, p 189
The federal government could also use threats of sanctions to influence a state's decision about
whether to legalize in the first place. For example, when the federal government wanted to strongarm reluctant states into increasing the minimum purchase age for alcohol to 21, Congress passed a
law that threatened to withhold a share of federal highway funds from states that did not comply. No
such threats were issued during the Proposition 19 debate in California, but they could be used to derail
a future proposition or—less plausibly—to "punish" a state after passage.
CP chills pot industry—Congressional action is key
Boyd, Third Way Social Policy & Politics Program visiting senior fellow, 2014
(Graham, “Marijuana Legalization: Does Congress Need to Act?”, June,
http://content.thirdway.org/publications/830/Third_Way_Report_-_Marijuana_Legalization_Does_Congress_Need_to_Act.pdf, ldg- thanks LDG!)
Additionally, reinforcing and arguably expanding upon the Memorandum, federal officials
have issued guidance that takes an important
step toward allowing financial institutions to provide some services to licensed marijuana businesses.22 The issue first
arose when Deputy Attorney General Cole testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and faced questions about the potential dangers of forcing marijuana
businesses to operate as cash-only enterprises. As several Senators pointed out, federal rules currently prevent marijuana businesses from holding bank accounts,
forcing them to keep large amounts of cash on hand, and thereby creating a high risk of robbery and violence. Cole declared that he would take responsibility for
clearing away obstacles to marijuana businesses having access to financial services.23 The
Second Cole Memorandum and the engagement
in the banking issue suggest a shift in federal policy towards a more nuanced and pragmatic policy stance on
state-regulated marijuana. But without Congressional action, it is merely a band-aid solution, since it
could be changed at a moment’s notice and gives no guarantee of protection against prosecution, still
explicitly stating that banks and marijuana businesses would be contravening federal law even by
following the guidance. The current federal policy is a good first step toward giving state officials room to construct a regulatory system and begin
But without legislation at the federal level, the participants in these newly-regulated
markets will continue to face significant hurdles and uncertaint y, and states will continue to be hampered in their ability to
protect the public safety interests of their citizens. The next President or Attorney General could put a quick end to existing
marijuana businesses and could even undertake prosecutions for past actions. In short, an exercise of
prosecutorial discretion today can become a policy of prosecutorial vigor tomorrow. The federal government
could also decide to change course and sue the legalizing states directly—a risk that increases each time a state
gets more involved in directly regulating certain aspects of the marijuana market. This atmosphere of
issuing licenses.
uncertainty and peril dissuades law-abiding businesspeople from becoming operators, discourages
transparent business practices, and impedes state lawmakers who wish to crack down on mislabeled
marijuana products which could threaten public safety and health . To solve these problems and create space for the states
that have legalized recreational marijuana use to do it right, Congress needs to amend the Controlled Substances Act to establish a policy of federal nonintervention based in state waivers that carry the force of law.*
2AC MIDTERMS
Dems will hold onto the Senate---GOP peaked too soon
Brent Budowsky 9/17, The Hill, "Brent Budowsky: GOP peaked too soon", 2014,
thehill.com/opinion/brent-budowsky/218123-brent-budowsky-gop-peaked-too-soon
The danger to a political party when pundits almost unanimously predict a nation-shaking victory for
that party is that, quietly and thoughtfully, voters concerned about the future of their families and country ask
themselves: Will we be better off if this party wins complete control of Congress?¶ For many days, the
bastions of Republican power in Washington have gloated with triumphalism about a coming GOP wave .
Pundit race-callers and statistical prognosticators have told voters the election is over. The Drudge Report has regaled its
readers with echo-chamber links to tales of demonic Democrats; GOP columnists have written about what Republicans should do after they
inevitably seize power; and neoconservatives have promised a return to the glory days of former Vice President Dick Cheney. ¶ But
then,
what happened?¶ In North Carolina, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan began to pick up steam. In Colorado,
Democratic Sen. Mark
Udall began to gain more support. And several statistical prognosticators have
increased their odds that Democrats retain control of the Senate .¶ Of course other states are still trending toward
the GOP in an election that is shaping up, not as a Republican wave, but as a razor-thin cliffhanger between the parties. In a handful of
states, there is some evidence — inconclusive but worth watching — of a nascent mini-Democratic counter-wave .¶
Republicans peaked too soon. The chorus of predictions of GOP victory have led swing voters to
more carefully consider how to vote and Democratic base voters to more urgently consider whether
to vote. What do they see? What is the Republican plan for power and how will it affect their lives?¶ Republicans promise they will continue
The
to hate President Obama with a fanatical passion and politics of total gridlock. They promise to continue investigating Benghazi forever. They
pledge to loathe Lois Lerner, vow to defeat the minimum wage and promise to prevent pay equity for women. They promise to prove that
climate change does not exist and to destroy ObamaCare — but are silent on what they would do to replace it or improve healthcare. They vow
to arrest Hispanic Dreamers and send them back where they belong. They vow to despise Hillary Clinton as much as they despise Barack Obama
and despised Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and the hugely popular Bill Clinton, whom they tried to impeach while he was accomplishing
the things that made him America’s most popular living former president. ¶ The
Republicans peaked too soon because
reports of their predicted victory drove voters to take an earlier-than-usual and closer-than-usual look
at what they would actually do in power. When voters look, they see an agenda that is almost
exclusively aimed at turning out the GOP base, almost exclusively negative and almost exclusively dominated
by attacks against people Republicans despise and policies Republicans oppose.¶ The GOP has become
the “we hate Obama” party. Its message emanates from an echo chamber of negativity that repels
swing voters, motivates Democratic voters and offers nothing to improve the lives of Americans who are not
partisan Republicans or far-right fanatics.¶ Will the recent uptick for some Democrats continue and spread? I don’t know that, but I do know
this: three weeks ago, I predicted Hagan would win because the more voters urgently focus on the stakes of the election, the more they
gravitate toward widely respected Democrats, from highly respected political families, who believe in governing across the aisle. And the more
they gravitate to Democrats, the more they reject a GOP that acts like a gridlock-championing “hate Obama” cult without any plans to create
jobs, raise wages, improve healthcare or make life better for most Americans. So far, that call is looking good.¶ Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.),
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Michelle Nunn
are widely respected Democrats from highly
believe in governing across the aisle. Stay tuned for movement in their races
— and don’t forget Kansas, where even many GOP voters are rejecting the brand of Republicanism that peaked too soon in 2014.
respected political families who
Legalization loses dems the election—core base and seniors oppose—vote against the
party that supports it
Nate Cohn 13, current New York Times journalist, former writer for the New Republic, 10/24/13,
Marijuana is America’s Next Political Wedge Issue, New Republic,
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115334/marijuana-americas-next-great-political-wedge-issue
Democrats staying on the sidelines for too many more election
cycles. The party’s base is already on board, with polls showing a clear majority of self-described
Democrats in support. Approximately three quarters of Democrats and liberals supported legalization
initiatives in Colorado and Washington. This level of support makes it a foregone conclusion that Democrats will eventually embrace the
Despite their apparent reservation to engage the issue, it’s hard to imagine
issue. There’s a reason there aren’t very many questions where the public is supportive, the party rank-and-file is supportive, and the party’s
elected officials stay silent. Are there any?¶ To date, Democrats
haven’t had many incentives to take a risk on the
issue. Democrats are already winning the winnable culture war skirmishes, at least from a national
electoral perspective, and they have a winning demographic hand. And let’s get perspective:
Marijuana legalization may be increasingly popular, but it’s not clearly an electoral bonanza. Support
for legalization isn’t very far above 50 percent, if it is in fact, and there are potential downsides . National
surveys show that a third of Democrats still oppose marijuana legalization. Seniors, who turnout in high
numbers in off year elections, are also opposed. Altogether, it’s very conceivable that there are more votes
to be lost than won by supporting marijuana. After all, marijuana legalization underperformed President
Obama in Washington State.
Obama’s approval is dropping like a rock due to ISIS mismanagement---causes Dem
losses
NYT 9/17, "Obama Faulted in Terror Fight, New Poll Finds", 2014,
www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/us/politics/for-first-time-most-americans-disapprove-of-obamashandling-of-terrorism.html?ref=politics&_r=0
For the first time in his presidency, more Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of
terrorism than approve of it, as discontent about his management of foreign affairs and the fight
against Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria weighs on an anxious and conflicted public, according to the latest New York
Times/CBS News Poll.¶ As Mr. Obama broadens the military offensive against Islamic extremists, the survey finds broad support for United
States airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but it also demonstrates how torn Americans are about wading back into battle in the Middle East. A majority
is opposed to committing ground forces there, amid sweeping concern that increased American participation will lead to a long and costly
mission.¶ With
midterm elections approaching, Americans’ fears about a terrorist attack on United States
soil are on the rise, and the public is questioning Mr. Obama’s strategy for combating the militant organization
calling itself the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Most respondents say the president has no clear plan for
confronting the group, and that he has not been tough enough in dealing with it.¶ “He is ambivalent, and I think it shows,” Jennifer SheltonArmstrong, a 45-year-old Democrat in Mission Viejo, California, said in a follow-up interview. “There
is no clear plan.Ӧ Mr. Obama
has lost considerable ground with the public in the month since he announced military action against
the Islamic State, which also saw the group release two videotapes showing the beheadings of American journalists. Fifty-eight
percent now disapprove of his handling of foreign policy , a 10-point jump from a CBS News poll conducted last month.
Fifty percent rate him negatively on handling terrorism, a 12-point increase from March, compared with 41 percent who rate him positively,
while the rest had no opinion.¶ Taken
together, the results suggest a profoundly unsettled public mood, with
two-thirds of Americans surveyed saying the country is on the wrong track and half disapproving of
how Mr. Obama is doing his job, a negative assessment that threatens to be a substantial drag on
Democrats in November.
The plan doesn’t change an election
Nate Silver 14, Elections expert, 6/4, “The Political Media Still Fall for the Hot-Hand Fallacy”,
FiveThirtyEight, http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-political-media-still-falls-for-the-hot-handfallacy/
The most important lesson of the 2012 presidential campaign, in my view, was not that polling-based models are foolproof ways
to assess the political environment, but instead that undisciplined ways of evaluating polls and political events can
lead to flawed conclusions. On several occasions during the race, news media commentators either overrated the
amount of information contained in outlier polls and jumped the gun on declaring a change in
momentum — or insisted that a candidate had the “momentum” in the race when there was little evidence of it.¶ The past year-and-alast year, the news media badly overrated the
political consequences of the government shutdown. Just a couple of months later, it somewhat overhyped the lasting
half hasn’t made me optimistic that things are getting better. Late
impact of the botched rollout of Obamacare. (I think that case is more debatable, but President Obama’s approval ratings have improved by
about 4 percentage points from their lows in December.)¶ The general flaw
is in overestimating the importance of recent
events and assuming that short-term trends will continue indefinitely: that a candidate rising in the polls will
continue to do so, for example. In fact, especially in general elections, candidates gaining in the polls see their position
revert to the mean as often as they continue to gain ground.¶ The political news media are by no means alone in
committing this mistake. It’s a close cousin of the hot-hand fallacy. This is the tendency — also evident in sports commentary — to place too
much evidence on recent events, which may be idiosyncratic or essentially random compared with longer-term averages and patterns. Still,
the news media may be especially prone toward overhyping purported “game-changers” that make
for snappy headlines . Two weeks ago, after Sen. Mitch McConnell beat a more conservative rival in the Republican primary in
Kentucky, some in the political media were ready to declare another momentum shift, claiming that the tea party was “losing steam” to the
GOP establishment. But Tuesday night in Mississippi, incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran received fewer votes than challenger Chris McDaniel, a
state senator who is often associated with the tea party. (McDaniel appears as though he’ll finish with just under 50 percent of the vote,
however, so the race is probably headed to a June 24 runoff.)
No vote-switching --- swing voters don’t exist
Lynn Vavreck 14, a professor of political science at U.C.L.A., is a co-author of "The Gamble,” about the 2012 presidential campaign, “The
Myth of Swing Voters in Midterm Elections,” APRIL 22, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-myth-of-swing-voters-in-midtermelections.html?_r=0
If you want to understand the 2014 midterm elections, remember this simple fact about American politics: There just
aren’t that many swing voters . Many people change their minds over the course of a campaign about
whether to vote and even which candidate they’re leaning toward. Ultimately, though, voters tend to
come home to their favored party. There are relatively few voters who cross back and forth between the parties
during a campaign or even between elections. Political professionals have increasingly come to
appreciate this pattern and have focused resources on getting previous voters to the polls. Both parties
have spent considerable effort in recent elections trying to understand the effects of television ads, canvassing,
phone calls and mailings on turnout. Mobilizing a party’s voters has become as important as
persuading undecided or swing voters. The 2010 midterm elections highlight the relatively small number of
swing voters. After winning with a wide margin and extraordinary enthusiasm in 2008, the Democrats suffered one of the largest losses of seats in any
midterm two years later. Although the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections , the size of
the 2010 “shellacking,” to borrow President Obama’s description, created the impression that many voters
had changed their minds about the president, his policy goals or his ability to get the country back on the
right track between 2008 and 2010. But only a small percentage of voters actually switched sides between 2008
and 2010. Moreover, there were almost as many John McCain voters who voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2010 as there were Obama voters who
shifted the other way. That may be a surprise to some, but it comes from one of the largest longitudinal study of voters, YouGov’s Cooperative Campaign Analysis
Project (C.C.A.P.), for which YouGov interviewed 45,000 people at multiple points during 2011 and 2012. The results clearly show that voters
in 2010 did
not abandon the Democrats for the other side, but they did forsake the party in another important way:
Many stayed home. Fewer than 6 percent of 2008 voters in the presidential election voted for a congressional candidate from the other party in 2010,
with the switchers roughly evenly divided across the parties, according to the C.C.A.P. It’s worth noting, however, that these switchers are not evenly distributed
around the country, with North Dakota’s single district having very few cross-party voters (under 3 percent) and some Pennsylvania districts, for example, having
upward of 10 percent switching between 2008 and 2010. On average, across districts, roughly 6 percent of Obama voters switched and just under 6 percent of
McCain voters switched; because there were more Obama voters than McCain voters in 2008, this means — as you’d expect — that more voters swung to the
Republicans than to the Democrats. An additional 1.5 percent switched to third-party candidates. But on turnout, the numbers were not evenly balanced for
Democrats and Republicans. Only 65 percent of Obama’s 2008 supporters stuck with the party in 2010 and voted for a Democrat in the House. The remaining 28
percent of Mr. Obama’s voters took the midterm election off. By comparison, only 17 percent of McCain’s voters from 2008 sat out the midterms. Turnout
in
midterm elections is always down from presidential elections, and Democrats routinely fight to return
more of their voters to the polls than the Republicans. More Democrats come from groups, such as young people and Latinos, that
typically vote at lower rates in midterm elections than other groups. But this 11-point difference in holding on to 2008 voters is larger than normal. It probably
stemmed from a gap in enthusiasm between the parties’ voters in 2010, as survey data indicated. It may seem hard to believe that the shellacking
was
more about who turned up than about who changed their minds between 2008 and 2010, but it lines up with a lot of other
evidence about voters’ behavior. Most identify with the same political party their entire adult lives, even if they do
not formally register with it. They almost always vote for the presidential candidate from that party, and
they rarely vote for one party for president and the other one for Congress. And most voters are also
much less likely to vote in midterm elections than in presidential contests. These stable patterns of
American politics reveal a clear path for both parties in 2014: Get your 2012 voters to the polls. Of
concern to Democrats right now is that Republicans once again have the upper hand on enthusiasm
going into November. The 2014 fight is not over swing voters. It’s for partisans.
TPA fails- doesn’t facilitate trade better than congressional action
Roh and Posner 2/17/14 (Chip, Ted, partners at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and former counsel to US
trade negotiators and trade committees in the US Congress, “‘Fast track’ is a slow route to a trade deal”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/65c402a2-97e1-11e3-ab60-00144feab7de.html#axzz2tjgq3Aq0)
To some, the prospects
for the proposed transatlantic and transpacific trade pacts appear to have
dimmed. Harry Reid, who leads the Democratic majority in the Senate, announced his opposition to taking up proposed
legislation to restore a “fast-track” process for congressional approval of such agreements. At a retreat last Friday, Democrats in the House
of Representatives are reported to have expressed similar reservations. The previous legislation, which had been instrumental in almost every
significant trade agreement signed by the US since 1974, expired six years ago and has not been replaced. This has
caused
consternation among advocates of trade agreements. It should not. The fast track has become so congested with
conditions and bureaucracy that it now offers few benefits over the conventional legislative process.
Fast-track negotiating authority was devised in the mid-1970s to help deal with the risk that the constitutional separation of powers would lead
to stalemate in trade talks. Only the president can negotiate with foreign governments. But implementing an agreement involves passing laws,
which only Congress has the power to do. The fast track was supposed to solve this. Congress would put forward a list of objectives and the
president would pursue them, consulting lawmakers and business leaders along the way. Legislation to implement the resulting treaties would
then be subject to a vote, with no possibility of amendment or filibuster. This ensured that the president could deliver on promises, providing
the credibility needed to negotiate with foreign leaders. That arrangement worked well for the Tokyo round of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, a multilateral deal that was concluded in 1979. It worked well, too, when agreements were signed with Israel in 1985 and
Canada in 1988. All passed Congress by overwhelming majorities. But starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the treaty
that established the World Trade Organisation in the mid-1990s, the political consensus on which this process was founded began to erode, and
agreements were passed by Congress by much narrower margins. In the past decade trade agreements with Colombia, Peru, South Korea and
five Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic all encountered hurdles in Congress of the very sort that the fast track was meant
to prevent. Significant changes had to be made long after the negotiations had formally concluded. When the agreement with Colombia was
first presented to Congress by President George W Bush, the House went so far as to amend its rules to take the agreement’s implementing
legislation off the fast track. Against this backdrop, the
caution of Mr Reid and other Democratic leaders should not
have been a surprise. These days trade agreements deal with far more than just import duties. They
involve undertakings on i ntellectual p roperty r ights, financial services regulations, food safety standards and much, much more.
These commitments constrain not only federal law but the actions of state and local governments, too. It is understandable that legislators
want to scrutinise such measures carefully – and unrealistic to expect them to be waved through. The
fast-track procedure is a
means, not an end . It may now be more trouble than it is worth . To secure special negotiating
authority from Congress, the president would probably have to agree in advance to a long list of
constraints. These would be public knowledge, weakening his negotiating position . It may be better
to negotiate without special authority than to accept conditions that hobble the president’s efforts to
negotiate a good deal for the American people. Any deal is likely to face hurdles in Congress. But these
will be easier to clear when the details of an agreement are known, and Americans can see what they
stand to gain by approving it. By contrast, a fight with Congress over fast-track authority would probably be
bloody. It would also be pointless, since the issue would have to be revisited once an agreement has
been reached. If President Barack Obama wants to make progress on trade, he should start work on
negotiating a deal that Americans will support.
2AC DA
Mexican collapse risks challengers abroad and allied prolif—fears of US turning inward
Robert Haddick, 10, Managing Editor of the Small Wars Journal, This Week at War: If Mexico Is at War,
Does America Have to Win It?, Sept 10,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/10/this_week_at_war_if_mexico_is_at_war_does_ame
rica_have_to_win_it
While answering a question on Mexico this week at the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
said, "We face an
increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing
into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency." Mexico's foreign minister Patricia Espinosa was quick to
dispute this characterization, arguing that Mexico's drug cartels have no political agenda. But as I have previously discussed, the cartels, evidenced by their attacks
on both the government and the media, are gradually becoming political insurgents as a means of defending their turf. ¶ I note that Clinton used the phrase "We
[the United States] face an increasing threat ...," not "they [Mexico]." The cartels are transnational shipping businesses, with consumers in the United States as their
dominant market. The
clashes over shipping routes and distribution power -- which over the past four years have killed 28,000
and thoroughly corrupted Mexico's police and judiciary -- could just as well occur inside the United States. Indeed, growing anxiety that
southern Arizona is in danger of becoming a "no-go zone" controlled by drug and human traffickers contributed to the passage of Arizona's controversial
immigration enforcement statute earlier this year. ¶ Both Clinton and Mexican officials have discussed Colombia's struggle against extreme drug violence and
corruption, revealing concerns about how dreadful the situation in Mexico might yet become and also as a model for how to recover from disaster. Colombia's long
climb from the abyss, aided by the U.S. government's Plan Colombia assistance, should certainly give hope to Mexico's counterinsurgents. But if the United States
and Mexico are to achieve similar success, both will have to resolve political dilemmas that would prevent effective action. Clinton herself acknowledged as much
when she remarked that Plan Colombia was "controversial ... there were problems and there were mistakes. But it worked." ¶ Isolating
Mexico's
cartel insurgents from their enormous American revenue base -- a crucial step in a counterinsurgency
campaign -- may require a much more severe border crackdown, an action that would be highly controversial in both the United States and Mexico. Plan
Colombia was a success partly because of the long-term presence of U.S. Special Forces advisers, intelligence experts, and other military specialists inside Colombia,
a presence which would not please most Mexicans. And Colombia's long counterattack against its insurgents resulted in actions that boiled the blood of many
human rights observers.¶ Most significantly,
a strengthening Mexican insurgency would very likely affect America's
role in the rest of the world. An increasingly chaotic American side of the border, marked by bloody
cartel wars, corrupted government and media, and a breakdown in security, would likely cause many in the United
States to question the importance of military and foreign policy ventures elsewhere in the world.¶
Should the southern border become a U.S. president's primary national security concern, nervous
allies and opportunistic adversaries elsewhere in the world would no doubt adjust to a distracted and
inward-looking America, with potentially disruptive arms races the result. Secretary Clinton has looked south and now
sees an insurgency. Let's hope that the United States can apply what it has recently learned about insurgencies to stop this one from getting out of control.
Nonunique-- State legalization makes issues for employers inevitable—also means the
CP links
Hannah Bender 14, The impact of legal marijuana on employers, July 17,
http://www.propertycasualty360.com/2014/07/17/the-impact-of-legal-marijuana-on-employers
In Colorado, Amendment 20 states that employers are not required to accommodate the use of medical marijuana in any workplace, but the
law does not explicitly state whether the use of cannabis at home gives an employer the right to fire an employee. Regardless of the result of
the final ruling, the decision will remove the law’s gray area. Should
the Colorado Supreme Court rule in Coats’ favor,
however, the decision will protect more than 110,000 registered medical marijuana users in the state. The precedent
could eventually affect millions of employees across the nation.¶ Considering more than 40% of
Americans ages 12 or older report having used cannabis in their lifetime, and more states are legalizing the use
of the drug for medical—or recreational—purposes, employers must know their rights, but also consider
evolving employment policies to promote the safety and productivity of the work environment while complying with state
regulations. All employers with drug-free policies should do their research, perhaps seek legal counsel and ensure that their drug policies are
enforceable, but also minimize risk and interruption to their business practices.
Good for business overall- new jobs and investment
WILL YAKOWICZ 14, Proof Is in the Pot: Legal Weed Gives Colorado Business a Boost, June 20,
http://www.inc.com/will-yakowicz/legal-marijuana-gives-colorado-businesses-a-lift.html
A weed grows in every business?¶ As the nation watches Colorado's headfirst dive into a socioeconomic experiment of legalizing and
commercializing weed, stories recounting pot-related tragedies and incidents of marijuana getting into children's hands have appeared in top
media outlets. (And, of course, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd famously ate far too much of an edible during a recent trip to
Denver.) But so far, doomsday
scenarios of crime spikes--or, worse, the state's turning into a giant Phish festival--
haven't materialized. Instead, almost half a year after pot went legal in Colorado, the violent crime rate in Denver, the state's largest
city, has dropped 10 percent, and the government has banked tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue. ¶ Because marijuana has been
illegal for the past 80 years, its strong economy has been historically underground. But as
the pot market rises to legitimacy
through new laws, new construction, new jobs, and new investments, in Colorado the birth of the
legal weed economy is demonstrating how it's touching many seemingly unrelated industries.¶ Which
many in Denver now realize. The Premier Group's Johnson, who is neither gung-ho supporter nor naysayer when it comes to pot,
neatly sums up the big picture: "I could argue that it has made our life more difficult and complicated, and we have to work harder. On the
other hand, jobs
are falling into our laps. We thought we had nothing to do with this industry. But clearly we do."
Doesn’t drive up costs
Max Segal 12, Legalize Marijuana: How Legal Weed Could Help Reduce Health Care Costs in America<
nov 24, http://mic.com/articles/19497/legalize-marijuana-how-legal-weed-could-help-reduce-healthcare-costs-in-america
Since a large portion of the population already uses marijuana despite its illegality, the drug only
contributes to health care costs without helping to offset those costs through tax revenue. Even though
legalization would likely result in an excise tax far lower than the $0.42 to $0.95 per marijuana cigarette necessary to completely offset costs,
an excise tax of any amount would bring in more revenue than is currently generated under
marijuana’s prohibition. Therefore the only way legalization could result in a greater divide between the costs and tax revenues
related to marijuana would be if usage increased following legalization.¶ But I believe there is substantial evidence to support the claim that
legalization does not cause increased usage. A 2004 study by professors at the University of California Santa Cruz found that, on average,
residents of San Francisco used marijuana for the first time at age 16.95, while residents of Amsterdam — where marijuana is legal — first used
at age 16.43. Furthermore, the study estimates that approximately 14% of Americans use marijuana, compared to only 5% of the Dutch.¶ So
if
we accept the premise that legalization will not bring about a long-term increase in marijuana use, it
only makes sense to convert illicit marijuana sales into a legal, revenue-generating process. If the Federal
Government decides to take action against Colorado and Washington, it will be fighting against its own fiscal interests and preventing a
potentially beneficial economic experiment.
Pot doesn’t threaten competitiveness- other factors swamp the effects
MATT SCHIAVENZAJAN 14, Legalizing Marijuana Does Not Mean the U.S. Would Lose Ground to
China, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/legalizing-marijuana-does-not-meanthe-us-would-lose-ground-to-china/282813/
Brown's tweet contains some questionable assumptions. One, that legalized marijuana will worsen America's
obesity problem and make the country stupider and sleepier, presumably because high people tend to get the munchies, act like
idiots, and fall asleep on the sofa. And two, the U nited S tates will lose ground to China, which has no plans to adjust
its strict prohibition of marijuana.¶ Before going any further, it's worth considering: How many people in China smoke weed?
Obtaining reliable statistics of illicit activity in China is difficult, but we can be reasonably sure it's less than in the United States. Americans
smoke more pot, per capita, than all but two countries in the world, and, while a recent study from the medical journal Lancet doesn't discuss
China specifically, it found that Asians consume less marijuana than people from any other continent. ¶ This, of course, hasn't always been so;
in fact, drugs have played a central role in modern Chinese history. China fought two different "Opium Wars" against the British in the 19th
century, after which a significant percentage of the Chinese population became addicted to the drug. When Chairman Mao Zedong assumed
power in 1949 and formed the People's Republic of China, the newly empowered Communists shut down opium dens throughout the country,
arrested smokers, and executed dealers. Within just a few years, China had completely eradicated opium use in the country.¶ Today, Chinese
law has little tolerance for illegal drug use. As in Singapore and Malaysia, traffickers remain subject to the death penalty, and four years ago
China marked the occasion of the UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking by publicly executing 24 convicted drug
dealers. However, marijuana grows in the wild throughout the country's southwest, a fact I can confirm as a four-year resident of Yunnan
Province. (At a wedding I attended in Xishuangbanna, a Yunnan prefecture located near the border with Laos, some foreign guests offered pot
to locals only to be told that they preferred store-bought cigarettes.) In Beijing, dealers are a ubiquitous presence in bar districts despite
periodic crackdowns by the police, and they sell more than just marijuana: The tranquilizer ketamine has become popular among China's urban
youth, and police recently seized three tons of methamphetamine in a rural village. A Chinese journalist was even able to buy marijuana via an
online forum.¶ ***¶ But Tina Brown's
tweet has less to do with marijuana than it does with a persistent belief
that any sign of American "weakness" must necessarily translate into an advantage for China. In fairness,
she's hardly the only person guilty of this: Three years ago, when heavy snow in Pennsylvania forced the cancellation of an NFL game between
the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings, then-Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell objected in these terms:¶ We’ve become a nation of
wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People
would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.¶ And
when in 2011 Amy Chua published her famous "tiger mom" essay in The Wall Street Journal, featuring a description of her draconian, cruel
parenting technique, she touched a nerve with Americans who suddenly questioned whether their own parenting might be inadequate.
Whether the subject is legalized marijuana, parenting, or canceled football games, the basic message is the same: Americans are fat, soft, and
lazy, and the Chinese are lean, disciplined, and hard-working—and that's why they're gaining on us. ¶ However, the focus on cultural issues
obscures the point about China's competition with the United States: it's pure geopolitics. Three and a half decades of growth has given
China an economy that, barring an unexpected collapse, will overtake the U nited S tates in GDP sometime in the next
decade. China has parlayed this growth into greater economic, military, and diplomatic power, and
now has the means to challenge American supremacy in the Western Pacific. This is where the SinoAmerican competition exists—not in the pot dispensaries of Colorado or the mountains of Yunnan.¶ If marijuana use
correlated to national health, then the two countries with the highest per capita consumption of the drug—Australia and New Zealand—would
not perennially rank near the top in human development indeces. But let's say for the sake of argument that Tina Brown is correct: Legalized
marijuana will result in more people smoking more marijuana more often, and that this will have a negative effect on the country as a whole.
Whether or not this argument is true, it completely misses the central argument in favor of legalization:
The current system, in which
people who buy, sell, and use marijuana are subject to imprisonment, poses a far greater cost to society than pot itself
ever could. And the disproportional effect of our marijuana laws on minorities and the poor only makes this argument stronger.¶ As the
American competition with China intensifies over the next years and decades, the United States will be
forced to confront weaknesses such as income inequality, unemployment, student debt, and high
imprisonment. Marijuana use just isn't one of them.
No Russian aggression- NATO checks gains
Stefan Wolff 14, Professor of International Security at University of Birmingham, and Tatyana
Malyarenko, Professor of Public Administration at Donetsk State Management University, 7/27/14, Lack
of trust and tit-for-tat escalation brings Ukraine to the brink of all-out war with Russia,
http://theconversation.com/lack-of-trust-and-tit-for-tat-escalation-brings-ukraine-to-the-brink-of-allout-war-with-russia-29707
Russia, in turn, may look like the winner at this stage, but is unlikely to be able to walk away from the
Ukrainian crisis unscathed. Moscow has bagged Crimea, thrown Ukraine back years if not decades in its social, economic
and political development and sent a strong signal to other countries in the post-Soviet space how it feels about their relations with the EU.
Yet, as the West gears up to more sanctions, as NATO rediscovers a collective defence purpose and as
the neighbourhood that Russia and the EU share edges closer to Brussels, these gains will soon turn
out short-lived and hollow. In the meantime, however, Russia continues to act and react in the Ukraine
crisis in a way that betrays a dangerous sense of desperation, betting on military escalation by proxy
that is ultimately beyond the Kremlin’s control.
The plan solves Afghan instability and terrorism
H.A. Goodman 14, Author and Journalist published in Salon, the Chicago Tribune, etc., studied
International Relations at USC and worked for a brief stint at the U.S. Department of State's Foreign
Service Institute, 7/14/14, “Legalizing Marijuana Should Be a Top National Security Objective: Terrorism
and Border Instability Would Diminish”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/legalizingmarijuana-shou_b_5583767.html
Afghanistan
is the world's largest supplier of cannabis and the plant is even more profitable
to Afghan farmers than opium Considering that the U.S. is the largest consumer of marijuana
the Afghan economy
could benefit greatly from supplying a legal
cannabis industry ¶
a federally recognized marijuana industry in the U.S. could
provide people in war-torn states like Afghanistan a needed source of legal income. This alone could
First,
according to CBS News
poppy.
in the world with
7.3 percent of Americans -- around 23 million citizens -- who regularly use marijuana,
.
and people
American citizens spend $40.6 billion a year on marijuana, so
mitigate instability but the fact that terror groups are using profits from Afghanistan's cannabis crop
directly undermines national security
Drug trafficking
is fueling
a global criminal enterprise valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars that poses a growing
challenge to stability and security.
more and more acts of violence, conflicts and
terrorist activities fuelled by drug trafficking and organized crime.
the Afghan
illegal drug trade "is funding insurgency, international terrorism and wider destabilization ¶
Afghanistan's cannabis crop is funding terror groups; a reality that directly undermines the White
House's counterterrorism objectives
federally legalizing marijuana
,
our
objectives. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, "
, the critical link between supply and demand,
" The report goes on to state that there are "
" Echoing this alarming fact, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stated
."
stated
Therefore,
. According to a 2010 Time article titled, Afghanistan's New Bumper Drug Crop: Cannabis,
would drain cash from insurgents in
grow cannabis
to buy weapons
resentment
and be destabilizing
Afghanistan ¶ 'Afghanistan is using some of its best land to
'If they grew wheat instead, insurgents would not have money
¶ 'Eradicating marijuana
fields can breed
the ongoing
,' says Antonia Maria Costa, director of the UN drug office in Vienna.
War:
and the international community would not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on food aid.'
by people
"
...
and opium
,' says John Dempsey, a rule-of-law adviser to U.S. and Afghan officials for the U.S. Institute of Peace. ¶ ... Groups of armed drug traffickers, meanwhile, travel through the countryside,
buying opium and cannabis at the farm gates for cash. For many farmers in the area, making a living and staying alive -- sadly -- go hand in hand." ¶ Furthering the link between the illegal cannabis trade and terror, a Guardian article in 2012 explained that, "Officials in southern Uruzgan
Legalizing a drug that 40 percent of high school
students in the U.S. have tried in order to slash funding to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist
organizations is far more feasible than introducing a democratic system to tribes and Afghan farmers
province, which borders Kandahar and Helmand, largely stamped out farming of the drug because of worries it was financing the Taliban."
.
As it stands, the U.S. is the world's largest consumer of cannabis and Afghanistan is the largest producer, but neither Bush nor Obama has taken action to address this glaring economic reality.
Afghan instability causes nuclear war
Cronin 13 (Audrey Kurth Cronin is Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of
How Terrorism Ends and Great Power Politics and the Struggle over Austria. Thinking Long on
Afghanistan: Could it be Neutralized? Center for Strategic and International Studies The Washington
Quarterly • 36:1 pp. 55_72 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2013.751650)
With ISAF withdrawal inevitable, a sea change is already underway: the question is whether
the U nited S tates will be ahead of the curve or behind it. Under current circumstances, key actions within Afghanistan by any one state are perceived
to have a deleterious effect on the interests of other competing states, so the only feasible solution is to discourage all of them from interfering in a neutralized state. As
the U nited S tates draws down over the next two years, yielding to regional anarchy would be irresponsible. Allowing
neighbors to rely on bilateral measures, jockey for relative position , and pursue conflicting national interests without regard for
dangerous regional dynamics will result in a repeat of the pattern that has played out in Afghanistan for the past thirty
years_ /except this time the outcome could be not just terrorism but nuclear war.
Legalization revives the sinking pharmaceutical industry
Sam Becker 14, business and auto writer for Wall St. Cheat Sheet, 5/2/14, “Is Big Pharma Ready to
Jump Into the Marijuana Market?”, http://wallstcheatsheet.com/business/is-big-pharma-ready-tojump-into-the-marijuana-market.html/?a=viewall
While the medicinal properties of marijuana have thus far been commoditized by small operations,
usually operating in some sort of gray legal area, the new legal markets and increased public acceptance of cannabis are offering
bigger companies an opportunity to take a serious look into the possibilities marijuana offer. With a myriad of existing
products, from topical treatments to oil capsules, the medical marijuana industry has already been a source of incredible
innovation and research. Cannabis has been shown to successful treat ailments as diverse as multiple
sclerosis to nausea experienced by cancer patients going through chemotherapy.¶ So what interest do pharmaceutical companies
like AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) or Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) have in an opening legal cannabis market? For starters, it has
patents that are set to expire in the near future. With the long list of treatable ailments by marijuana,
the answer is fairly obvious.¶ The adoption of cannabis-based medications and products could be the
future of the pharmaceutical industry . While marijuana has been designated as a Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level, many states have gone
ahead to pass bills making medical marijuana use legal for certain ailments. Now with two states passing legislation enabling full
legalization, entrepreneurs have the chance to jump into the new industry. The problem for many
national and international companies is that it does not want to be exposed to legal backlash in areas
where prohibition is still in place .¶ Companies like Novartis have started divesting in reaction to the rapid changes in the biotech industry. With businesses willing
to take aggressive moves like this, seeking out new avenues to invest in is most likely in the industry’s best interest. One example of a company taking the leap is Earth Science Tech, Inc.
(QB:UNOV.PK), who recently announced its entrance into a variety of different cannabis-based industries, including legal medical marijuana, cannabinoid and legal hemp. ¶ Earth Science Tech,
Inc.’s CEO Dr. Harvey Katz laid out his company’s reasoning behind the move, with perfectly sound reasoning. “We’re a health and wellness company, and we will continue to be a health and
wellness company with our new entry into the Legal Cannabis and Medical Marijuana Industry. A growing proportion of the medical community believes that Medical Marijuana and, more
specifically cannabinoids, have the potential to help patients who are suffering from a variety of conditions and disorders,” he said.¶ What future does cannabis have in pharmaceuticals? It will
depend on when and how it is adopted by Big Pharma. In the meantime, small businesses and science-savvy entrepreneurs will continue to drive innovation and introduce new products and
medications to the market. Some companies, like Earth Science Tech, Inc. are putting its foresight to work, and it will probably pay off.¶ In a turbulent industry, pharmaceutical heavy-hitters
will do what it needs to stay afloat. If embracing cannabis as a new source of revenue and innovation is the next step, expect to see some big names throwing money toward the battle to end
prohibition.
1AR
The cp leads to uncertainty
Jonathan P. Caulkins et al, 12, Prof of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, Dr.
Angela Hawkin, Associate Prof of Public Policy at Pepperdine University, Dr. Beau Kilmer, Co-Director of
the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, and Dr. Mark Kleiman, Prof of Public Policy at UCLA, MARIJUANA
LEGALIZATION: WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW, p 191-2
In February 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sig- naled that federal enforcement policy toward those
operating legally under state laws would change. The reversal became more formal in October 2009 when
Deputy Attorney General¶ Ogden released a memo suggesting that as a general matter, U.S. Attorneys should
not focus federal resources on "individ- uals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with
existing state laws providing for the medical use of mari-¶ juana." The memo reserved the option of targeting those vio-¶ lating
state laws or attempting to make a profit from selling¶ medical marijuana, and federal agents have arrested dozens of¶ individuals involved in
supplying medical marijuana since the¶ memo was released.¶ More
recently, some U nited S tates Attorneys warned
specific dispensaries to shut down or face enforcement, and in some cases have carried out those
threats against operations that did¶ not comply. A June 2011 memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney¶ General Cole reiterated the
warning of enforcement action against "commercial operations" and "persons in the business"¶ of cultivating, selling,
or distributing marijuana. It also argued¶ that those "who engage in transactions involving the proceeds¶ of such activity may also be in
violation of federal money laun-¶ dering statutes and other federal financial laws." Advocates¶ saw this as a reversal of the Holder-Ogden
policy. But the Ogden memo differentiated between individuals and their caregivers¶ on the one hand and for-profit commercial enterprises on
the¶ other. Likewise, since California law recognizes only "coopera-¶ tives," and many of the medical marijuana dispensaries are¶ actually forprofit businesses, it's not clear that any of them are¶ in fact operating in compliance with state law.¶ In October 2011, the four U.S. Attorneys in
California pub-¶ licly described their plan to target the large, for-profit medical¶ marijuana industry. Tactics will include criminal cases and civil¶
forfeiture cases against those who own properties involved in¶ drug trafficking (e.g., landlords who rent to dispensaries). It¶ does not appear
that all dispensaries are being targeted, but¶ U.S. Attorney Melissa Haag suggests, "Although our initial¶ efforts in the Northern District focus
on only certain marijuana¶ stores, we will almost certainly be taking action against others.¶ None are immune from action by the federal
government."¶ The
moral of this back-and-forth saga is that the outcome of a state's making marijuana
legally available depends on whether and how the federal government chooses to enforce federal
laws.