EL PASO — Tania Lozoya was a goal-oriented 15 year old. She was a member of student government, the junior varsity softball team, and planning to be a lawyer some day (after being inspired by the movie Legally Blonde).

It was a weekend of festivities across the border in Ciudad Juárez as her family celebrated a cousin’s baptism and another cousin’s birthday. This was meant only to be a weekend trip to El Paso’s neighboring Mexican city.

On that Saturday evening as she sat in the living room during the party it happened – gunshots were fired and Tania Lozoya became another victim of the escalating drug-war violence in Ciudad Juárez.

This is just one of hundreds of stories published in the El Paso Times, describing the gore and the massacre seen on a daily basis.

Beto O’Rourke, city council representative for District 8, said the solution could be found in the legalization of narcotics such as marijuana.

“There are thousands of lives lost in terroristic manners…the drug policy is seriously a failure,” O’Rourke said. “It is an ineffective policy not accomplishing any goals and costing trillions of dollars.”

O’Rourke attempted to amend the resolution, originally proposed by the Border Relations Committee, adding a possible open debate for the legalization of marijuana to ease the violence in our border. The rest of city council agreed with him, but Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution.

District Attorney Jaime Esparza, like the mayor, opposed the resolution. “Legalizing drugs in general is a bad idea, ”Esparza said.  “It is bad public policy. Legalizing drugs with the incentive to relieve violence in Mexico is not realistic. The battle in Mexico is a territorial battle of who has control.”
Hilary Clinton begs to differ.

She told CNN in March 2009 that the “insatiable demand for illegal drugs” in the U.S is fueling the Mexican drug war. According to Clinton, without that demand, there would be few illegal drug traffickers in Mexico.

The criminal gangs in Mexico go back decades, according to a point/counterpoint editorial in the Wall Street Journal by John P. Walters and Steven B. Duke, titled “Drugs: To Legalize or Not.”

“Legalizing drugs is the worst thing we could do for President Felipe Calderon and our Mexican allies,” Walters said in the editorial. He also explains legalizing drugs would weaken the moral authority of Calderon’s fight and the Mexicans would immediately realize that “we have no intention of reducing consumption.”

But Duke believes otherwise.

“These are turf wars, fought between rival gangs trying to increase their share of the market for illegal drug,” Duke said. “The only long-term solution to the cartel-related murders in Mexico is to legalize the other illegal drugs we overlooked when we repealed Prohibition in 1933.”

In December 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” It was repealed on December 1933 with the ratification of the 21st Amendment.

According to the Web site recessionhistory.info, one of the many reasons for the repeal of the amendment was the country’s economic state. During the Great Depression, the reopened industry created a lot of financial possibilities for the United States.

“Much like during the prohibition of alcohol, we need economic help in this deep recession we are in,” O’Rourke said.

Retired federal anti-drug agent Terry Nelson, who is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, testified at a late April 2009 city council meeting in support of the resolution.

“Certainly the people that make their living off the drug war and the misery it causes will have to adjust just as the ‘Al Capone’s’ did after the failure of the first prohibition,” Nelson said in his testimony.
Whatever measures are taken, the violence in Juarez continues unabated. There have been more than 1,000 drug-related murders this year.

According to an article in the El Paso Times, at Lozoya’s funeral service, Rev. Pablo Matta said: “There are no words when innocent blood is shed. There is no reason. These are human beings at their worse moments.”

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