Border Leaders Question War on Drugs
When Mexican neighbors moved north with their wild marijuana parties, El Paso leaders in the 1910s became some of the first in the nation to ban the drug. A century later, El Pasoans see their neighbors slaughtered daily in a vicious drug war and worry the carnage will spill north. And city leaders are wondering aloud whether it’s time to retreat from the American War on Drugs their forebears helped start.
Experts from around the country and from Mexico, including former U.S. law enforcement and former Mexican federal officials, gathered recently at the University of Texas at El ...
Comments (2)
wilbanksdale
The mentality of those that want to decriminalize drugs. Their "if we can't win, let's make it legal" is a copout attitude. I'm glad our founding fathers of the state didn't live by those feelings.
eamartinez
"When Mexican neighbors moved north with their wild marijuana parties ..."
My understanding is that the June 1915 ordinance was passed because a Mexican fired a shotgun into the air downtown during a New Year's celebration. This during a time when moralists were a dominant political force in politics, so they attributed the common (even contemporary) Mexican tradition of firing guns into the air during celebration to "reefer madness."
http://newspapertree.com/system/news_article/document1/3299/1.9.09_Ordinance_prohibiting_the_sale_of_marihuana_-_June_3__1915.pdf