Enrique “Kiki” Camarena: Remembering Why We Have A Drug War

For anyone who would like to check his or her conscience, Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, is a reaffirmation that marijuana has a dark and evil history.  This is a fact that cannot be changed.  When we look back at the story of tortured and murdered DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, we get a renewed sense of how much evil is associated with marijuana.  Camarena’s story is a profound cautionary tale for anyone who believes that history is our most important reason for the drug war.  Camarena lost his life to vicious cartel members, who (at the time) with the assistance of the Mexican government and doctors to keep him alive, was kidnapped and viciously tortured for three days.  This in retaliation after Camarena initiated the 1985 raid of the largest marijuana plantation in Mexico.

Drug legalizers are not willing to look at the facts as they are and are short sighted when they say marijuana is a harmless drug.  Marijuana is not harmless and the people using it and dealing it have been known to be out of touch with reality, are mean-spirited, evil, and dangerous.  If we look at the tactics of today’s marijuana movement we find our cities being sued by the drug lobby, surrounded by a new brand of drug trafficking crimes and anti-establishment spokes people who speak on behalf of the drug lobby, insisting that they are entitled to break the law if they so choose. 

When we think about marijuana, we should think about all of the history it has, not just what sounds politically convenient.  When we are out shopping for a used car and find one we like but then find out before we owned it there was a murdered body found in the trunk, would we still buy it?  If we went shopping at a second hand store and bought an outfit we really liked and then found out it was worn by a rapist, would we still want it?  The answer seems pretty simple.  Of course we would not want this kind of gloomy history in our lives.  The idea of making marijuana legal will never take away marijuana’s dark, reprehensible stigma.  Enrique “Kiki” Camarena’s story will always be a reminder of that.