EL PASO, Texas – Concerns about the bloody drug war being fought just across the Mexican border led to a short-lived resolution Tuesday asking the federal government to consider legalizing drugs.
Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution hours after it was unanimously approved by the City Council.
Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso city councilman, pushed the resolution that asked the U.S. government to start an "open, honest, national dialogue on ending the prohibition of narcotics."
"We think it should at least be on the table and so far it hasn't," O'Rourke said.
Cook called the request to look at legalizing drugs "unrealistic" and urged the council to adopt a broader resolution that looks for other solutions.
The council, which oversees a city of more than 600,000 people that is considered one of the safest U.S. cities of its size, had unanimously approved the request.
The nonbinding resolution suggested that legalizing drugs in the United States could help curb a volatile and bloody drug war that claimed nearly 1,600 lives in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, in 2008. Thousands more were killed across Mexico.
But the request would have been a tough sell to a newly minted Congress facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and two wars.
"Legalizing the types of drugs that are being smuggled across the border is not an effective way to combat the violence in Mexico, and I would not support efforts in Congress that would seek to do so," U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent from El Paso, said.
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EL PASO, Texas – Concerns about the bloody drug war being fought just across the Mexican border led to a short-lived resolution Tuesday asking the federal government to consider legalizing drugs.
Mayor John Cook vetoed the resolution hours after it was unanimously approved by the City Council.
Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso city councilman, pushed the resolution that asked the U.S. government to start an "open, honest, national dialogue on ending the prohibition of narcotics."
"We think it should at least be on the table and so far it hasn't," O'Rourke said.
Cook called the request to look at legalizing drugs "unrealistic" and urged the council to adopt a broader resolution that looks for other solutions.
The council, which oversees a city of more than 600,000 people that is considered one of the safest U.S. cities of its size, had unanimously approved the request.
The nonbinding resolution suggested that legalizing drugs in the United States could help curb a volatile and bloody drug war that claimed nearly 1,600 lives in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, in 2008. Thousands more were killed across Mexico.
But the request would have been a tough sell to a newly minted Congress facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and two wars.
"Legalizing the types of drugs that are being smuggled across the border is not an effective way to combat the violence in Mexico, and I would not support efforts in Congress that would seek to do so," U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent from El Paso, said.
- Stephen M. Smith