Letter to the Editor

Commonwealth Times:

On Sunday morning, January 31, we learned of another horror in Mexico’s drug war. Fourteen young people were murdered among 25 shot at a party celebrating their high school soccer team victory and one student’s birthday.

In any other time and any other place, this would be unbelievable. In any other time and any other place, the world would be riveted to “on the scene” accounts of this outrage. In other times and other places – school shootings in the U.S., Scotland, Germany – when students are shot, there are demands for policy change to protect them, to address underlying issues, and the related commerce.

But these days, for the students of Mexico, there remains a stunning silence. It is as though the world accepts as normal the bloodshed of the innocent high school students because the bloodshed of the failing war on drugs is normal. This is not normal!

For too long the world has tolerated a failed policy to control drugs. It has tolerated deaths from tainted drugs, death from overdoses, from indifferent medical care, from HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, from police brutality, from gang wars and drive-by shootings.

The bloodshed will end when prohibition is repealed.

Please join Virginia Commonwealth University Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) in standing with our brothers and sisters in Mexico. Vigils will be occurring in Hermosillo and in Mexico City. A large group will be gathering at the University of Texas in El Paso. Vigils are expected in Halifax, Lagos, London, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and more. Please check www.ssdp.org/vigil/ for updates of locations.

The Vigil will be held Thursday February 11 in Monroe Park, across from Johnson Hall from 8:30-9 p.m.

Devon Tackles

President, VCU SSDP

For a link to the story visit commonwealthtimes.org.

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link for web site:

www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-shooting1-2010feb01,0,3479327.story