¿Rudo y cursi… yo?

Dudley Althaus and Dane Schiller in the Houston Chronicle:

But for its problematic pedigree, Mexico’s marijuana might be hailed as a marketing miracle.

The much-maligned weed has suffered decades of punishment — burned, poisoned, ripped from the earth by its roots. Customers have been jailed, suppliers battered by literally cutthroat competition. Better products from Colombia, California and countless suburban back-rooms have somewhat eroded its popularity. Governments refuse to make it honest.

Yet, this pot has persevered. Production grows, quality improves and exports northward hum along.

…

“Marijuana remains the constant commodity of choice for the drug cartels because of end user demand and the ease of production,” said Tony Garcia, South Texas director of an intergovernmental police alliance that keeps tabs on the illicit drug trade.

“When cartels lose large quantities of other type drugs to law enforcement, their money coffers are replenished through the trafficking of marijuana,” he said.

Cheap to grow and relatively easy to bring to market, Mexico’s marijuana provides sustenance for entire mountain communities and wide profit margins for the gangsters.

…

Like your typical Mexican bourgeois, I tend to think of marijuana smokers as rather, cursi, but with “… surveys [that] suggest at least 11 percent of Americans over age 12 regularly puff from a joint, pipe or bong,”  I suppose there’s a strong argument to be made in favor of the “war on drugs”… as long as it stays in the United States.  It keeps down the competition from U.S. domestic growers and allows at least some of our traditional agricultural communities to thrive.