PRESS RELEASE
U.S. General Slams Drug Legalization
Jan. 27, 2016 (EIRNS)—Not for the first time, Gen. John Kelly has attacked the drug legalization drive in the United States for the problems it creates for U.S. joint efforts with its southern neighbors to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States.
Kelly delivered this message again in an interview with Military Times, published Jan. 16, two days after he retired as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which coordinates security cooperation with Central and South America and the Caribbean, of which drug interdiction is a major component.
Kelly told Military Times that the drug cartels make "insane profits" from the consumption of narcotics and stimulants in the U.S. and Western Europe.
"So if you’re a Latin American, and we’re harping on them to do more to stop the flow of drugs, they say: ’Wait a minute.... Why would we do more when you seem to be legalizing this stuff?’"
There is no doubt that marijuana is a gateway to use of harder drugs, Kelly also said, and the "hypocrisy" of legalization favors cartel operations that are an integral component of global terrorism: "Drug trafficking. Human trafficking. Weapons trafficking. It’s all connected."
"We know that as that cocaine [bound for Europe] moves up through the Mahgreb [in Africa], ... some of the al Qaida type organizations allow it to pass but charge a fare, just like we know that some large amount of the money that comes out of the United States is laundered by banks and organizations in the Caribbean and Latin America that had relationships with Lebanese banks, and there’s a certain skimming that we know goes into certain Islamic terrorist group coffers."
In a May 20, 2015, presentation at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., Kelly had elaborated:
"There’s nothing these groups can’t move—from drugs, to heavy weapons, to precursors for methamphetamine, to counterfeit software, to illicitly mined gold and sex slaves.... With submarines, jets, trucks, and a logistics operation that Amazon would envy . . . they are no longer the cocaine cowboys or even cartels.
"Many of the problems in the region, such as the mass migration of children from Central America fleeing horrific cartel violence, are "the direct result of our drug consumption,"
Kelly said.
