Whack-a-mole Drug War: Fear and loathing surrounds decriminalisation

Al Jazeera looks at the drug war, the impact of prohibition and legalization -- from Mexico, to the Neatherlands to Connecticut.

Fear and loathing surrounds decriminalisation - Features - Al Jazeera English: "John Gibler's mind. Gibler is an investigative journalist and author of To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War.

Greatly contrasting the Dutch experience with marijuana, Gibler has explored the drug war's reality in the world's most violent border region, and he strongly supports decriminalisation.

'People in Amsterdam aren't stuffing headless bodies in the trunk of a car, or hanging dead bodies from bridges,' he tells Al Jazeera, an image seen far too often in Mexico.

"Illegality has done nothing to stop [the violence], but has done the opposite - fuelling it by creating the profit margins associated with that much wealth," he told Al Jazeera.

Charles Bowden, an investigative journalist and author ofMurder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, told Al Jazeera's Faultlines : "If you want to know one of the biggest causes of death in Mexico, it is the American drug prohibition."

"Al-Qaeda couldn't do to Juarez what the US government's done," he added."