[MUSIC]
There are only two kinds of people in this world.
Those who consume illegal drugs and those who knows someone who does.
I'm not here to critic or judge people who consume drugs.
I have nothing against the drugs themselves.
My aim in giving this talk, however, is to pull down the curtain, so
that you can see what is, perhaps, not obvious.
So that you all know what is actually going on
before illegal drugs get into the US.
I care deeply about this issue, because I was born and
raised in the north of Mexico.
My hometown is some 200 miles south of Texas.
And it used to be a place in which as a kid, I would bike and
skate around with my friends, and people exercised in the street safely.
But now, everyone is living in constant fear.
Children are not allowed to play outside.
And literally everyone I know could stand before you today and
share a horrific story of how the drug trade violence has damaged their lives.
I have seen this other side.
And I have kept quiet for way too long.
I have lacked the courage to speak.
And I have feared being the outlier.
But I'm breaking my silence today because people need to hear this,
especially here in the US.
The US is the largest market for illegal drugs.
With only 5% of the world's population,
it consumes over 30% of the global demand.
And what's really interesting is that the vast majority of the millions and
millions of users are using the drugs for recreational purposes.
But only by buying, they are creating a demand.
And wherever this is demand, there will be supply, and
this supply is costing human lives.
Let me illustrate this for you.
Let's say you are a user and you feel like getting high tonight or this weekend.
So you would contact your trusted dealer and
engage in a business transaction with him or her.
You see, it's a victimless crime.
So, you get high, and no big deal.
But what you don't see is that for any dealer to be able to sell to you,
they need to be working with one of the cartels.
And before cartels supply to their dealers,
they either produced the drugs in Mexico or imported them from Asia or
South America, and crossed them to the US by land, air or sea.
And at every step of the chain there's bloodshed.
Why is this the case?
Well, because this is the most lucrative of all criminal activities.
As a result, it attracts the worst criminals to it.
And criminals compete by force.
So this is effectively a business in which the most violent player wins.
And what are they fighting over?
Well, territories, highways, ports, border crossings, political influence, and so on.
Because the real money to this business is not in producing drugs but
in getting them from the source to the end consumer here in the US.
And to do that successfully,
cartels need to control their traffic routes every step of the way.
And to prevent smaller criminal groups from growing and eventually competing
with them, they also set out to control the smaller criminal activities like human
trafficking, kidnapping, piracy, extortion and even prostitution.
To protect their huge profits,
they're killing not only the people involved in the business, but
also journalists, law enforcers and innocents, who refuse to cooperate.
They even sometimes engage in mass killings of civilians
just to create fear in the town.
In the span of this hour of talks, three people are killed just in Mexico.
This is 60 lives every single day, many of them are innocent men,
women and children.
The official death toll since 2007 stands at 160,000.
This number is larger than that of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.
This is the bloodiest conflict in North American since the American Civil War.
One morning back in the spring of 2010, I found out that four very close
member of my family had been kidnapped by one of the cartels.
Long hours of fear and suffering turned into days.
Days turned into weeks.
We didn't know what was going on.
And we still don't because we never saw them again.
The narcos disappeared them, breaking my family apart.
Now, by show of hands,
who here believes in making the world a better place through our daily actions?
I believe most people do, actually.
In the US, every day it's more common to hear about people becoming
vegetarian to save animals.
People are buying cruelty free cosmetics, third rate coffee, conflict free diamonds.
And I deeply admire how this heightened awareness,
how its supply chains is growing.
But unfortunately, we haven't yet picked up on the worst of them.
One that is killing not animals, but human lives.
Because Americans are spending around $150 billion on illegal drugs every year.
An amount that is slightly higher than what the US federal government spends on
education.
And five times larger than what the US federal government spends on law
enforcement.
So, you can see why this problem is so huge.
And thanks to a very convenient geographic location,
Mexican cartels control over 70% of the US market.
The truth is that, with an incentive of this magnitude, no government
action in the US or Mexico will ever be enough to mitigate the violence.
Around three years ago, Marie a hardworking,
lower-class woman who worked with me for over six years, realized that
one of the cartels was recruiting young boys from her neighborhood by force.
Being the mother of a 14 year old boy, Marie panicked.
So she took her whole family and they walk away, they run away.
For several months they lived at a very remote and uncomfortable shelter.
So, soon as they hear that their neighborhood was relatively safe again,
the family return home.
On the second night from their return, a group of armed men entered their house and
killed her boy in front of her, and her whole family, just in retaliation.
I completely understand that some of you are thinking,
how come the Mexican government is not doing anything about this?
It is the Mexicans fault that they such a corrupt government and weak institutions.
And you know what?
That's fair.
I accept our responsibility.
And we are doing something about it, but the pull is way too strong.
How are we suppose to fight against those hundreds of billions of dollars and
automatic guns?
The cartels just buy their way around Mexico.
And those who don't take their money get killed.
The fact we can't walk away from is that every time we buy illegal drugs,
we approve, reward and incentivize these criminal organizations.
We approve, reward and incentivize the narcos.
So I stand before you today because I desperately need your help.
And because I know that each one of us here could bring about a huge change.
Think about this, recreational users spend between 200 and
$2,000 on illegal drugs every month.
Just to give you a glimpse what this money buys for the cartels.
With $200 they can get 1,000 new rounds of ammunition.
$500, a brand new AK47 rifle.
$700 base, the monthly cost of a full-time employee under that squad.
What if instead you or someone close to you stopped buying illegal drugs?
You would singlehandedly help prevent several kidnappings, extortions, or worse.
So if you're not the user,
I ask you to please have this conversation with your friends, with your families.
And if you are one, please think twice before you buy again.
Consider alcohol or legal wed instead.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Just don't lie to yourself
because now you know where you're money will find its way through.
Eventually, if we succeed, my family,
people in my hometown and all over Latin America would start feeling safe again.
Our children would go back to playing outside.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]