Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s repairmen

Openly turning that sophisticated intelligence apparatus against the citizenry is simply not politically tenable in the US at present. (Note that I said openly. What Snowden revealed wasn't open.)

OTOH, I may not really think highly about how AMLO has done things, but I do applaud him for following a strategy to act against the structural causes. We have enough history on how the Militar strategy doesn't work, and actually a couple of examples where the "tough on drugs" guy is actually colluding with the drug dealers.

I found this paper by Charles Tilly, a well-known sociologist, to be enlightening and eye-opening.

And I think the flip-side is also true, "organized crime" being little different from "legitimate state", except in scale and sometimes scale.

But even more enlightening to me, building on top of this paper, was the opinion of a chief named Bear in the Vietnamese (iirc) jungle, who had to deal with both the "legitimate" (dominant) government and the "paramilitary" groups, who would both alternate tearing through his village and terrorizing his people.

To Bear, all of this activity was the inevitable result of existence of power itself, just a fact of reality. Power which, inevitablly, one or another would struggle to acquire, with similar results regardless of who it was. This perspective allowed him to maintain and protect his tribe from both organizations, by acknowledging their power, acquiescing to it, and letting the wind bend his stalk but not break it, so to speak.

Bear was a wise man who lived to old age in a place with everyday danger, so his words are worth something, IMO.

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I learned of Bear and his wisdom from a book written by an anthropologist who lived with his people for several years. I remember one of the stories being about how an unwanted premature baby was allowed to die, and how much this upset the anthropologist at first.

Unfortunately, I do not remember the name of the book anymore. If anyone recognizes it, please comment here.

But then again, there is a somewhat thriving black market for detergent and soaps: In the US, Tide is often targeted, as are branded department store body soaps, shampoos, and razor blades. This isn't because soaps and things are taxed.

Also, does tax make up for all of the risk markup? I very highly doubt it. IIRC, prices have gone down in places with legalization, in no small part because the whole process can be done out in the open.

And it’s not just arms, it’s military training and procedures. The cartel mentioned most often in the article (the Zetas) literally WERE the army - they were special forces and commandos that decided to become the muscle for the Gulf Cartel because it paid more.

Then the Gulf Cartel learned the problems of relying on mercenaries when the Zetas turned on them as well, becoming one of the most dominant cartels in the world.

Anyway, to answer your question: the cartels have tanks, helicopters, ships, submarines, mortars, grenades and missiles.

Many of them are crude versions of course (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco_tank) but it’s definitely not just small arms fire.

A bunch of highly trained ex-commandos with billions in budget and hundreds of thousands of “troops” (in aggregate) that doesn’t much care about hurting civilians can do a lot of damage.

It's so different to the reality that most of us inhabit that it's hard to imagine.

That's obviously difficult. The actual situation is even more difficult: you have to simultaneously deal with the supply and demand factors.

It's not enough just to legalize everything (which will never happen, 80-90% of the globe will never do such a thing under any circumstances, regardless of what the US does). If you do that, the demand will of course still be there. Someone has to wipe out the cartel production/supply by competing with it.

So the US has to go into the production business for cocaine, heroin, etc. It wouldn't be reliable to leave it to Mexico, it would be too easy for the cartels to hijack and control.

Any country that doesn't legalize globally - which will be most of them - will still remain a target for the cartels to sell into. Latin American cartel networks are effective enough and big enough now that they move product globally.

Legalize it all requires that a very large portion of all countries go in on that. It will never happen.

The US will fully legalize marijuana and it will hardly make a dent in taking down the cartels or reducing cartel violence in Latin America, which demonstrates their considerable staying power. There was widespread opinion that it would make a big difference, in reality it'll have hardly made any difference (Mexico is more violent now than it has ever been in its history).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Sweden

"The drug policy of Sweden is based on zero tolerance focusing on prevention, treatment, and control, aiming to reduce both the supply of and demand for illegal drugs."

All crime is not fungible.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant#Prisoners_o... they certainly fulfil three conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

but for whatever reason they feel they have an advantage in not fulfilling:

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Nota Bene George Washington would return, unopened, letters from the British that were not properly addressed, because he wished to emphasise that his men were regulars.

In more recent news, the sundry poorly regulated US militia may have (a) and (c) but fail on (b), while the "boogaloo" have (b) and (c) but fail on (a), and neither has yet shown any sign of how far they might observe (d).

It's brutal, but the cartels have to be treated in the ways that you would treat terrorists.

The next Saturday a black trashbag was deposited on her doorstep.....with the chopped up body of her son inside it, and a message to "be careful who you speak bad about".

It's terrifying to think of how people try to navigate such savagery just trying to go about their lives.

One from last month shocked...

They're already doing that with the avocado trade.

See how that "always been like this" logic doesn't make any sense? I have yet to hear a coherent reason why drugs should be decriminalized or legalized.

Exactly. Just look at the much larger market contested by the Apple/Google blood feud for an example!

This doesn't actually happen. The expense of running a private army makes a firm catastrophically non-competetive vs. the new flood of now-legal competitors selling at a much lower price.

I wonder if it would make a bit dent, if Mexico just legalised production and distribution of most drugs? Instead of waiting for the US to get their act together.

Because we have these schemes in the Netherlands. Opiod addicts can get their fix from municipality health centres, alcoholic homeless people can clean up parks in exchange for beer, it seems to work very well.

If you take away 'the game' of acquiring your next fix and give people structure it seems to set them up better to drop the dependancy all together.

Once you have addicts in this system, you can manage them and work with them to get them out of their addiction.

50 years of a punitive policy have shown that punishment does. not. work.

- the end user has no way to measure the exact impact of his/her actions. The government does.

- the end user does not have advice from PhD in chemistry, neurology, psychology, law, economy. The government does.

- the end user has no choice to buy from an ethical and legal source. The government can.

- the end user cannot publicly ask for help (or forgiveness) of any kind. The government would imprison him/her.

- the end user might be living a very harsh life and have little ability to stop using or not to start. The government does not help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Vancouver_gang_war

https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/real-scoop-alleged...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/increase-drugs-drivi...

Apparently there is some drug trafficking through Canada [1] mostly coming from Asia, which makes sense, since it'd follow international shipping routes. I'd imagine the volume is much less because it sounds much more expensive, which would make it a much less profitable and contested industry.

[1]: https://www.drugwise.org.uk/where-do-drugs-come-from/

That's highly dependent on the particular product and regulation. There's not much of an alcohol or tobacco black market in the US as far as I can tell because the regulation seems to consist almost exclusively of a sin tax applied to product sold for human consumption.

Compare this to marijuana in WA, where there's some sort of convoluted and expensive licensing system for cultivating it. Then there's a set of byzantine regulations surrounding the cultivation and distribution itself followed up by a sin tax at point of sale.

If drug legalization were simply that existing pharmacies could sell existing stock to people who didn't have a prescription subject to a tax (less than 50%) the drug cartels would quite literally lose their entire revenue stream overnight. The controlled substances act then becomes a list of taxed behind-the-counter substances instead of a list of illegal substances.

(Bonus: The jobs of academic researches who use such substances immediately becomes _much_ easier. Not for human consumption? No tax issues, just order it from your usual supplier like any other chemical. No more complicated permits and limited availability.)

(Extra bonus: No more meth labs in residential neighborhoods illegally disposing of highly toxic compounds, presenting a serious fire hazard, and otherwise endangering the health and safety of everyone nearby. Industrial chemistry belongs in industrial areas, where it can be subject to OSHA and the EPA.)

I used to manufacture "shatter" in my basement lab which I extracted from "shake" I bought off of friends that ran grow-ops. Since legalization I had to wind that entire operation down because in addition to noticing a precipitous drop in my own sales figures no one I know is growing anymore! Now I can buy bulk flower from the store for less than I used to pay for trimmings.

But when your neighbour has an economy 100x the size of yours, and hands your cartels several billion dollars a year, you really have not realistic chance at all.

Do you have a picture at hand, perhaps?

There are really two things to respond to here: first, all powder cocaine starts as the leaf, so the powder cocaine market would move downstream to extraction from widely-available coca leaf. This is the biggest reason we haven't tried this already. However, I hope that the economics will not favor transporting large amounts of still-illegal cocaine across long distances, so that instead it will mostly be produced near the point of consumption, with lower profit margins and less violence.

Second, addicts are more likely than you think to recognize their own usage as a problem, yet rely on the drug to do things that most people expect to be able to do. Someone who uses cocaine so they can focus on work or participate in social activities would probably be willing to substitute at least some of their usage with tea, if it were cheaper than powder and legal. Drug abuse isn't usually a problem of simple uncontained hedonism. It's not a perfect analogy, but the availability of beer probably likewise moderates the demand for spirits.

Heroin, mostly, comes from Asia, so I did segment a little there. In particular, a lot of heroin comes from Afghanistan, specifically, and American interventions there may have contributed to the opioid crisis. See e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47861444

Really the post was just too long and I was tired of writing. Opioids will indeed be another problem we have to deal with.

In the case of methamphetamine, there is some hope of substitution with less dangerous drugs like amphetamine, methylphenidate, et cetera. One of the biggest reasons people start using meth is that it's cheaper than other drugs; it's by far the easiest for chemists to make. It's heavily ingrained in various "party" subcultures for this reason, and also features in stories of rural poverty. But that also means that even a strikingly different (hopefully safer) drug could potentially take its place, if it were stimulating and pro-social. In that case we have no appeal to tradition; we have to confront the question of whether "party drugs" can have a place in legal society, which is another matter entirely.

Luckily, the market for methamphetamine is significantly smaller than that for marijuana or cocaine according to the RAND report, and I think this is because demand for meth, which we might call the "ramen noodles" of drugs, is more price-sensitive than other drugs. If the power of cartels is reduced by decriminalization efforts targeting the marijuana and cocaine markets, the price of meth may not be able to rise so easily without impacting demand.

Violent criminal activity is not attractive from a business perspective. Security is expensive, paying bribes is expensive, mistakes are expensive. Without the huge money influx of drug trafficking (which is an insane source of profit) to maintain an army, it'd be more cost-effective to simply not have one.

Don't get me wrong, these aren't good people and right off the bat would probably still be involved in lots of corruption, blackmailing and even murder. But I doubt they'd be able to afford a paramilitary branch and maintain violent conflicts without the profits from drugs.

How sustainable is any change if people believe criminals will just regain power once help leaves?

I would assume they are already trying to expand as much as possible. Legalising drugs doesn't look like it would make that expansion easier. If anything, it would become harder, because funding dries up, so investments are harder to make.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf (page 16-)

>Cocaine of Colombian origin supplies most of the U.S. market, and most of that supply is trafficked through Mexico,

>In 2017, Mexico seized 421 metric tons of marijuana and eradicated more than 4,230 hectares of marijuana, according to the State Department’s 2019 INCSR. However, some analysts foresee a decline in U.S. demand for Mexican marijuana because drugs “other than marijuana” will likely become dominant in the future. This projection relates to more marijuana being grown legally in several states in the United States and Canada, which have either legalized cannabis or made it legal for medical purposes, thus decreasing its value as part of Mexican trafficking organizations’ profit portfolio.

However, the same report indicates I underestimated the relevance of heroin coming via Mexico. In this case, poppy production in Mexico has increased in recent years, so apparently "actual agriculture" is still not too much work for the cartels.

Unfortunately, opioid use is a much more difficult question, due to the "laser-like" effect of opioids: the capacity for non-drug pleasure is slowly degraded[1] and users may not notice until it's too late, similar to the way that the visual cortex will try to correct for laser damage until the retina is irredeemable. Decriminalizing any opioids comes with significant risk, since they are easily the deadliest sort of drugs.

Instead, approaches similar to that currently applied in the Netherlands may be more fruitful. A bright spot is that medical cannabis seems to decrease the likelihood of opioid prescriptions, which narrows the medicine-to-streets pipeline.

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201317