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Comment by parsimo2010 | Hacker News Reader

parsimo2010

It blows my mind that there are multiple organizations that are so large and well armed that even the Mexican government won't touch them. Keep in mind that the Mexican military has the 17th most active duty personnel in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...) and spent $7 billion last year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Armed_Forces), and still isn't willing to take on drug cartels stomping on their own sovereign territory.

These guys just throw up repeaters and not only do they not try to hide them, they actually mark them to show who is going to be destroying your life if you take them down. Oh, and you have to pay if you want to work on your own legitimate equipment that is rightfully on that tower.

The illegal drug trade exists on a scale unimaginable to most people. Imagine if we could figure out how to legitimize it- we'd save countless lives over stupid stuff like having your life threatened just because you work for a telecom company and need to do your job. If we could tax drug money at just a couple percent we could invest in all sorts of social programs and infrastructure, rather than funding thugs. The crazy part is that a lot of the drug lords don't even spend a good chunk of their fortune, they just store massive amounts of money in houses they'll never even live in.

Edit: To clarify my point a little, the reason the Mexican government isn't willing to do anything is that they couldn't do anything about it even if they tried. The Mexican military has fewer people than the cartels and have a smaller budget. According to this article from 2012 (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485071) the Mexican cartels employ 450,000 people and make $25 billion annually (these numbers have probably increased in the last eight years). The Mexican military would have to be incredibly skilled to take them on with 177,000 people and a $7 billion budget. And even then, that's just the Mexican cartels, there are more in South America and the rest of the world. Stopping the illegal drug trade would take a unified policy effort from every government in the world, we're past the point of being able to be able to fight the cartels with military power.

View on HN

Mexico is in a civil war.

There are a few factions - but this is not a drug war - it is in a total civil war. The difference is: the ability to control government. Taking over towns, expelling the police, trying to murder top police cheifs [1], negotiation of prisoners [3] -- all examples of what happens when a society is divided - in civil war. They are not fighting over pot farms.

Killing 24 people in a rehab clinic isn't reported much in the US due to politics [2], but, this country needs international help NOW. The US is purchasing drugs at a massive rate on the I5 corridor and is now a drugged out enabler. I wouldn't expect help from the US. The cash stakes are huge: some cities import drugs in metric tons in the US and avoid prosecution [4].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/world/americas/mexico-cit...

[2] https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-07-01/24-peo...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne8k9w/mexico-confirmed-t...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/no-charge...

I heard that rehab clinics in Mexico are often used by the cartels as safe houses for cartel members, and their weapons are taken away during their stay until they actually go out and do their mission to avoid cartel members to go freelancing.

Strictly speaking it isn't officially a civil war, because the cartels prefer to operate as a mafia instead of as a Party To A Conflict. (or am I showing that I grew up last century, by even considering Geneva Conventions?)

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;

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).

Most guerillas don't fall under that definition any way. And there can be civil war regardless, Northern Ireland, various parts of Africa, Afghanistan, Syria...

Just from the number of shootings per day you can count the U.S. in.

Shootings per day in the US doesn't count. To be a Party To A Conflict, not only does there have be some organisation to the violence, but the organised party has to agree to certain things, including renouncing physical or mental torture, or cruel or degrading treatment, as well as attacks on civilian population as such or civilian persons. Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives.

(These are probably the reasons the cartels have for not becoming recognised belligerents: they likely see themselves as having unbundled the profitable aspects of violence from the unprofitable parts of governance.)

to switch references from the Geneva Conventions, consider the formal definition provided by Dr. Linebarger: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm

> Formally, war may be defined as the "reciprocal application of violence by public, armed bodies."

> If it is not reciprocal, it is not war, the killing of persons who do not defend themselves is not war, but slaughter, massacre, or punishment.

> If the bodies involved are not public, their violence is not war. Even our enemies in World War II were relatively careful about this distinction, because they did not know how soon or easily a violation of the rules might be scored against them. To be public, the combatants need not be legal—that is, constitutionally set up; it suffices, according to international usage, for the fighters to have a reasonable minimum of numbers, some kind of identification, and a purpose which is political. If you shoot your neighbor, you will be committing mere murder; but if you gather twenty or thirty friends, together, tie a red handkerchief around the left arm of each man, announce that you are out to overthrow the government of the United States, and then shoot your neighbor as a counterrevolutionary impediment to the new order of things, you can have the satisfaction of having waged war. (In practical terms, this means that you will be put to death for treason and rebellion, not merely for murder.)

> Finally, war must be violent. According to the law of modern states, all the way from Iceland to the Yemen, economic, political, or moral pressure is not war; war is the legalization, in behalf of the state, of things which no individual may lawfully do in time of peace. As a matter of fact, even in time of war you cannot kill the enemy unless you do so on behalf of the state; if you had shot a Japanese creditor of yours privately, or even shot a Japanese soldier when you yourself were out of uniform, you might properly and lawfully have been put to death for murder—either by our courts or by the enemies'. (This is among the charges which recur in the war trials. The Germans and Japanese killed persons whom even war did not entitle them to kill.)

> Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives.

I don't know much about history but my understanding is this true only exists as long as it is convenient. The union didn't care for this role during the US civil war iirc

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

That is more an illustration of how broadly "military objectives" alone may be defined in absense of other constraints. While horrible scorched earth itself has a valid tactical purpose. Military objectives alone is a low bar to clear.

That's exactly the problem the U.S. has. As long as they find a single idiot willing to defend the status quo they won't do anything. Fact is, the amount of casualties in the U.S. from shootings would qualify any middle eastern state for some sweet democracy.

The 'democracy in middle east' is a meme. United States is incapable of maintaining occupations primarily due to its own values. this is why after World War II we forced the colonial powers to decolonize (case in point, Suez Canal conflict where we forced UK and France to back off). America just doesn't know how to maintain an occupation, because to maintain an occupation requires you to have extremely brutal power structure on the civilian population, and if our military was trained to do that then they would wreak havoc in our own countries. So we train our military according to our values which renders them incapable of being able to maintain an occupation the way Chinese army or Russian army would be able to do.

Being able to maintain an occupation seems highly determined by the local population will and ability to fight. In the 1980's the Russian army tried to occupy Afghanistan and the Chinese army tried to march into Vietnam. Both had extremely brutal power structure on the civilian population, and both took severe damage then left.

You seem to ignore that the US has had, and kept, several overseas territories. There are current movements to recoup the independence of several of such territories, like Hawaii.

> So we train our military according to our values which renders them incapable of being able to maintain an occupation the way Chinese army or Russian army would be able to do.

The US military has been involved in all sorts of atrocities since the end of WWII, they just sometimes failed at achieving their military goals, e.g. Vietnam, and sometimes the government resorted to the use of other aggression tools, e.g. Cuba economic blockade.

going by firearm homicides from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflict...

if my maths are correct, we have 4,5/100'000 firearm homicides reported for the US.

This is less than the hot conflicts (including, per TFA, the mexican drug war), and same order of magnitude, but still less than iraq (7/100'000 in 2019).

However, it's an order of magnitude more than ukraine (0,3/100'000 in 2019).

> It blow my mind that there are multiple organizations that are so large and well armed that even the Mexican government won't touch them. Keep in mind that the Mexican military has the 17th most active duty personnel in the world and spent $7 billion last year, and still isn't willing to take on drug cartels stomping on their own sovereign territory.

But if the real problem is your army is corrupt, no quantity of guns and personnel will fix that.

As far as I know, the cartels are closer to an asymmetric military adversary, and have subverted the Mexican state rather than defeating it directly.

When everyone knows that they can either get paid off or get killed most people choose to be paid off.

"Plata o plomo" (silver or lead)

Plata o diploma

It is an either/or situation. Neither is not an option. Not taking the money means you can't be trusted not to talk, you still get killed.

And the final possibility, namely both, probably happens a fair bit.

But what if you took down their communications?

Perhaps Mexico is in need of some good ole UN liberation forces.

Judging from the past examples, they'd be corrupted at lightning speed - who wants to risk their life in some foreign country by playing a saint when all local "government" officials around you are on the take? What would motivate one to resist? The locals have patriotism, caring for their community and making better country, but foreign forces are just paid to do a job - so somebody could pay them 10x to do a different job or just to look the other way. It happened to UN forces many times.

I think what you are missing here - drug cartels are essentially mini factions that govern areas in the society. The cartels are the government and the government is public face for the cartels essentially. How this evolved over time has been interesting, but make no mistake about it. They both protect each other interests domestically. It's not that they can't its that they wont. They attack themselves when they're disputes. Its very fascinating and no secret down there.

Correct. It's basically the same relationship large financial interests have with the US government. When financial interests have enough influence, they become too big to fail, meaning any "corruption" by the big players is ignored, and so isn't really corruption anymore so much as a part of government policy.

Except there are rules, and when they are broken there are consequences. See Lehman Brothers and Enron.

Maybe there are lines in Mexico that cannot be crossed, but from an non-American perspective I struggle to see where those lines are.

Based on the 2008 bailout, it wasn't the banks who suffered the lion's share of the consequences. Maybe the difference isn't so great as we perceive

kiki camarena

> Maybe there are lines in Mexico that cannot be crossed, but from an non-American perspective I struggle to see where those lines are.

The main rule is don’t antagonize the Americans too much. The big example is Camarena who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the cartels in the 1980s. It brought such a response from the US, that the cartels in general avoid trying to kill US DEA agents.

From an open source, mexican "top cop" turns out crooked, mexico advises US to check his stateside counterparts: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-usa-corruption/mex...

Anyone know if there have been any resulting probes, north of the border? (I didn't pick up much english just now in a quick news search, and this is not very relevant to my interests.)

I’m not sure, but my goto blog for reference on Narco news is: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/

Maybe they have more info?

It's possible Lehman Brothers went under simply because Paulson didn't like Fuld.

https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+tilly+war+making+sta...

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.

---

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.

"Lane, a superbly attentive historian of Venice, allowed specifically for the case of a government that generates protection rents for its merchants by deliberately attacking their competitors."

In a more historical note, compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlord_Era

From the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Los Zetas:[1]

The origins of Los Zetas date back to the late 1990s, when commandos of the Mexican Army deserted their ranks and began working as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel. In February 2010, Los Zetas broke away and formed their own criminal organization, rivalling the Gulf Cartel.

Needless to say, going after some gang is likely to be different than going after a gang of ex-commando military personnel, and that's before you factor in that there's probably a steady stream of military that still leave to join Los Zetas and that they probably still have active military contacts...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Zetas

Not only are the Zetas not full of military any more, they are fighting constantly between old school and CDN (when they aren't fighting golfos). The current organization is a shell of what it was.

Sounds like they need some management consulting.

It was a red queen's race that they lost by attracting too much attention. The original cadre of special warfare operators has been eliminated, and their escalation in violence and sophistication of direct action was emulated by others. Cooperation with the government and subverting the state is more powerful than killing entire towns.

I'll just add that the cartels are so unimaginably brutal, not bound by even the slightest pretense of laws of warfare, that it is impossible that anyone resist to bowing to their demands.

I'm talking "refuse to be bribed and we will skin your teenage son alive in front of you and send the video to his mother".

If you have an army, that's when you answer that you'll have them hanged. You have to actually hang them after.

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

That is a comforting thought, but the “tough / law and order / war on drugs” response has already been tried extensively under president Calderón, and the result was an explosion in violence and killings, without overall reducing the power of cartels.

Unfortunately it is not that simple.

The source of the power of the cartels lies north of the border. It's not possible to fight them only in Mexico without tackling their funding sources.

At least some US states have started legalising some drugs. That should pull some of the revenue into the legal economy?

If something is prohibited by the federal government but not additionallt prohibited by the state government, it is not part of the legal economy.

The cocaine, meth, and opium trade is more than enough to maintain the current situation.

Marijuana confiscation at ports is down 80% over the last decade, but under the current administration (Mexican), violence has exploded to levels triple that of the peak of the previous drug war when CDS/Zetas/CDT/CDG were engaged in multiple wars over lucrative plazas.

Afaik it is working with marijuana, because we now support domestic production. If we want to cut off the supply chain, we would need to produce domestically the other drugs in the cartel's supply chains.

The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel. The CIA already did this as a funding source, I could see it being done to destabilize cash flow for cartels. Simply legalizing the possession will allow the focus to be spent elsewhere but will not stem the tide.

>The US doesn't have the maturity to produce cocaine and distribute internally w/o becoming another cartel.

It already does.

Stepan, a chemical company in New Jersey, is the only company in the US licensed to import coca leaf, which primarily comes from a Peruvian state-owned company. The cocaine is extracted and sold to Mallinckrodt for pharmaceutical use (it's used in ENT surgery, as it's both a local anaesthetic and a vasoconstrictor), whilst the remnants are sold to the Coca-Cola Company for use as flavourings.

https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/01/business/how-coca-cola-ob...

Importing vs growing it.

The process to get cocaine from coca leaf is the same as to extract any alkaloid from a plant.

The problem is the supply is not controlled in the USA, is dependent on the government of Peru and the drug manufacturing cartels have tons and tons of land in Colombia just for growing cocaine. It grows naturally.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Casale/publication...

Look at this map, see Peru, See Colombia?

That's your competition.

Competition is good. The goal of legalising is not to make money, but to suck the profitability out of the industry. Especially the illegal part of the industry.

One of my junior Marines has family in Mexico. He was almost kidnapped there when he was 17. He also told me a story of his Aunt's friend, who had a restaurant in central Mexico. One day she was complaining about the cartel to a customer, a middle-aged man. The man said "Hey aren't you having a banquet next Saturday? I'll provide the meat. Don't worry, consider it a gift."

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.

They are uploading videos of dismembering innocent female family members because the competing factions are trying to outdo each-other in brutality to take the upper hand.

One from last month shocked...

As if the military doesn't work for the drug cartels. The truth is that Mexico is a Narcostate.

edit: I removed my comment that was here. It was confusing in a way that I didn't intend. It was going to merely generate toxic responses. That was not my intention at all. I'm sorry.

uh - I'm unsure about that. Can you please cite a reference why you believe the US is a narco state?

Opiates? Big Pharma? We’re the “legal” drug dealer kingpins.

I sometimes wonder - is the current opiate epidemic an argument against the legalization of others drugs?

Not really, legalisation allows for destigmatization.

The opiate crisis happened because weed wasn't legal soon enough. Most opiate users for pain release could swap.

> Most opiate users for pain release could swap.

I'm sorry but I have to call you out on this. It's complete BS - we simply don't have anything that's remotely comparable to opiates for pain relief.

That being said I'll second that the opiate epidemic in the US is largely the fault of prohibition. Illegality feeds all sorts of negative cycles that wouldn't otherwise exist.

Its a bit rich to call bullshit on something I didn't say.

I wasn't saying they were comparable drugs. I was saying one is overprescribed for pain level that could be managed by something less drastic.

Huh. My apologies for the misunderstanding then. It's definitely not how I read that wording, largely because I'm highly skeptical that a viable alternative exists for any significant number of non-recreational opiate users.

Well the problem is a lot of people are simply addicted, the pain the feel is real but it's confused withdrawl.

These people would be better off on thc.

You are not as informed as you would like to believe.

Marijuana is a great replacement for those who never started down this path and okay a means of getting off opiates. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6777788/

That's a rather baseless and low effort accusation to make.

The linked paper doesn't appear to me to make the claim you did. The combination group (the one from which you could validate the claim you made) is very small - only 486. In fact the paper appears to very carefully outline its own considerable limitations. The authors detail the lack of research in the area and point out a number of conflicting results, including results that directly contradict their own.

That being said, it is a well written, interesting, and thoughtful piece of research. It (and the nearby comment by waheoo) raise quite a few interesting questions for me regarding patient perception and how withdrawal symptoms might interact with marijuana. I also wonder which specific symptoms and underlying conditions might correlate with the various groups. I'm glad you brought this paper to my attention!

When drugs are illegal, they tend to get more potent and lethal. You can smuggle a lot more doses per kg.

Opium -> Heroin -> fentanyl

So maybe legalize opium?

The other thing is there is a huge difference between by a powder that you don’t know what’s in there versus buying a 100 ug ampoule of pharmaceutical fentanyl.

The horrors of illegal drug economics can easily pale next to the horrors of mass, systematized drug use. There’s no easy solution. Our drug policies are wrong because they’re racist, not because drugs aren’t actually bad for people.

I think a part of what's driven the opiate epidemic was the massive overprescription of opiate painkillers by doctors and the marketing surrounding them.

People tend to trust that their doctor is right. If the doctor gives you oxycodone, you assume that it's safe.

Tied in with that is the increased availability of heroin and fentanyl, and now decreased availability of prescription painkillers, pushing users from taking relatively safe pills to injecting drugs, which is an order of magnitude more damaging.

An oral surgeon gave me an opioid prescription several years ago after a tooth extraction. The pain was minor so I never filled the script, but in retrospect just giving me the prescription seems like malpractice. I can totally see how other patients would end up addicted in that situation.

I got it for a mild cough. Opiate cough medicine that I liked a little too much.

Scary.

Frankly, it’s hard to hate opiates

Some people viscerally do!

My wife for one, even 5mg Vicodin would give her unbearable nausea and head spins.

Whereas that plus a glass or two of wine would be very (too) enjoyable for me.

Scary thought. Legalization is presented as the utopian solve-it-all-policy and everyone points to weeds harmlessness. But hard drugs who lead to physical addiction?

But that's the point. The arguments for the current regulatory environment failed because the gatekeepers still perpetuated a drug epidemic. That is, not only did drug scheduling fail to keep people from obtaining illegal substances, it failed to keep people from getting legal but inappropriate ones too.

Not everyone said weed wasn't dangerous either. Leading up to cannabis deregulation there were any number of experts warning of disaster due to its claimed severe effects.

The point of the deregulatory argument is that you can't really entrust a homogeneous monopoly to act optimally, because there's lack of competing perspectives and alternatives.

The current drug regulation regime has failed in all sorts of ways that go far beyond drugs of abuse, into siphoning off funds surrounding less recreational substances, through rent seeking. Anyone who has tried to get a prescription for something harmless or nearly so that they've taken for years can attest to this. Acyclovir, for example, is an essential medicine per WHO, and articles have been written in which it is acknowledged to be safe for the general public (with empirical data) but still argued should be kept as a prescription to avoid viral resistance (even though there's no evidence of this, and other sources of microbial resistance are routinely ignored).

The current system has failed in part because discussions are presented in this black and white fashion where it's things stay as they are or nothing. Pharmacists could be used much more than they are, for example, as could other provider types, not just for drugs but for lots of things.

The pandemic is full of other examples. The CDC demonstrated early on how regulation can fail, and people managed to poison themselves without involving prescribers or their illegal drug dealing counterparts at all.

That possibly desensibilize the user for violence, and give them a reason to need an unbreaking stream of income? That's another reason the black and white them versus us image is misleading. Many of the criminals are victims, and vice versa, moral hard liners tend to criminalize use for the same reason. This also means that it would be a runaway process, and that the elites have to practice abstinence or at least self control.

That's what I'm really unsure about, the physical and psychological addiction potential and an extreme stance which would take it as justification, that the victims are weak of will. The eugenics argument would even encourage this as a way to selection for fitness. IMHO, the physical addiction is countered by the adverse effects of the come-down. I hold some arguments against it, but consider the psychological component much more important. 30% of first time heroin users became addicted in the last German federal report on domestic drug use. I'd say only 30%, in contrast to the myth of the immediate addiction--which is real in a sense, for if addiction-affinity is considered, it's effectively correct. Arguably, understanding the history, these people must be extremely racist, fascist, socialist, liberal, you name it, basicly selfish egoists in any sense you might find offensive.

Simple adversary population dynamics settle at an optimum in the infinite limit (I've watched a video by numberphile or so on the Logistic Function, haha). If the government is a regulator, it should seek to estimate the optimum. The pretense that the optimum is the extinction of drug use and users is ...

I have no idea what I'm talking about, lol

In my experience a lot of drug use is self medication for relieving emotional or psychological pain, people who just don't feel good for whatever reason and want to feel better. Making drugs illegal won't really helps these people and if anything can do great damage to their future if they run into legal problems. People should have a right to their own bodies anyway even if they might cause themselves harm

A perfect example is amphetamines. Without them, I don't get stuff done, sure I will get the one thing done that I am interested in, but the dishes will sit in the sink for 2 weeks before I can even remotely begin to think about them, and then it is like pulling teeth to get started. The task just seems insurmountable. When I take my medicine, I do them as a way to take a break from thinking. I agree, I think a lot of people self-medicate mental health issues. I know I like opiates, so I always take them as prescribed when they are given to me. Never had an addiction problem with them, but I was on them for a period of time due to a back injury. I think the risk of amphetamine addiction is overblown, but I certainly see how opiates can be addictive and very quickly. They make you pretty much not give a crap about anything.

George Bush Sr Unrelated, but Operation Fast and Furious

Intelligence agency black budgets have been partially tied to drugs for a while.

Just read this after my comment. You are ABSOLUTELY correct. What you see is some warring within that is political anything else is smoke and mirrors.

Just to underline the fact that Mexico is a narcostate, when the US announced that they would declare Los Zetas as a terrorist organization, Mexico's president intervened to block that classification.

To be fair, wouldn’t you?

Folks know what happens to countries the US deems to contain terrorists.

> Folks know what happens to countries the US deems to contain terrorists.

Obrador's excuse was that he feared that officially recognizing los Zetas as a terrorist organization would tarnish Mexico's reputation. This alleged fear of the US only fits if they feared an outsider intervened to put a stop to the mafia's dominance.

Because that’s the best option america has to offer

Another huge challenge about dealing with the drug trade - people with guns and power probably aren't just going to go away because you've changed the dynamics of their most profitable market: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico...

They aren't funding armies and bribing governments by skimming off the avocado market. If you take away 90% of their revenue, the cartels' power will shrink quickly.

All crime is not fungible.

Check the revenue breakdown of the cartels. It’s far beyond drugs.

Could you supply a link? Would love to know the revenue breakdown.

Not the OP, am on mobile and too lazy to search for links and it’s also about Italy and not Mexico, but there were some studies made a few years ago that showed that the Calabrian organization ‘Ndrangheta was worth about 50-60 billion euros at the time. They had started getting big in the late ‘80s by smuggling Columbian cocaine into Europe but nowadays I think that the drug trade represents a very small percentage of their revenues. For example I live in a reasonably big Eastern-European capital and I’m pretty sure that the biggest waste disposal thing in our city is controlled by ‘Ndrangheta.

Presumably a similar transformation will be carried out by many Mexican cartels when and if the drug trade will dry off.

The difference is that these crimes (extortion, contract abuse, gasoline theft) are actually stoppable. They have real victims who can complain; they have physical pipelines that can be protected. Drugs generally involve a happy buyer and happy seller transacting in private.

Organized crime doesn't go away overnight. It's not like all the gangs immediately disappeared after the end of Prohibition in the US. You just have to keep taking away their revenue sources, eventually they're too poor to fight back.

Not OP but here is one also from HN[1][2] on Mexico. Selected quote from the article:

> “It’s good business,” El Polkas says with a shrug. “It makes a lot of money.” When I ask how gasoline compares to narcotics, in terms of overall revenue to Los Zetas, he rubs his index fingers together. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “It’s approximately as profitable as drugs.”

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18101141

[2] - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/drug-w...

The article addresses your point about the drug trade:

"Stories like this are unfolding in industries across Mexico as criminal groups branch out far beyond drugs. Cartels have siphoned millions of dollars’ worth of fuel from Mexican state oil company Petróleos Mexicanos or Pemex in recent years; they steal cargo and pilfer lumber. The tentacles of organized crime extend even into Mexico’s avocado growing regions, where gangs extort farmers and hijack loads of the green fruit."

Just because the military is big, It doesn't mean It's efficient and Its easily controllable centrally. Probably there are many groups within the military and many of the higher ups have their own connections with different local organizations etc.

What you describe is a failed, or at least failing, state. What makes you think these para military groups would stop taking over society if they are made legal?

Look at other mafia run states. Most of them aren't dependent on the drug trade. It's a parasitic part of the economy that won't let the rest of the economy flourish.

One of the most interesting instances of this was the East India Company. Using it’s own army and navy, it eventually colonized Hong Kong and large parts of India.

>Imagine if we could figure out how to legitimize it

Legalize it and the gangs go bankrupt or pivot to another black market.

It's unfortunate many do-gooders are more interested in enforcing their mores on others than working toward harm reduction.

People will always crave drugs and humanity has always had junkies. Embrace this with compassion, not intolerance.

>pivot to another black market

They're already doing that with the avocado trade.

Yeah, but this is a multi-generational problem - it's important not to give up just because they try to diversify in the moment. Anything that cuts into their margins in the long term makes them weaker, less able to recruit, less competitive for labor. Taking away the black market markups will absolutely hurt these terrible organizations.

https://www.newsweek.com/some-mexican-cartels-have-begun-hum...

> People will always kill and humanity has always had murderers. Embrace this with compassion, not intolerance.

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.

When you do drugs, you're only really harming yourself. Comparing it to murder is a false analogy.

Maybe sometimes. But it can also have a heavy impact in families and communities. Parents looking for kids doing drugs. Relationships destroyed. Lying. Siblings lacking attention when all the attention is on the drug user. Partners of drugs users abandoned – or hurt – physically, emotionally and economically. The same with their kids. Stealing to stop the craving. Murder is knocking on the door . . .

When you have invited substances to take over your mind, you can't be sure that it will let you be the captain on the boat without a heavy fight.

Yes it does have those impacts, which is why medical intervention instead of criminalisation should be the norm.

Abuse, violence, stealing and so on are already crimes in their own right, regardless of whether drugs are involved or not. They directly involve harm inflicted on other people. The act of doing drugs does not, so why make that a crime, too?

It's a slippery slope argument, it's like saying cutting yourself should be a crime, because people who cut themselves have issues and could harm others.

Just like drug users, they should be helped, not punished.

> When you do drugs, you're only really harming yourself.

Though buying (some) drugs is like buying blood diamonds, funding misery for your own satisfaction.

>When you do drugs, you're only really harming yourself.

Tell that to the children of addicts

This type of thinking doesn't help, because jailing addicts doesn't help (or work), either. Addiction robs you of most or all of your agency, it's not so simple as just blaming the addict for their behavior.

The current legal status of most drugs in the US has a profoundly net negative affect on drug use and its ripples, not positive, because anyone wanting to help those addict parents risks just having them simply thrown in prison for who knows how long. Until seeking help isn't a massive risk, addicts will always end up helplessly trapped.

But it shows that consuming drugs does harm people other than you. So we're back to: why should drugs be legalized or decriminalized?

Because legalizing doesn’t mean a greenlight.

Cigarettes and alcohol harm those near them, but there are stiff regulations in place, there are social stigmas attached, and heavy legal consequences.

The legalization gives the government the funding to actually do something about it in proportion to demand.

We already have seen this during prohibition. It’s either regulate demand, or pretend that it can be banned and let a non government entity rise up and take power.

Even if drugs were legalized, children of addicts would still be taken away by CPS and put with relatives or into foster care. It's a crappy situation all around but legalization wouldn't change it

Personally, I am surprised journalists dare to write about it. Journalists are an endangered species in mexico.

Journalists should ‘cancel’ the cartels.

To quote Bill Hicks, "There's a big fuckin' drop off after #3 largest military"

The problem in many countries is that the military are themselves involved with drug trafficking. So the fact that they have a relatively large army is not necessarily an advantage, the cartels are most probably infiltrated there.

The other side is also true, the US has the largest army in the world, along with the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus, but it cannot (or doesn't want) to stop the traffic coming from outside its borders.

> it cannot (or doesn't want) to stop the traffic coming from outside its borders

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.)

Well, this is done in the open: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone/ .

The US already openly uses the entire surveillance apparatus legally anywhere within a few hundred miles of the border.

Are you aware that there's a bit of an ongoing jackboots-gas-and-rubber-bullets crackdown happening across the United States against unarmed civilians?

The government has no problem turning its tools against the citizenry - well, particular parts of the citizenry.

These aren't hypothetical techie concerns about the NSA seeing your dick pics. This is actual police departments behaving like we live in a police state.

Indeed. In context, something that would presumably continue indefinitely (border traffic and drug consumption) was being discussed. That would require permanent legislation and normalization of extensive government surveillance.

In contrast, the current shenanigans are occurring within a declared state of emergency (pandemic) on top of which widespread protests over an unrelated topic broke out. Even then, what's happening appears to be status quo police brutality that's piecemeal. (As opposed to open, centrally coordinated mass surveillance of everyone's actions - both physical and digital - with the approval of the legislature).

It also continues to be unable to win wars against insurgents hiding in mountains. Winning is hard in general.

China has the largest army in the world.

And India has the 2nd. US is 3rd.

That may be true by number of combatants. But the size of an organization is not measured just by number of people involved. It is well known that the US military spends more money than most other countries COMBINED, and has more bases and operations than any other military in the world. It doesn't even make sense to compare the US military with India's.

It’s not actually in the US’ national interest to have Mexico be a functioning state. How would we be able to get cheap seasonal immigrant labor, or export manufacturing jobs if they were? Perhaps more importantly, if Mexico really was a functioning economy we would then have to compete with them, rather than profiteer off of them. There is very little geopolitical incentive for the US to fix any of Mexico’s endemic problems, in fact it’s probably a far more in the US’ interestes to maintain the status quo making sure that no one faction ever gets too powerful.

Don't think of them as one. I'm the General in charge and I don't care of what happens, when I'm offered $50 Million for protection. Especially when refusal means death for my entire family. This is repeated in every situation or region. Now I'm in charge and this is my chance to get rich and survive. A lot of these narcos carry multimillion dollars in cash with them, if they get caught they buy their way to freedom. $2 million and let me go. Why would someone not take especially if the one up the chain will probably still free him...?

A state, any state, can take on private armies. They can get all the help needed from USA and EU if they were weak. Even Escobar was beaten, one way or another. Cartels employee a lot of people but the state can make them fight each other and then take on the winner. But then, what does Mexico have to offer to the many millions that wet their beaks in the drug trade? Go work daily on corn fields for $x a day when you can make $xx on opium ones?

Isn't heroin legal in Sweden? I mean, legalize it all. Some people will definitely get hurt and be thrown into a spiral of addiction, but having rehabilitation and counseling programs seems like chump change compared to the drug war boondogle.

What would Jesus do?

Very likely will not help except to the extent that it makes selling drugs unprofitable. Any profitable industry--agriculture, tourism, energy, etc.--falls victim to the same.

> I mean, legalize it all.

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).

> So the US has to go into the production business for cocaine, heroin, etc.

Pharmaceutical companies already produce everything you could imagine and more. I can't stress enough how much of a non-issue this concern would be in practice. (Also we already produce an impressively wide range of opiates for medical use.)

> Any country that doesn't legalize globally - which will be most of them - will still remain a target for the cartels to sell into.

So you're saying we shouldn't try to move in the right direction because our actions alone wouldn't immediately and completely solve the problem? This is an incredibly defeatist point of view.

>Pharmaceutical companies already produce everything you could imagine and more.

Such as Cocaine: http://www.mallinckrodt.com/products/generics/compounding-po...

Methamphetamine: https://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug.htm

Ketamine: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

And obviously the dozens of opiates more potent than heroin.

Funny aside, the company that Mallinckrodt gets its coca from is the same company that Coca-Cola gets its de-coca'd leaves from.

> 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).

Cutting the US demand (and the prices the US will pay) out of the illegal business will make the cartels far less profitable, even if the rest of the world does nothing.

> So the US has to go into the production business for cocaine, heroin, etc

If it's legal in the US, US business will rush into that domain. Especially if it's not legal to produce in the rest of the world, so they only have domestic competition.

> 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).

The US hasn't legalized marijuana at all. (Individual states have, the feds have just paused enforcement of laws on the books, with no guarantee that they won't retroactively resume them within the statutes of limitations. Everyone doing business in the field is in danger of not just garden-variety narcotics offenses but make-enough-money-and-its-life-in-prison kingpin laws. Which effects the willingness for mainstream businesses to get involved and means that the state-legal businesses are often operating at only a remove or two away from traditional organized crime. You can't judge anything about actual legalization effects on legal and illegal business networks from the current state of affairs.)

If you legalize and tax production, you'll grow a booming local production market. Smugglers have trouble competing with legal enterprise. The endless argument is mostly one of "how many more addicts would you create and what is that harm" vs "how many people would enjoy better lives if they were not criminalized for taking drugs (and their suppliers were regulated and not criminalized)."

in fact, legalization of class A or B (schedule 1 and 2 in the USA) drugs would generally mean expulsion from the UN of that country for breach of the charter. that's why e.g. the Netherlands have only decriminalised certain drugs. technically they are still illegal. in fact, if Canada was a smaller, non Western/developed country, im sure they would not have legalised cannabis, and even so they definitely won't legalise wholedale trafficking etc. it seems the UN got a bit upset but couldn't do much? [0]

0. https://news.un.org/en/audio/2018/10/1023212

> in fact, legalization of class A or B (schedule 1 and 2 in the USA) drugs would generally mean expulsion from the UN of that country for breach of the charter

No, it wouldn't.

The UN Charter has nothing relevant.

There are various drug conventions, but IIRC, all of them have denunciation provisions, and in any case there is no basis for the claim that either violation or denunciation of those conventions would result in expulsion from the UN. Violation, rather than denunciation, might result in a suit and adverse ruling in the ICJ by another aggrieved nation. Or it might not.

Get real. The UN is never going to expel any member state regardless of which treaties they breach.

I think that depends on the circumstances. I saw quite a lot of "don't let the door hit you on the way out" sentiment over Brexit.

To be clear, you saw a lot of that regarding Brexit in the UN? If you meant from those in the EU, then that's a completely separate organization.

The UK wasn’t expelled, and the EU bent over backwards to try to keep the UK in

You're right, I posted while tired and blame that on a brain fart.

You say that as if the reason the UN and the world have a mostly unified drug policy isn't because of US strong arming.

ok, these are all good points, perhaps i could have been clearer. how about this, which i think is a true statement based on my understanding; drugs (mostly cannabis) are usually only decriminalised, rather than legalised, due to treaty obligations within the un system. this makes canada (and uruguay) interesting cases, since both have actually legalised cannabis.

sure, there won't be a un police action against them, and today i learned that denunciation is an option in the relevant treaty, rather than expulsion. but, there is a good reason (treaty obligations) why countries won't just 'legalise all the things' and have traditionally followed softer approaches.

I think if the US left the treaty, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and modify the treaty.

I don't know - both the UN and WHO are pushing for a more tolerant policy. At this point, it is merely focusing on decriminalizing possession and use, in no small part because of good results in some places. It isn't much of a jump to allow full legalisation in their charter.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/united-nations-wor...

No. Not even marijuana is legal in Sweden.

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."

I believe you're referring to Switzerland. It isn't legal, but addicts can get free heroin (or methadone) administered by doctors. It cuts the bottom out of the dealer's markets, prevents petty crime by desperate addicts, avoids OD deaths, and makes sure the government has tabs on how bad the problem is. In 20 years Zürich has gone from 'having a heroin problem' to just a few old-timers who occasionally relapse, with almost no new addicts.

> ... even the Mexican government won't touch them.

The distinction between government and gangs in Mexico is subtle. Just as in the US, many former military become mercenaries. But unlike US mercenaries, Mexican mercenaries operate domestically.

If you try to tax drugs, there will still be a significant black market. Just look at cigarettes - legal, but huge black market because there is money to be made undercutting legitimate vendors with taxed goods.

A large part of the cost of illegal drugs comes from all the effort needed to avoid law enforcement along the supply chain. I'm sure a legitimate operation could save enough money from being able to just have large scale production and delivery in the open without having to hide it to make up for a few % of tax.

I think most of the cost is because of the personal and inventory risk that everyone involved carries. With 100x markup, seizures at borders aren’t as big a deal.

And there are lots of people involved, each one adds markup.

Avoid=Pay

> a few % of tax.

The cigarette tax rate in New York is 2500% higher than the tax rate in Missouri. That's more than a few %, and that's just the state tax; NYC has their own additional tax that increases the difference even more.

A black market will always exist as it does for anything. The problem we're trying to solve is the power of a huge market solely tapped by criminal enterprises. You don't see narcostates formed by black market tobacco or alcohol.

> A black market will always exist as it does for anything.

A black market only exists when there's legal hurdles to avoid. Some markets have low enough legal hurdles, that there's no black market.

(But I agree with the rest of your comment.)

That's true. Saying "anything" was a bit sloppy. I meant to say "any regulated/controlled substances".

Yes. Though to be even more precise, the benefits of going outside of regular channels have to outweigh the burden of the regulation.

Eg some countries have black markets in currency, because of tight controls. Singapore doesn't really have black markets in currency, despite some (light!) regulation and taxes on money changers.

Right, but the dude who runs a bodega selling loosies in NYC doesn’t have enough power to meaningfully challenge the state.

I don't know, man. Most folks I've met that smoke cigarettes just buy them at the store. Occasionally, when folks travel, they pick them up at a lower tax state (or country). I'm not convinced the black market is really 'significant' since I'm guessing most folks go the legal route. It is just there.

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.

As I understand it, the primary customers of the cigarette black market are corner stores. The people who ultimately end up smoking those cigarettes don't know anything about it.

In New York there's a $4.35 excise tax on a single pack of cigarettes. In Missouri it's $0.17. That huge delta provides a big opportunity for arbitrage.

Stopping the illegal trade by force is foolish and just creates more smaller players

Stopping the illegal trade by making it legal destroys everything.

But it also destroys a lie we've been telling ourselves.

> It blows my mind that ...

Arguably the government is the Mafia.

> These guys just throw up repeaters and not only do they not try to hide them, they actually mark them to show who is going to be destroying your life if you take them down. Oh, and you have to pay if you want to work on your own legitimate equipment that is rightfully on that tower.

As I said, modulo "rightfully" which I won't take away from you just for sake of the argument.

> The illegal drug trade exists on a scale unimaginable to most people

That's why the previous two remarks are necessarily exagerated. If the government governs and the drug trade drug-trades, pretty much by definition--Isn't that a bit myopic (I'm at a loss for words here, as much as you are).

I mean, the tinfoil hat says: if governments wanted to sustain a deadly drugmarket they could not do it in the open. The counter-point, that nobody would want this, is evidently wrong, and that unreasonable cartells did it only for the money is again myopic, if money is really about power.

> Mexican cartels employ 450,000 people and make $25 billion annually (...). The Mexican military would have to be incredibly skilled to take them on with 177,000 people and a $7 billion budget.

Wow, that's incredible--how one could draw such a black and white back of the envelope calculation cobbled together on a quick google search. Not only is the us-versus-them perspective quite difficult, reducing moral to a binary number. It is also conflating a lot of that in the economic measuring stick that is the dollar.

Seen another way, that's 250.000 tons market capitalization of Mexican cocaine and equivalent substances p.a. (at a guessed street price of $100 per pure gram). This would be a gram per day for 1/10,000 of the population, if they compete in a market of ca. 10 billion potential consumers in the market. Realistically though, the street price is grossly inflated after each border. So, if the inflation would be x100, you'd have to have a 1% share of the population in the developed world (more, if my numbers are too high) being highly addicted daily drug users, who can afford to spend between 10 and 100$ a day. This seems like something is off--my numbers, sure, if Mexico is more of an intermediary than a producer.

Mexico is getting into production now that their supply chains with China was disrupted (still is?)

How well armed are they? I know a common refrain against the 2nd ammendment is that guns don't matter much against tanks, helicopters, missles, etc.

Very.

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.

> There was a general shifting of position and a group clearing of throats.

> 'What about mercenaries?' said Boggis.

> 'The problem with mercenaries,' said the Patrician, 'is that they need to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end up paying them even more to stop -'

(from the book Jingo by Sir Terry Pratchett).

I had the impression that cartels, north of the border, prefer mail bombs to bullets. Yet the narco tanks that image search gives me are uniformly flat-bottomed, suggesting that IEDs are not common south of the border.

A few years ago there was a live news broadcast on Mexican TV of a running downtown street battle between the cops/feds/army and one of the cartels. I think it was in Juarez. We watched in real time as the state forces retreated, outmanned and outgunned.

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

Less than a year ago a cartel literally out-gunned the government to recapture the cartel head’s son from the police [0].

They literally overpowered and brought the city to a standstill.

They run Mexico, no illusions anymore. Still a beautiful place to visit fwiw.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culiacán

Going for a capture rather than a kill was the core mistake in this operation. Shoulda just droned him.

It might have been Sinaloa, where the police captured one of the sons of "El chapo". There was actually something fishy about that event, and some even think it was a setup of the local government against the federal government.

No doubt there was extreme fishiness involved. One common trait of most corrupt societies is the concentration of power at the top of the pyramid, and how the same few names and families keep popping up all over the landscape.

The current Mexican cartels are offshoots of the military / federal police. A large part of their military / police organization is taking bribes, if not outright working for cartels. It's tragic. They are well armed and more importantly, know how to use them.

> The current Mexican cartels are offshoots of the military / federal police.

Only the Zetas are really “offshoots”, having been started by former anti-drug special forces IIRC, the rest are more business partners.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War#Government_co... ,

> In May 2010 an NPR report collected allegations from dozens of sources, including U.S. and Mexican media, Mexican police officials, politicians, academics, and others, that Sinaloa Cartel had infiltrated and corrupted the Mexican federal government and the Mexican military by bribery and other means. According to a report by the U.S. Army Intelligence section in Leavenworth, over a 6-year period, of the 250,000 soldiers in the Mexican Army, 150,000 deserted and went into the drug industry.

From today: https://www.reddit.com/r/mexico/comments/ht79hw/c%C3%A1rtel_...

Strategically that seems like the time where you should start using air power.

One F-16 could take them out all in 60 seconds.

If somehow drug was legalized in the Mexico then I suppose the army would have to product "legal" producers from cartels waging war on them to defend their turf ?

Are cartels lobbying to prevent drug legalization ? I suppose they make more money on illegal drugs than they would if they converted to legalized drugs (if it'd ever come to be)

> It blows my mind that there are multiple organizations that are so large and well armed that even the Mexican government won't touch them.

One of those organizations was a Mexico Army unit.

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

Most goverenments are deferential to sufficiently large corporations... so not a surprise

This isn’t just about drugs. Human trafficking, extortion, theft. Legalizing drugs would barely make a dent in the cartel’s revenues.

You could legalise migration, too, that would make a bit dent in trafficking.

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.

I'm sure most of the officials are in their pocket. others just won't mess with their business. if you aren't going to play by their rules they will make an example of you.

It does not help that our current president, AMLO, thinks "Abrazos no balazos" is the solution. Hugs not guns

Then he captures the son of El Chapo, and because they began threatening the government they let him go. It's just a disaster. At this point my only hope Trump is reelected so he puts some pressure on him to actually do something about the problem.

They've tried guns for 4 decades and look where it's got them. I'm not saying hugs are the answer. You still have to punish the existing bad guys. But guns definitively are not the long-term answer. It's time for a different approach - one which prevents new bad guys.

Hmmm I'd say it only began in earnest in the 90s. And then you look at the previous Democrat goverment and its cross border gun trafficking operations which certainly didn't help.

What I can tell you is it's probably never been so brazen. Couple weeks back they shot the chief of Police of Mexico City in broad daylight in one of the nicest (most expensive) neighborhoods in the country. They killed his bodyguards and gravely injured him despite of having an armored SUV. An attempt like that was unheard of so far

The "war on drugs" dates back to the 70s or 80s, starting from either the Nixon or Reagan administrations (depending on which way you look at it). Even if we take the 90s as a starting point, that's an entire generation lost to pointless violence. Entire governments corrupted by the deluge of narco profits.

The "cross border gun trafficking operations" you're referring to involved about 2k guns, of which 1/3 were recovered. Terrible bungling, surely, but a drop in the bucket.[1]

The CIA/Contra cocaine trafficking was probably far more consequential.[2]

The brazenness of the cartels comes from the insane profits they earn. They can buy off anyone, and if they can't they can hire anyone to get rid of them. And their insane profits are due to how scarce and illegal their products are in the US. Take away their economic base and they become far more vulnerable.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...

I meant in Mexico. Things move slower here

Cartels have killed hundreds of Mexican government figures, including presidential candidates. I'm not sure the police chief of cdmx is a much higher profile target.

A decade ago, Chapo was burning tractor trailers on all the major highways in plazas to box his enemies in, fighting them for hours in broad daylight.

With that said, the homicides in Mexico have absolutely exploded under the current US and Mexican administrations, CJNG shot a helicopter down, etc. It's sad this escalation doesn't get more attention.

Trump had enough time and leverage to put pressure on him, so if that's your hope, well I don't think anything will come from it.

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.

What are the structural causes? Unless you mean the economics of it, I don't think people will be dissuaded from going for cartel jobs. Lots of educated people end up working for them. It is just that the profits are that big. Would Chapo having a better primary school have made any difference?

Yes, I do mean economics. And as I mentioned, I don't think highly about how he's doing, as the economic indicators are not so great, but the proposed strategy was since the debates, to put pressure on the economic side of cartel, and offer relief on poverty.

This is how “defund the police” ends.

It looks a lot more like this is how "make guns freely available" ends

Guns are very tightly regulated in Mexico.

And penalties for drug dealing are quite strict.

Therefore neither guns nor drugs are readily available in Mexico?

If you'd bothered to read past the catchphrase you'd realize how stupid this sounds. It would also help if you gained some perspective on Mexican history - it's never been an issue of lack of funding for police.

This seems unlikely. It would vary a lot by the society in which “Defund the Police” became policy. The last time the US decided to radically reduce law enforcement and severity of punishment for law breaking in the 1960-1970 period it didn’t lead to parastatal organizations with their own militaries. Eventually the public grows sick of the disorder and laws and constitutional barriers that militate against harsh punishment and enforcement get worked around. Before the political reaction you had a broader social reaction in the flight from cities and suburbanization.

I think most of us would agree that all drugs (drug use) should be decriminalized. But even if you go as far as to imagine the Mexican cartels being (eventually) legitimate businesses, the strong competition between them would not subside, so they would still fight each other and keep their grip on the government and the population. (Then there's also the ties they have to the governments of the target markets, and their policy making.)

I think to solve this situation, you'd have to diminish the demand for their product in the target markets, which is next to impossible due to the addictive nature of the product. One way to do this would be to legalize and promote therapeutic use of drugs which are known (among many other positives) to break drug addiction (in just a few sessions), like psilocybin mushrooms or Ayahuasca.

> if you go as far as to imagine the Mexican cartels being (eventually) legitimate businesses, the strong competition between them would not subside, so they would still fight each other

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 how that works in a world where more than a few competitors are willing to chainsaw apart the upstarts.

It'd be a brave new world of businesses trying to fly under the radar and evade 'prosecution', I guess!

Keep in mind that the actual drug producers are just as much victims of the drug cartels as anyone else.

Legalising the production of drugs would make it so that they could, at least in theory, turn to the police for help.

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