Hipólito Mora, vigilante crusader against Mexico’s cartels, killed in ambush
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Anecdatally, I heard from someone that went back there to visit family for the holidays. They traveled to a ranch town on the countryside. They were stopped at roadblocks where armed men interrogated every man in their group before letting them through
Did the cartels take him out? I doubt it. Its an open secret in Mexico that these people have to be worried about the police and goverment more than cartels at least until Felipe Calderon changed things.
Miguel Felix Gallardo was a Federal Police officer in Mexico
...as well as the godfather of the son of the (1963 to 1968) Governor of the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
He is considered one of if not the original cartel drug lord of Mexican cartels, as a/the founder of the Sinaloa cartel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_%C3%81ngel_F%C3%A9lix_G...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/world/americas/mexico-sal...
Legalizing all recreational drugs isn't "harm reduction", it's creating a bigger drug addiction pandemic. Successful Harm reduction models like in Portugal have legalized no recreational drugs.
And why? Those who want drugs, can get (any) drugs today, just with bad quality and the dark sides of crime involved. Who do stuff like adding other drugs that have a higher addiction potential.
If you legalize it, all the dark sides of cartels and co vanishes and you can spend all the police money on education and therapy to fight the actual bad sides of drugs. And preventing the reasons for people to do (hard) drugs in the first place.
(But not necessarily more than other countries).
So I see a need to do further harm reduction.
Harm reduction is a series of publicly funded social and rehabilitation/substitution programs that has absolutely nothing to do with legalizing any sort of drugs. Legalization is an entire different question, just don't try to make "harm reduction" yet another buzzword for legalization.
Currently junkies need the dealers to get their supplies. So they have to support crime, to meet their needs. And they get bad quality with usually extra poisenous additives. Legalizing would immmediately reduce or remove those 2 harms.
But I agree that we should not stop there, but rather help them stop being junkies at all, with various help programms. I just happen to think it is easier to reach people in legal ways, than criminalize them. But you seem to disagree here?
Harm from drugs in the current system goes well beyond the individual user.
If you want a true analog take a look at Afghanistan where something like 20-30% of the population may be users. Or Native American reservations where banning alcohol has drastic reductions in crime and domestic abuse rates. Or Singapore that essentially has no junkies.
(Portugal is an example of this approach, generally considered a success)
But Portugal hasn't legalized, taxed anything. (illegal) Recreational drugs are still illegal. There is no need to legalize any drug to do harm reduction. Not even Cannabis is legal in Portugal.
People can be functional heroin addicts (same as functional alcoholics).
Not that it’s a good or desirable thing.
Most heroin overdoses come from cut drugs, or from using at similar level after a break, often caused by prison stints. Both direct consequences of them being illegal.
Estonia (with fentanyl) and Switzerland (with heroin) only worked because over time the state became the only source of these drugs. They rooted out most dealers and sources of the drugs.
As long as it is available on the streets cheaply, people will defect and return to illicit purchasing. Estonia and Switzerland have basically eliminated new illicit opioid users from the population. In much of the US, suggesting this is a positive aim is tantamount to “hating” addicts.
If no, it’s a straw man argument.
You also have the DULF distributing medicinal grade heroin with the tacit support of local government.
There is a serious opioid problem in the rural Midwest and Appalachia but most users there are housed because housing is affordable. Many also have roots like family in the area. Makes treatment way easier if people are safe and off the street already.
How do you get off the street when, at least in SF, the poverty line is upwards of $100k/year? You could leave but that’s a big leap for someone battling addiction with no resources and a very small world.
Don’t know.. it just seems like other places in the world have decriminalized to better effect and something else is wrong in West Coast cities. The cost of housing seems like one possibility.
Edit: could also be cultural. I know Vancouver has a deeply rooted opiate culture. Just go listen to some 90s industrial from that place. Every song is about smack or trying to kick smack or being back on smack. Good music though. There’s a whole thing about heroin and good music. Too bad it’s so addictive and toxic.
It sounds like once you are in that lifestyle the incentive is very much to stay there. So no wonder.
Of course the high cost of real housing doesn’t help. Makes it that much harder to get truly out of poverty. It also makes a life off the street look unattainable. It’s telling a mentally ill addict there is no hope for them to truly get off the street unless they can somehow produce an engineering degree or gain equivalent experience.
I have used opioids since the mid-2000s. I am on a low enough dose today that it treats my cancer/Crohns pain but I feel no noticeable psychological effects. I can and do easily taper off multiple times a year for tolerance resets.
Further, every year a number of people in my programme finally taper off methadone for good; the relapse rate is in the low single digits. This is similarly the case for patients in Switzerland’s heroin assisted treatment programme. (I live in Estonia and am on their methadone equivalent.)
Yes, the cartels diversify, yes, they can make money from other things, but no, the profits of these other revenue sources will simply not match the backbone of support and systematic, prolonged institutional corrupting power that the illegal drug market provides in the long run.
Half-baked and half applied legalization7decriminalization models are not the answer, and when they very sparsely get applied, full of regulatory hurdles (never mind the outright global prohibition that still exists for the sale of most hard drugs and even marijuana) you simply can't make a fair argument for how any existing policy has failed at legalization and that thus the only answer is some variation of continuing the immensely destructive prohibitionist model that has spent decades bringing things to their present state.
How stupid, intellectually dishonest or bloody-minded does one have to be to continue advocating for anything except complete legalization and regulation in a practical, broadly-applied, responsible way?
I’m an opioid addict and formerly homeless person who has spent thousands of hours advocating for, and working with, the unhoused. I am the furthest thing from a 1980s drug warrior.
In fact, I have always argued that American drug policies are an unequivocal failure. All I have stated, and continue to believe, is that one cannot emulate successes such as those in Estonia, Switzerland, Portugal and other jurisdictions by picking only the policies that are most politically feasible or attractive. These are holistic approaches that require changing the incentives of all agents interacting in the illicit drug economy.
If one only focuses on a single element of the trade (say, the users, as has been done in many American metropoles) then the policy is bound to fail.
I agree, a holistic approach is a good idea, but at least in my assessment, it absolutely needs to include a serious move towards practical legalization while investing in support for addiction problems among users. The latter is important, but the formar is the very major missing piece. Multinational drug trafficking organizations will diversify, but without that huge central source of revenue, they'll be walking on a much weaker path in their attempts to dominate entire regions and national governments.
Thank you so much for speaking up. The necessary changes in this space are only going to happen with continued pressure to abdicate the status quo.
Let the people have their drugs. Try to minimize consumption and abuse (and profit motive), and treat such abuse as a health issue, not a criminal one. That is the only sensible and humane way. Easier said than done, of course.
At the risk of redundancy, I want to include that proper discussion of the subject requires an understanding of the origins and intentions of these laws. The current system fails in every way except in satisfying those original intentions (hint: not benign).
This is just kicking the can down the road. The cartels won't vanish into thin air if you do this.
The best way to have less people use drugs is probably to make it illegal to use and buy drugs.
The best way to have less people drinking alcohol is probably to make it illegal to use and buy alcohol.
I think we have proven this to be incorrect.
In fact, making it illegal to use and buy drugs has the effect of locking people into a counter-culture and making it a major life decision to use drugs instead of a daily decision like it should be.
If I want to take time off of work to waste a day of my life doing drugs for fun and pick up where I left off the next day, that shouldn't be a life destroying decision.
You basically spell it out yourself. Making it legal and accepted to use drugs makes more people use it. If more people use it there will be more drugs being sold.
People think that by making it legal the drug dealers will go away (and all other drug related problems) and serious companies will take over. But this is very unlikely so as the illegal sellers will always be able to undercut the legal sellers on price as well as service (24/7 etc). Same with legal producers vs illegal producers etc.
In addition, making it legal and thus having more people use drugs increases those side effects as well (such as you say "waste a day of my life doing drugs" or maybe waste your whole life or your spouses life or your kids life).
I don't think I said that at all. Just because it is made to be a major life decision does not mean that the decision is made with proper due diligence or even with a rational mind.
In fact, these decisions are usually made by very young people. This has the unfortunate side effect of locking a lot of people into a way of life because they decided to try drugs as a teen.
It is possible to try some drugs and walk away like smoking a little weed as a college kid, but a lot of times drugs are used as an escape. At a young age that escape can be tempting and you can develop a habit. Now, if drug use were legalized and normalized, you could seek help and not otherwise impact your life, but as it stands it is more likely that a habit would result in a conviction which will follow them around for life making it harder to find a well paying job, decent housing etc. The cycle reinforces itself over the course of a lifetime.
Now as far as numbers go, the current policies ensure that a drugs retention rate is as high as possible. If policies forced more churn, then the number of simultanious users at any one time could be lower. They could be higher, but we havent had the oportunity to see.
The best way to to have people use less drugs is to have them live happy lives that they don't feel compelled to escape.
Avocado’s are legal yet there’s still a lot of cartel interference in the Mexican avocado business.
The solution to cartels is a strong and effective state. Think Singapore, or what Bukele is doing in El Salvador now, or NYC vs the mob.
But that doesn't change the fact that the the laws are flawed and don't make things better.
If you do the research, you'll find that drug prohibition has been based on the oppression of minorities and "undesirables", and that only in that regard has it been an overwhelming success.
Now I live in the UAE. Drugs are very illegal and violent crime is practically non-existent.
We need am army from outside to come and squash all the major violent criminals (cartels with grenade launchers and ak47s). We need a ruthless justice system like the Arab ones that cuts people hands and puts criminal dogs to sleep.
People that live outside of Mexico dont get it.. in here, the police is part of the criminals, judges are bought by crime, the politicians and rich people give money and space to the criminals. It's a real cesspool.
And I say this as some who was born here in Mexico, all my family is here, and have lived here for a long time.
BIG citation needed (and the US at the federal level has not legalized marijuana, I guess you mean some states)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
Legalisation solves certain problems. But doesn't make bad/broken beasts suddenly good.
If that is what victory looks like, I am not sure I wanna win.
I don't think the far away results of their actions are on the minds of junkies when they are looking for a fix.
I am not a junkie, so I am just guessing...
> It's made by children for the immature.
> It is made by babies who've been captured.
> It's a sin against their fellow man!
> It's a sin against your fellow man.
Are you sure people who want to keep heroin, meth and coke illegal are doing it because they want to legislate morality and control others bodies?
Or is it because they don't want to have to deal with the negative effects that these drugs have on their community.
Criminalizing them hasn't been the solution, but decriminalizing them will not make things that much better either...
From my perspective, most of the bad effects of those drugs occur due to their illegality. Meth, heroin, cocaine, etc. is pretty fucking dirt cheap to produce. The impurities and high costs and unknown doses and burdens to the carceral system are what impose the bulk of the costs to society.
In both meat eating and driving those activities have inherent harm, eating meat will cause animals harm, driving a car will cause pollution and release of GHG.
The harm of the drugs trade (on a societal level) is _due to its illegality_ I.e. it is run by criminals.
Regardless, it is absolutely not immoral or unethical to consume drugs. What is immoral, is imposing the negative consequences of prohibition upon society because of your particular moral code. You want to lock people in a cage at the end of a gun because you disagree with the choices they make for their own bodies. It is authoritarian shite of the highest degree.
Now if only those pesky addictions would listen…
Instead, I'd like to work on genetically engineering yeasts and bacteria to synthesize the desired alkaloids in a homebrew setting. It would be more ethical, and probably safer too.
That's a lot of doctors you're asking a lot of.
Do you carry a lot of money? Confiscated (civil forfeiture).
Did you make a large money transfer over 10,000? Reported to the IRS.
Is there something off in your tax return? is there a large fluctuation in money? is there a lot of money from unusual sources? Audited by the IRS.
And the list goes on and on.
That is the kind of stuff Mexico needs.
Do you dress really nicely and have a cool car and house but no university degree, no occupation and cannot explain where your stuff comes from? We confiscate all of your shit just in case.
Do you have a degree but talk like you did not go to elementary school? Standardized test follow by the confiscation of all your shit.
You need a functional government to do everything you listed, not that any of it would work.
This isn't the movies- the bad guys don't all wear fancy suits. They don't carry millions in cash. And good luck getting anywhere near their property to confiscate anything, you'd have to get past their personal army first.
When the cops work for the cartels, and so does the federal government- it becomes almost impossible to restore order.
It's early for me, so if the post was sarcasm that flew over my head I apologize on advance.
Off to coffee.
Edit- last to past. NOW off to coffee.
What a government must do, is to completely obliterate the reputation of anyone that could serve as an example of a successful organized crime guy. And instead, leave that person so humiliated so that no one wants to be that person.
Something such as "Hey little kid, is this loser your hero? Look what we are going to do to this clown", and then do a full Jackass style movie making fun of the guy, and make everyone believe that guy is the ultimate loser.
Also, send the message: if you steal $1, we will have no problem spending $1 million dollars chasing you down. There will be no tolerance for you.
Combine two things and what you have is: the defeat of learned helplessless, which is the true epidemic of Mexico. The feeling no one can do anything about it. In truth, you can. You can go where the bully is remind them that bullying you is not for free.
Arm every Mexican citizen with an AR-15 on their 15th birthday and then organized crime will be gone in 24 hours. Tell every citizen that if they seize money from organized crime they can keep it, and organized crime will disappear overnight. If you do that, the power will shift from incompetent politicians and organized crime, to the majority of people, who are decent, hardworking individuals that want peace. If you want peace, prepare for war.
If your neighbor is Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino you will not mess with that neighboor, and you will probably start using the words "please", "thank you" and "sir" more.
The solution can’t be what actually stopped the prohibition era organised crime as, as we all know, it didn’t work at all. /s
When you have no territorial control, you need to grab back the territorial control, and fight any armed groups that oppose resistance.
> In 1971, Article 10 of the present Constitution was changed[10] to limit the right to keep arms within the home only (in Spanish: ...derecho a poseer armas en su domicilio...) and reserved the right to bear arms outside the home only to those explicitly authorized by law (i.e. police, military, armed security officers). The following year, the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives came into force[11] and gave the federal government complete jurisdiction and control to the legal proliferation of firearms in the country; at the same time, heavily limiting and restricting the legal access to firearms by civilians.
> As a result of the changes to Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution and the enactment of the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives, openly carrying a firearm or carrying a concealed weapon in public is virtually forbidden to private citizens, unless explicitly authorized by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA). For purposes of personal protection, firearms are only permitted within the place of residence and of the type and caliber permitted by law.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_Mexico
Why is Mexico such an outlier in terms of the success of gun control? It seemed hugely successful elsewhere in countries like Japan and Sweden.
They are also a major exporter of illegal drugs to the US (aka the world’s biggest market for illegal drugs), being both a producer and trade route for other producer nations further south.
Control of these trade routes is extremely profitable, and guns are super easy to import. It’s not that surprising that the situation is different to Japan or Sweden.
https://www.thetrace.org/2022/10/how-many-american-guns-mexi...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
> Article 3 of Colombia's firearm law states that civilians may possess firearms only via permit issued at discretion of the competent authority.[45]
> In 1993, Colombia legislated gun ownership, effectively establishing a government licensing monopoly. In 2016, president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos signed an executive order suspending civilians from carrying firearms, with some exceptions including security details, hunting, private defense and collection. It was extended in 2018 by newly elected president Ivan Duque, albeit with the added stipulation: "for reasons of emergency or security ... taking into consideration among other factors, the particular circumstances of each application".
> Gun laws in Honduras are stated in the Act on the Control of Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Material of 2000.[199] In April 2002, the National Arms Registry was formed, requiring all citizens to register their firearms with the Ministry of Defense.[200]
> In 2003, a ban on certain "assault rifles" was passed, restricting citizens from possessing military-style rifles such as the AK-47 and the M-16.[201] In 2007, an additional decree suspended the right to openly carry and conceal carry a firearm in public, and limited the number of firearms a person can possess.[202]
We've all heard this, but I only recently put it in context after watching one of these [1] videos. It's terrifying.
In Mexico, the state and its functionaries (very much including the police) at all levels are too inept, too corrupt and too indifferent to handle their investigative and protective duties as things stand. This is a major cause of insecurity and high crime. It's only a secondary factor that the cartels and their weapons (many of which are not even bought from the U.S but instead stolen or bought from the corrupt public security agencies, unless you think you can buy RPGs and mortars in an American gun store, for example). That these cartels dominate so much isn't specifically because they can buy U.S weapons, or use money from drug sales to the U.S. to corrupt institutions. Instead they dominate because they can do all these things in a landscape where the state either retreats persistently, doesn't seriously apply itself to public security or simply sells itself to their bidding.
Canada, to the north of the U.S also has plenty of drug demand, drug sales from the U.S and an even more open border, yet it remains a safe, well-run country. Why? Because unlike the government in Mexico, Canada's government takes its duties seriously and invests in applying them.
But I also remember reading about the US$100,000,000 bribe allegedly paid to Pena Nieto in 2012. Like, damn, it’s gotta be hard to fight corruption in a middle-income country when the criminals have that kind of cash to throw around.
I'm in no way implying that open-carry discourages civil war or whatever, I'm just saying that there are HUGE swathes of the world where the gun laws on the books are not respected whatsoever.
A weak government and a history of corruption
There are weekly shootings and bombs exploding, just from this week https://sweden.postsen.com/local/117122/Large-police-operati...
The amazing thing about Sweden is that very few people want to acknowledge that it has problems just like any other country. There is crime, racism, poverty, housing crisis, alcoholism, etc.
Seems stupid to me since it’s hard to improve the situation if you can’t acknowledge the problems.
I’m assuming your question is friendly curiosity, and not an attempt to disqualify my opinion.
Yeah, everyone else assumed the same, too.
You should compare it to other countries instead. To me, an Irish person (ranked 157 at 0.18 per 100k) living in Vietnam (ranked 173 at 0.12 incidents per 100k), the gun violence in Sweden sounds shockingly high.
Although it's actually only a bit higher than Ireland at position 149, 0.25 per 100k.
https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country...
Look at the rates of homicides by firearm for White Americans and they’re within the same order of magnitude as European nations.
This is a conversation that is verboten in the US because people assume that it means you believe that crime must be intrinsic to race, even though this statistic is actually fully compatible with the liberal orthodoxy regarding the disparate impact of government policy on American Black people.
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"A 2018 systematic review of 25 studies on firearm violence in Sweden by criminologist and physician Ardavan Khoshnood, concluded "that even though knives/sharp weapons continue to be the most common MO in a violent crime in Sweden, firearm-related violence is significantly increasing in the country and foremost when discussing gang-related crimes. Moreover, firearm-related homicides and attempted homicides are increasing in the country."
"In 2021, Sweden was found to have the 2nd highest gun homicide rate (after Croatia) out of 22 European countries surveyed. Most other countries surveyed had instead experienced a decline in gun homicides."
"By 2021, gun violence by crime gangs had increased tenfold since the early 1990s."
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