50,000 people dead? - check. Billions in profit? - check. Narco-states on the US border? - check. Criminals walk out of prison? - check. Gigantic crack & methaphetamine problem within the US? - check.
So long as the policy is perpetuated by people who are elected by those who still sheltered from the worst of it, I wouldn't expect any change.
Particularly not now that there's a robust military-incarceration-industrial lobby with a strong incentive to maintain the status quo and no limitation on their ability to make 'campaign contributions'.
Having a gigantic drug war going on right across the US border in Mexico is a crazy thing to begin with. Add to that it's about owning territory to import drugs into the US, to feed a large demand.
Plus the cartels make bales of money on marijuana sales, when it could easily be a huge cash crop for so many US counties. Job creation blah blah blah.
I'd support legalization and taxation of marijuana, it seems like the honest thing to do since it's everywhere anyway and doesn't seem to destroy people's lives like crack and meth.
Drugs don't destroy lives, addiction does. Prohibition drives addicts underground. This makes the problem harder to solve, not easier.
The legal status of tobacco and alcohol are proof-positive that biology isn't the metric that's used. It's politics and big business, pure and simple.
Consider the negative externalities of cocaine use (much higher than marijuana's); the healthcare implications and effects on worker productivity are costs that would need to be covered by a heavy tax. That, in turn, would make smuggling profitable.
Legalising cocaine would cause its price to plummet. This would cut into cartels' profits but also spur demand. I'm not sure if I want to walk around the street with people high on bath salts and cocaine. Perhaps in a highly controlled environment? That still leaves a profitable opening for illegal distribution.
For Mexico it makes sense to decriminalise; the United States would bear the cost of use while it could potentially build a viable industry in cocaine processing. It makes similar sense for the US to pressure Mexico to do otherwise up to the expected public cost of higher cocaine use in America.
People probably wouldn't be using mystery-chemical-x-mixed-in-some-bro's-tub bath salts if they could get cheap cocaine from a well established business.
The streets became a better place, no more criminals in the corners. No more shots and dead bodies in the communities. The kids were playing again in the streets. And the cops wouldn't have to arrest minors selling drugs, they were able to focus in the big fishes, the head of the operation. The problem is, after some time, the town hall and the police chief started to not believe in the crime rates the captain was giving to them. They were TOO DAMN LOW. They tough he was manipulating, faking or someway, not giving the actual rates. But they were true, he just couldn't say that he legalized the drugs. After some time, he had to tall, and of course he was fired.
I think the series made a great simulation of what it will happen that we had in our city an area were drugs selling were legal. Everyone in HN should watch the show.
PS. I'm sorry for typos and bad grammmar. Not native speaker. I'll get better.
One of the many things I've learned in my life is that criminals will go where the money is. In the early 20th century it was alcohol, prostitution, gambling, etc. They later moved on to drugs which was more profitable than alcohol, especially after prohibition ended. Criminals will always find a way to extort.
It's not as if I'm talking about a father stealing a loaf of bread for his family. The people I'm speaking commit the most vile crimes possible. They are deserving of the tag 'criminal' regardless of what position in life they started.
That said, this isn't really about defeating the drug cartels. It's about the putting an end to the violence that is behind it and stopping it from spilling out into the lives of law-abiding citizens.
In South America, criminals have turned to kidnapping family members of wealthy individuals and even talented baseball players who have signed deals with professional teams. Most baseball teams have backed out of looking for prospects in Venezuela because of these worries. There was even a minor league prospect who was kidnapped last year and held for ransom.
in short:
* same crime to supply addicts is there * inter-gang violence is still there * premium on drug territory increases, thus violence and competition increases
Something similar ("Needle Park") was attempted in Zurich in the eighties: a place where drug sale and use was officially tolerated. It was closed after a few years. Opinions are mixed.
My prediction is Mexico's violent crime spilling over to the US resulting in a drug war surge (both already happening to some degree.) In the background, regulators slowly loosen up laws as to not lose face (would explain the toleration of medical marijuana.)
I can only imagine that from the outside American appear completely crazy. Regulators and lobbyists write the laws, bankers and the wealthy fund the enforcement, and then both parties consume them in obscene quantities. The exporting country pays the price in blood and corruption. From my perspective as an American, that's not crazy, that's evil.
One reference for prohibition homicide data: http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/alcohol-pro...
In additional, legalization would cause prices to crash because the risk would drop significantly. Even so, in a legal environment there would still be a black market because regulations would still impose restrictions, but it would be more like teenagers paying homeless guys to buy beer and cigarettes.
People simply don't think rationally about the war on (some) drugs.
It's clear that the need or desire to escape reality won't change anytime soon. Instead of ignoring and fighting this reality, we should try to find constructive solutions.
Even today tobacco, mostly cigarettes, is smuggled and it is legal, people hate the high taxes implemented to help cover healthcare costs. The majority of legal drug (tobacco, alcohol) users it seems are low income so it would make sense taxes are a large part of the purchase price.
It's the same for alcohol easy to make and I think if I remember hearing it correctly from high school teacher that (here in Canada) the cost of alcohol is 99% tax.
Then people would say tobacco, alcohol, and probably drugs too if they are legalized should not be taxed so high, it's never ending.
If I said I didn't care if someone killed themselves using drugs that sounds callous but if I said I cared and thought people should not be able to use meth or crack then I'm told to mind my own business.
And people are living shorter lives due to morbid obesity because they can't manage to eat a healthy diet what would happen if drugs are legalized? People balk at taxing unhealthy food I can't imagine adding legal crack into that mess. People in the US and Canada can't seem to regulate their vices, I foresee massive numbers of deaths if drugs are legalized.
I also think people would be much more willing to tax drugs than food. The reason food is not taxed more heavily is because of industrial heavyweights lobbying congress extensively. There is relatively little money spent in pro-legalization lobbying.
Furthermore, drug legalization in Portugal has made it easier to treat users of particularly dangerous drugs (such as heroin) and has in fact reduced use. Portugal might not have the same drug culture as the US, but it's still a promising result.
That's what I mean. I often deal with people from Monaco and work with a guy from Portugal and the difference in culture between southern Europe and here (US/Canada) is striking.
It's interesting to see how similar Monaco and Portugal are generally speaking. People from each area seem shocked by the excess we take for granted.
Food for example eating out and having a near litre container of sugar water plopped down in front of you doesn't raise an eyebrow here yet S. Europeans (as I call them) seem almost nauseated seeing it. Food is the same pounds of meat and lots of everything else, years ago a family would eat what one person eats today. None of the people I speak with eat after 8PM and most meals are small except maybe noontime, Portugal may be later.
I can't see the same results here for legalizing drugs we are a culture of excess, me first, I'm better than you, you-can't-handle-it-I-can kind of culture. It couldn't be more different going by what I can gather from speaking to locals from S. Europe.
As for cigarette smuggling not causing deaths, a car bomb going off in downtown Montreal killing an 11 year-old boy because rival biker gangs fight over smuggling turf, strip clubs (prostitution front) is pretty similar. Add to that Native American Mohawk warriors on the NY/Quebec border.
Re: cigarettes, they're actually smoked much less than in Europe, despite being cheaper and having less graphic warnings. Alcohol is certainly consumed differently as well, but most people grow up and stop binge drinking past a certain age.
I don't really know about the cigarette smuggling you're talking about, so I won't comment on that. If you can point me to an article about it, I'd be interested to read more. I do find it hard to believe that it's had the same effect on communities as drug trafficking in Northern Mexico.
There is also quite a bit in eastern Quebec and New Brunswick , it's into the remainder of Maritimes the border really where a lot of this occurs.
CBC.ca has news of it from time to time mostly when violence erupts, a lot of it occurred in the 90s when the Rock Machine and Hells Angels were separate club but I think they merged, violently.
Of the regions involved all are areas of high rates of smoking. Even here where I live where the federal tax centre building is the local news found illegal unmarked cigarettes outside the smoking area! Imagine if in the US the IRS workers on their smoke break smoked illegal cigarettes and just put them out on the ground, ballsy!
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mohawks+gangs+tobacco/14...
(PDF) http://www.cisc.gc.ca/annual_reports/documents/2001_annual_r...
If we start banning substances rationally, wouldn't cigarettes top the list.
The only things that should be "banned" are those that are so intrinsically harmful they cause severe, immediate, measurable harm to both the abuser and society.
There aren't many drugs that people consume that qualify for this standard since to be able to continuously abuse something it can't kill you the first try.
Almost nobody does though because there is a legal form from which to get the high that is a minute fraction of what is required to kill you.
Firstly, substances can be used without 'abuse'. Alcohol is a good example of this, you probably know many users who never abuse it. Alcohol most certainly can cause severe, immediate harm to the abuser an society.
Why ban substances based on harm? Why not just enforce the rules around the actual harm?
For example, enforce driving under the influence and don't ban alcohol.
Is there really a need to ban things like heroin which have a high rate of causing harm to the user? It seems like it is more of social and community issue. Throwing that person in jail is hardly improving their life.
In terms of priorities it should be avoiding harm to others, such as not driving under the influence as you suggest, and then avoiding harm to the individual, as might be the case with a chronic alcoholic.
As a note, heroin isn't as inherently harmful as it's made out to be, but, like other things, so long as it's illegal it will really only be popular with the more hard-core drug users. It was legal before, after all.
I'm not sure about the USA, but in Canada, the number of people who use marijuana and the number of people who use tobacco are almost equal, despite only one of those substances being legal. That seems to indicate to me that the laws have no impact on consumption or the limitation thereof.
If you are worried about the effects of people using drugs, you are already witnessing them.
I don't see how you're going to stand any chance of causing more problems than that.
Cocaine has gotten cheap enough that anybody can try it if they want to. In the 40 year war on drugs, they've had a nearly unlimited budget and all the time that could ever be needed, things have only continued to get worse. The Cartels have already taken over every city in America, and they literally control portions of the south west. It's time to neutralize them, and the only way to do that is by destroying their profit centers with 'free market' competition that they can never beat (government regulated ala alcohol).
Only the government can create organized crime. And it's always through prohibitions of activities that should be legal.
Typical example: Criminals lure naive poor country girls with prospects of lots of money and a job elsewhere. As soon as they arrive to the destination country, they are held captive (they steal everything they own, and use violence) and then used as prostitutes. I fail to see government help in this scheme.
Do you think that the cops don't know about Backpage or other prostitution outlets? Do you think that law enforcement is impervious to corruption?
My point is even assuming incorruptible law enforcement, these outlets would still exist, might last less if you wish.
From there to saying it's a government sponsored slavery is a big step.
If it were legal, it could be taxed and regulated like anything else. Most people are OK with letting others do what they want with their own body. It's certain puritanical, tyrannical, authoritarian and powerful government factions that don't allow that.
Same addict in two societies.
Society 1) Drugs are regulated in pretty much the same ways they are in the US, and because of this prices are high. The addict may have a family or maybe not, but has bills to pay. He spends all his money on drugs leading to neglect of his bills. He gets arrested and is now unable to hold down a job. This leads into other problems after he gets out of legal trouble. He now has to steal to obtain the drugs.
Society 2) Drugs are largely decriminalized and cheap enough that a days supply for any addict don't break the bank. He doesn't lose his job because of legal ramifications and he just spends all his free time doing cocaine. He doesn't have to steal to obtain the drugs.
[1]http://www.americanscientist.org/libraries/documents/2006451...
It does seem like the war on drugs could be fought more by addressing those that are supposed to be fighting it and removing corruption. Perhaps huge pay increases and bonuses for turning in people that attempt to bribe?
Our best example of a good way to go about reducing the drug trade is to go the way of Portugal.
The key word here is "transits". Every other country in Central America, and some in northern South America are part of that "transit" too. Mexican just happens, to its bad luck, to be next to the biggest consumer.
Nobody is arguing to have cocaine accesible by kids at the grocery store. The argument is to legalize it to regulate it and, as someone below commented, to bring the prices down so is no longer such a profitable business.
Sincerely, the Market Economics Fairy!
(Full disclosure: I'm just borrowing this character because it's suddenly relevant.)
The first link provided actually says they are the largest foreign supplier of marijuana.
What exactly makes you think any other drug would be different?
This makes sense, since a highly regulated substance is de-facto illegal if it is unobtainable by the vast majority of its target market.
Alcohol sales are in the billions, why aren't the cartels making money from that? Because legitimate corporations are there to supply it already. (You can also produce your own alcohol at home, but most people don't.)
It's hard enough to get pot legalized in most states - the "harder" drugs don't stand a chance.
And even if they were legalized, it's not even possible for a big illegal drug operation to "go legit". All of the drug cartels will still have long histories of violence, piles of cash, boatloads of weapons, and a ton of smuggling expertise. They'll probably just "pivot" to smuggling the next most profitable thing. Or smuggle untaxed and unregulated drugs.
No, gangs aren't going to go away, but they will be reduced in capability and law enforcement will be far more effective. Crime will go down. Not instantly, but over a fairly short amount of time.
With regards to effect, though, I'm sure it wouldn't magically fix everything. It would, however, mean that the cartels would face competition without the overhead of smuggling, which would drop the profit available substantially. They might well move on to smuggling the next most profitable thing, but obviously the next most profitable thing is not as profitable. The power and wealth of the cartels would thus not be growing as fast as it is, which is a much better situation long-run.
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm
"After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation"
For a historical analog, look at the Mafia. When Prohibition ended, the Mafia didn't become nice people. They continued a life of crime. However they had diminished power, and we had fewer open gun battles in the streets. On the whole this was a good thing.
Ironically, I'd imagine the cartels would be for keeping it illegal - it's their market!
The one key aspect that I often find that is missing from the intellectual reasoning of the drug cartel violence in Mexico is that most Americans don't understand that narco culture that exists in Northern Mexico. For over 30 or 40 years, there has developed a narco culture in Mexico where songs and movies have been influenced by the trade (see Chalino_Sánchez). Basically, Chalino_Sánchez was like the Mexican Jay-Z except he didn't sell out and was gunned down by an unknown assailant.
That's a recent development, plenty of violence before that desperate measure.
The entire supply chain needs to be legalized before the violence will end. Killing will stop, former murderers will be caught, and the American drug use rates will stay as steady and unaffected as ever.
The reason that cocaine is as expensive as it is, stems from its illegality.
And subsequently, the only reason that the cartels were able to grow to such monstrous proportions is the amount of money that can be made with the production and distribution of illegal drugs. Remove the money and you'll remove their power.
If you shut down their income from drugs, they will find another way to make money. I had the opportunity to talk to a former U.S. Border Patrol sector chief in San Diego about the cartels. He said that in San Diego, they achieved some level of success in constraining the drug trade. The cartel response? Kidnap people and hold them for ransom. Like any business, they will find another way to make money when the market changes. As their innovations in finding new ways to bring drugs into the country shows, they can be creative when faced with a business problem.
You don't see the Kennedys going around kidnapping people, do you? Why should it be any different with modern drug dealers?
If the goventment gets involved I'm sure it will want a highly regulated system, just like it does with all of the alcohol regulations on the books now. If the government says that only X supplers or growers are allowed to legally sell drugs then I can't see how this is going to be cheaper than stuff that is out on the street. If the government wants to make drugs on par with high end drug cartels that customers like I see it being overrun in bureaucracy and will cost the buyer much more than if they hit up their local dealer for better product at a cheaper price.
If the government can't beat the price + quality then people are going to continue to buy from suppliers in Mexico, which will keep fighting it out for this market.
When you legalize drugs, they aren't going to suddenly stop selling it. They will now have a legal business which will continue to fund their criminal empires. We most likely will see an increase in other crimes, like extortion and kidnapping.
Drugs are still illegal in the US and we don't really see the same kind of crime in our country because the police actually (for the most part) do their job.
If you really want to stop the violence, stop the corruption. I know the recreational drug users of HN don't really want to hear this..
Alcohol is legal. The gangs that formed around producing, smuggling, and selling alcohol (e.g. Capone) are gone.
The hope is that once other drugs are legal, the same thing happens to their producers.
That prompted me to ask "why is moonshining illegal", and the best (wrong) answer I could come up with was for production and delivery to dry counties.
Turns out, it's just a matter of taxation. Moonshiners are welcome to go legit, but they then have to pay $2.14 for each 750ml bottle they make, which cuts into profitability.
As they likely don't have reputations and/or massive marketing budgets, they still and distribute illegally, which turns it into a pure profit + overhead scenario.
"The number of jurisdictions which ban the sale of alcoholic beverages is steadily decreasing which means that many of the former consumers of moonshine are much nearer to a legal alcohol sales outlet than was formerly the case. Moonshine-like distilled beverages with names like Collier and McKeel White Dog,[27] Everclear, Virginia Lightning, Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine,[28] Platte Valley Corn Whiskey Cat Daddy and Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon are produced commercially and sold in liquor stores, typically packaged in a clay jug or glass Mason jar. As a result of these changes and aggressive law enforcement, moonshine production is far less widespread than it was formerly." [1]
Obviously there is a point at which taxation is virtually equivalent to prohibition (1,000,000%?) so the aim of a good tax in this arena is to (1) discourage consumption (2) provide some revenue to offset against social costs of the activity (healthcare costs of smokers, for example) while (3) not being so outrageous as to push the activity underground altogether.
I agree that the main element is taxation.
Very many cigarettes sold in England are smuggled in from EU because of tax. But now people are counterfeiting so some cigs are both smuggled and fake - the quality of some of the smuggled product is alarmingly poor. (But it's tricky to get any sensible information about this because the only people releasing information are the customs / police who want to make it seem as scary as they can.)
They are of course part of the problem.
This of course doesn't solve the real problem which is consumption.
I think it would end up more expensive at your local pharmacy if legalized. The benefit would be you know you won't lose your teeth from the odd chemicals the producer is using.
(I could be horribly off on the details)
Methamphetamine is currently available at your local pharmacy. It's a generic drugs and costs less than a $1 per dose.
You don't lose your teeth from meth because of chemicals used in it's production, you lose them due to a combination of poor oral hygiene and reduced saliva production. The same thing happens if you abuse the stuff you can get at the pharmacy.
I object to your use of the definite article here. We can argue about the degree to which consumption is a problem vs. it leading to problems, moderate use, what particular drugs, etc... but making the police into the enemy of a large swath of our population is itself a real problem, gang violence to control distribution territory is itself a real problem, etc.
If people are doing things that hurt themselves that's bad, but it's important we don't cause worse problems (for those people or the rest of us) in trying to stop it, and legalization frees up huge resources that we could put toward educating people about the dangers of various drugs and cleaning up the mess when they don't listen.
If on the contrary you take the huge profits part out of the equation then the whole network collapses; there just aren't enough money to support all the individuals involved in trafficking.
Besides, haven't you heard the saying: "Always know your dealer"?
Even if so, moving to a harm reduction / medical model is more likely to fix the addiction problem than criminalizing (or worse, militarizing) the consumption side of the equation.
Obviously that kind of money is no problem if your profit margin is 80%. Legalizing drugs (hence introducing highly industrialized competition) and helping those who are truly addicted tends to quickly kill that margin.
I'm not saying legalization is the golden bullet; obviously you will have to do a lot more to reverse the damage done by millions in prison, impoverished, killed, or corrupted in the government apparatus. But its the starting point to stopping the cancer from expanding.
I strongly disagree with your statement. Police? Mexico is not using your usual police officers to fight drug violence neither Colombia. They are using highly trained military forces. Why? Cartels have very advance military equipment that is, sometimes, even purchased directly from the U.S. government as stated by one of the captured Zetas cartel heads (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/7/inquiry-of-we...). One of the main reasons the U.S. doesn't have the amount drug related crimes that countries like Mexico do is because it's their primary market (in the case of Mexican cartels) so they, obviously, don't want to create that much problems there and mess up their business.
This is not about pointing fingers or saying that the police is useless but as someone who was unlucky enough to witness hitman executed individuals (in front of my house) but lucky enough to _not see anything_ useful for the police I have to tell you that is not about an effective police force. The production, distribution, violence, money laundering, and all the other problems that revolve around drugs are shared between: consumers, criminals, and corrupt individuals (private, government, and public service sectors). My point is that this very complicated problem has only gotten worse since the "War on Drugs" started so legalizing drugs to have some regulation could be an alternative.
If you read the article, you'd see the reason Colombia and Mexico use the military is mainly because the cartels own the police. Virtually ever person has been bribed. That's the core problem here.
A quick examination of the FBI's data on African-American crime proves that out. We put four million black men in prison every decade due to drug related criminal activity, and have nearly two million black men in prison at any given time. The lifestyle of said criminals is always tied to illegal drugs (there's no other profit source powerful enough to drive that kind of crime wave).
Extortion and kidnapping must be way less pleasant and much more difficult than dealing drugs. It's very hard to believe that they could scale up to be the same sort of revenue source.
As for the US and its supposed success, sure, it's better off than Honduras, but it still spends a fortune on law enforcement and has a massive prison population. I don't want to think of how many lives have been ruined over needless drug-related convictions. US demand and money are also what's fuelling a lot of the violence in Latin America.
So those people with expertise in growing it would continue to do so but out in the open in huge farms and profits would plummet to near at-cost production levels as they compete with similar large farms.
Also, without making any judgement about whether people should or should not do certain things, banning private, consensual transactions rarely works well or inexpensively. My politics do not trend libertarian, but this is a well established fact at this point, whether it's prostitution, drug use, etc.
The drug cartels would lose a lot of the revenue which makes them powerful.
No one here is claiming that selling drugs is legal. Some of us think that selling drugs should become legal, in the hopes that businesses that are like Microsoft and Apple, i.e., don't assassinate judges, etc, will outcompete the cartels and decrease the cartel's revenues, hence decreasing their ability and participation in such undesirable activities.
No. Once a drug is legalized, supply can go up and price plummets. What was once a "criminal empire" now has the cash flow of a 7-11. And because price plummets, addicts no longer need to crawl in your bedroom window to steal money/goods to buy drugs. Crime drops. Drug-related extortion and kidnapping would virtually disappear.
http://vision.ucsd.edu/~kbranson/stopchocolateslavery/ataste...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_cocoa_production
Top comment, and many comments totally oblivious to the realities of life. Not surprising for HN, sadly. Keep those libertarian blinkers on boys!
If your business is illegal, however, you're neck deep in shit already, so the marginal benefit for stopping is almost zero. Twenty to fourty years added to a life sentence.
EDIT: typo
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine-harder-t...
Drugs are changing your brain by altering it rewarding system.