Graphic: Mexican drug cartels’ spreading influence | Hacker News Reader

Graphic: Mexican drug cartels’ spreading influence

news.nationalpost.com

73 pointsholychiz37 comments

When the government regulates vice, the criminals go legitimate or get caught/killed doing more outlandish stuff.

Look at California for just a taste of how it could be. Cartels can't push their outdoor mass produced garbage marijuana in Cali when anyone over 18 can walk into a Doctor's office, get a recommendation card, walk a few feet to the dispensary next door, and receive the most quality indoor, top-shelf, out of bounds Cannabis you could buy. This is decidedly not your father's lid of smoke in a sandwich baggie licked shut. The Cannabis has often been tested for anything from potency (THC and cannabinoid or CBD count) to contaminants. Some 3rd parties are actually certifying Organic Cannabis.

Most of that top-shelf Cannabis comes from multi-generational farms in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California (Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity). They have farmers who have passed down seed and clones from generation to generation, along with their breeding, growing, and flowering trade secrets.

Cartels only know bulk pricing and murder. More legitimized drug trade will not only lower cost and increase quality, but would make Cartels seek other forms as their profit margins evaporate. I'd love to see even the biggest cartels try to compete with Anheuser-Busch InBev, Pfizer, or Altria group once Marijuana is legal in the US.

I doubt it will happen. It may be somewhat of a conspiracy but I don't think society can accept that members are able to increase their happiness just by smoking a few leaves (and the price won't be that much either, once it has been made legal). It would sap the inspiration to work hard at a job in order to succeed.

It is the only explanation I can come up with that is consistent with the way the war on drugs is currently fought.

Likewise, society can't accept that members are able to increase their happiness just by drinking a few ounces of...coffee. Or beer or rum. Or run for a mile.

These would sap the inspiration to work hard at a job in order to succeed.

If alcohol was invented today, do you think it would have been made legal?

And churches worked very hard to make it impossible to legally drink in the US.

As for coffee, it is very difficult to ban something so many people depend on daily.

anyone over 18 can walk into a Doctor's office, get a recommendation card

Is this really the case? I can't imagine it's that easy to just get a doctor to give a person a recommendation when they don't need it. Do people just say they're anorexic or something?

You are probably right. But it's probably never going to happen.

Indeed this "war on drugs" will probably remain until there is a generational shift in power or if some pharmaceutical company saves the world by developing soma.

For those who don't know what soma is, it's a fictional non-addictive recreational drug without negative side effects first described by Aldous Huxley in his novel "Brave New World".

Public support of marijuana legalization has hit 50%. California almost did it two years ago, Colorado will try this year, and Rhode Island just reduced penalties. As demographics shift with public opinion and governments look for ways to both cut budgets and increase tax revenue, I view it as the inevitable future, pending the uncertain influence of embedded interests and other factors I might be unaware of.

> it's a fictional non-addictive recreational drug without negative side effects

Not fiction, dude. Cannabis is real.

But it's probably never going to happen.

Sure it will happen. Just not before enough baby boomers die.

It's not about baby boomers. Corrupt people within the US government are making a large amount of money on this conflict and will work very hard to make sure that revenue stream doesn't close. Why do you think Mary-J was ever banned in the first place? It wasn't like there was a rash of husbands getting high and beating their wives, etc.

Here's the thing. This is a huge problem. The cartels have been becoming more heavily armed and more sophisticated for years, perhaps decades. And the problem is that all this money goes into weapons, tactics, etc. On top of that the drug tunnels have been increasing in sophistication quite a bit. One recently discovered one had a railcar system in it. And so the use of predators in the sky will just keep the rest of us cowed, while the real criminals are underground.

This is a major national security problem. We can't control our Southern border because the policies we would need to enact to start doing so (drug legalization, immigration reform aimed at a real guest worker program) are political nonstarters. And so we essentually fund a menace on our Southern border, one which has had enough military contacts to do what they want for longer than I have been alive (so more than 36 years).[1]

The only sensible policy is to legalize drugs, institute a real guest worker program, and then step up efforts to control the border. But without those first two, the latter won't do anything. We are already out-classed there. We will lose. And if we can't control our Southern border, many bad things will follow.

[1] My parents were in Mexico before I was born and have witnessed some things which indicate even then the cartels were able to get the army to do whatever they wanted.

this is sad.... and also a result of a war on drugs. Decriminalization of drug use would actually allow people to get help without losing their job/life/everything. There is no reason for this senseless madness.

End the War on drugs. Portugal hasn't fallen apart because they decriminalized: https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=5&source...

... Why should we be any different? Clearly empowering cartels and criminalizing addicts is a problem. Help the addicted!

I'm surprised more people in Washington don't see this as a parallel to the rising influence of the mob when alcohol prohibition happened. There are probably no wiser words than "those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it".

There's a problem though. If you legalize marijuana and get rid of the cartels, then what? Are you just going to make that giant industry aroudn drug enforcement go away?

No, you just take the people who used to enforce prohibition and make them collectors of taxes on the newly-legal substance.

This would not be a new concept. For most of the period alcohol prohibition in the US, for instance, Federal enforcement of the prohibition laws was the responsibility of the IRS and the Treasury Department (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Prohibition), because of those agencies' long experience as collectors of alcohol taxes. (When you hear hillbillies in old movies complain about "revenuers," they're complaining about Treasury agents who shut down their untaxed backwoods stills.) And the Prohibition Bureau's successor agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, was part of the Treasury from the repeal of Prohibition until the big reorganization after September 11.

Yes. You must. It won't be easy, but it's a necessity.

The point is, there is organizational inertia regarding lobbying etc which more or less guarantees that Congress cannot act on this.

The best thing is to force a Constitutional crisis by states refusing to cooperate with federal drug enforcement. Given the recent health care reform case, the federal government has far fewer options than they did before the ruling on the Medicaid expansion issue there. They certainly cannot cut off all funding, and certainly cannot even cut off a large amount of funding.

C'mon, they are basically police. Couldn't they just go fight some non-victimless crimes?

Wow, I've always thought that if drugs were decriminalized, you'd have to continue to let employeers have testing and drug-free workplace policies as part of the new laws. To do otherwise is really asking for this never to happen.

Why though? If it's about on-the-job performance, alcohol can affect that just as much, and we don't test for alcohol use outside of work.

Based on that extensive (NYT?) article from a few weeks ago, it doesn't look like Mexico will ever be able to pull itself out of this mess. The article suggested that most of the govt and police force was either in bed with the various cartels, or too terrified of them in order to do anything about it. It's a very lucrative arrangement for everybody but the poor bystanders who might become civilian casualties in the endless turf wars.

It feels like the only way to fix this is to tweak the "demand" variable, perhaps through legalization.

It feels like the only way to fix this is to tweak the "demand" variable, perhaps through legalization.

I wonder what the cartels' reaction would be to legalization? Would they willingly give up their massive amounts of wealth to become part of a regulated system?

Edit: Removed HTML tags. Duh.

Illegal drugs just have the right risk/return balance. Legalizing would change that (probably a race to the bottom for cost). While this would disrupt a cartel's primary cash flow for a short period, there are still plenty of illegal things to move (secretly) and sell - weapons, humans, counterfeits, actually dangerous drugs which would probably remain illegal (meth, cocaine, heroine).

Legalization might hurt a cartel long enough for them to be unable to pivot, but like any business, they've found an expense to cost ratio that they like. When their industry (again, largely transportation of contraband) Is disrupted, they will die, but more likely adapt.

Don't want to sound too conspiracist, but I'm pretty sure that's part of the reason why the legalization didn't happen yet. Cartels just won't let it happen without a fight.

Why would the government want to legalize drugs when having cartels to fight gives them reason to assume more power?

Just saw Savages (by Oliver Stone). The War on Some Drugs passed the point of believability probably during the Reagan era and is now just another war on Other People. I wish someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Richard Branson would just spend a few million dollars to end it, at least for the benign drugs like marijuana that are provably less destructive than alcohol or tobacco.

As a side note, I wonder how things like Silk Road will affect it, once enforcement isn't really feasible anymore.

Looking at those thick arrows reaching into the US, with even thicker arrows close behind them, makes me think that this will be the thing that tips us over into an overt police state.

The death toll charts are pretty shocking. I mean, an increase of over 300% in 5 years? Wow.

There is a civil war going on in mexico, that's the only way to describe it. Armed insurrection against the government with a force of over a hundred thousand soldiers, and so far the death toll has been in the range of ten thousand civilians a year or more.

And yet you probably haven't seen as much news coverage of what's going on there as you have of, say, goings on in Syria.

It's a peculiar civil war though because one side doesn't care about ruling or controlling territory per se, they just care about being able to operate their business.

Yes, nearly 50,000 people have died in Mexico since Zedillo essentially declared armed war on the cartels in 2006.

Almost 10,000 people per year.

Given the scale of the violence, you'd expect more news coverage in the USA. I didn't learn of this until I traveled in Mexico for a while last summer.

I think you mean Calderón.

You're right - it was Felipe Calderon who declared war on the narcos in 2006.

"one side doesn't care about ruling or controlling territory per se,"

For now.

It kind of looks like it may have peaked last year, though I suspect that's just data noise as opposed to some fundamental improvements.

I have a hard time imagining the Tijuana and Gulf Cartels operating large organizations in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Aren't they missing a cartel in NM - specifically a large production facility in ABQ?

Couple of interesting points.

First, the cartels are probably the biggest supporters of the current drug laws. It's like being given a magic bottle that makes money all of the time -- as long as you're willing to use violence, which was never a problem for them.

Second, I am not optimistic about the U.S. political system growing a set of cajones anytime soon, but damned if there isn't a tiny bit of movement, from both parties. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48203995/ns/world_news-the_new_y...

Third, and most importantly, we're always going to have smuggling. Always had it, always will have it. I think the goal here is to allow a lot of things to be smuggled but to keep the total dollar amount down. The drug trade is tens of billions of dollars, and it involves moving plants that grow as weeds. High-value art, rare fish, or any of a hundred other things really shouldn't be getting that much attention. There simply isn't enough money there to corrupt the system. The key problem (as far as customs goes) is rampant smuggling destroying control over the border. That's the problem to address. (I'd add that legalization would sure help a lot to address it.) We need to decrease the complexity of the customs laws and increase the focus of enforcement. Trying to ban something that huge sections of the population consume, or trying to control tens of thousands of random little items, are both ways to destroy the entire idea of having a customs office in the first place.

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