Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

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This is a great read, but it begs the question - why did 40 or so special forces agents defeated to the dark side?

Was it for money, because they felt unappreciated, because they saw too many bad things and just stopped caring (or were ordered to do said bad things and it broke them), because they didn't care in the first place and enrolled just to get the training?

The situation is certainly quite bad, but understanding why it got there in the first place could be interesting, if only to protect other countries from the same experience - ie a drug startup could consider setting shop in, say Canada, with a much larger and far less controlled border, lots of empty space and forest to run labs (etc) using the very same methods.

Reservations, crime and drug friendly cities like Winnipeg could offer them a great advantage - or if we talk about geography, sea access from Labrador to the European market could also be an advantage.

So the question is - why did it happen in Mexico?

I'd suggest reading: http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/apjinternational/apj-s/2009/3t...

Mexico is a needed stop into the US. From that article, "Due to U.S. interdiction successes in the Caribbean during the 1990s, Mexico has now become the single most important way-station for cocaine and heroin produced in the Andes, and is itself a major producer of marijuana and methamphetamines. The permeability of the U.S.-Mexican border allows for easy transit into the United States, and Mexico’s share of the drug trade has grown steadily over the past 15 years."

IMO, whenever you have as much poverty as Mexico, but a very wealthy neighbor, this can be a possibility.

Because hemp and coca can not be grown effectively in Canada without expensive greenhouses because of the climate. Also there are already many drug plantations in Central America.

So that explains why Mexico instead of Canada. But I'm not sure what motivated those particular soldiers to go rogue.

True for harder drugs, yes, but not marijuana. Canada (and BC specifically) produces billions of dollars of marijuana per year. It's a fairly well known fact.

That one is easy, the profit per kilo, as a percentage of per capita income, is on average staggeringly higher in Mexico. Higher profits mean more contenders which means more fighting.

>expensive greenhouses

You might want to look into the margins on cocaine production. Either that or the person selling you your greenhouses is ripping you off.

The margin is excellent but do you realize how many plants and leaves goes into making a single key? It would be impossible to keep such greenhouses off the map. And the startup costs would be extremely high, even if the payout was great later on.

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