"Impossible" to end drug trade, says Calderón | Hacker News Reader

"Impossible" to end drug trade, says Calderón

economist.com

82 pointsmtgx92 comments

As an habitant of Juarez, one of the cities that was hit the most with Calderon's war against drugs, this is insulting. We all know it's impossible to end drug trade. That's why most cities had this sort of "understanding" with the cartels. They move some stuff around, they leave the people alone and everything works out (e.g. Though Juarez had a lot of Drug related crimes before the "war on drugs", it was mostly contained, but still we had a lower than average rate for other types of crime like armed robbery and such).

But this wasn't about the wear on drugs, this was about territory: The local government had deals with the local cartel, but the Sinaloa cartel started fighting for more territory, allegedly with the aid of the army/federal police. Suddenly Juarez is impossible to live in, not because of all the narco murders but because federal agents and armies are stopping you every three blocks and suddenly you have a lot of blackmail, threats, etc coming from the guys that are supposedly there to protect. We knew they were not there to end the drug problem, they were there as a part of it, and we know it's impossible to end it, but it's better to have it out of sight, out of mind.

Now he's leaving and of course he had to come up with a conclusion like this. I just hope cities get back to the balance they had from before the war and this drug traffic problem stops spilling to the general population. As long as there is a market there will be someone to fill the need, and being the next door neighbor we're sadly in a good position to have those kinds of people.

Yes Mr. Calderón, it's impossible to end drug trade, you knew it, we knew it, this is not news... And yet you had us suffering in fear and crime for six years just because you wanted to help some buddies and look as if you were actually doing something.

If you haven't seen the movie Traffic (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/), I highly recommend it. There's a scene where Michael Douglas' character, who plays the role of US Drug Czar, is in a room full of politicians and lobbyists. He is told by one of them that basically this is a war that will never be won nor end. The only success would be vaguely getting usage down. There will always be a demand that creates the supply.

edit: this scene from The Wire also has a great perspective on the war on drugs -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5za4VsskM

Mexico's problem is in essense, that outside market pressure makes its inhabitants behave in a way that is at odds with keeping up a state under the rule of law.

As a thought experiment, think what would happen if Mexico made drugs legal. Their government would had to fight against the cartels, and might at some point win.

What you have then is a system where Mexico has much less criminality. They can't export to the US directly of course, but people will just buy drugs legally in the Mexican north and try to smuggle it the the US. The US can decide for themselves if they want to legalize it or not, and if they don't the US criminality is still there, but the Mexican criminality is gone.

Well what would likely happen then is another 1989 Panama. One of the main reasons why the US invaded Panama was its involvement in drug trade. So the US would criticize Mexico publicly, and at some point probably invade it.

It looks to me like current time Mexico is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They must be opposed to drugs because their powerful northern neighbor wants them to, but outside market pressure, from the very same neighbor at the same time destabilizes it.

So it's an issue that should be solved by an outside party - the US. But that party won't tackle the issue because Mexican people can't vote in the US.

Sounds like bad US colonialism to me :-(

> Their government would had to fight against the cartels, and might at some point win.

I dont think that would be a big problem. Everybody that has a car coule without any trouble start trafficing drugs into the US, without fear of the police. The goverment would essentially only have to be passiv antil the funds of the cartels drain.

Guns and stuff are expensive. A well organised logisics firm (for example) could outperform these cartels in drug transportation. All the goverment would have to do is protect the firms.

Many of the people that work for the cartels could get jobs in 'legal' frims that do the same thing, witch would be a better workplace for people.

> Well what would likely happen then is another 1989 Panama. One of the main reasons why the US invaded Panama was its involvement in drug trade. So the US would criticize Mexico publicly, and at some point probably invade it.

MMhhh possible but Im not sure the US people or the international community would stand for this. I doute that the US would go so far.

I think legalizing drugs is the only workable solution for Mexico.

The flaw in the argument that ending the drug war will financially starve the cartels..(true) & if fighting criminality is our stated policy then it's the right thing to do..is that it's overlooking the accompanying weakening of the law enforcement- prison-military industrial complex & YES, I know people don't look at it that way, but the police & the entire drug fighting establishment are also an interest group set on keeping their budgets & their privileges. Calderon is a coward, he should have stated the obvious before he was set to leave office. How many lives were lost in Mexico because of his stubborn delusion..or cynical political calculations ?

> the police & the entire drug fighting establishment are also an interest group set on keeping their budgets & their privileges

In a way, there's this angle, sure. However, nobody wants the drug war to get so violent policemen drop dead all the time, like they do in Mexico. Nobody actually wants an all out war, despite the name "War on Drugs."

I think the US is fine with a War on Anything, as long as it's done in another country. The actual killing is done in Mexico and Afghanistan, and we're just peachy fine with that.

Afghanistan I'll grant you, mostly, because there are no US civilians for miles and miles. There are some soldiers, though.

But Mexico? No. No, for so many reasons: it's a favored tourist destination, for one. Second, relatedly, Spring Break takes place there. America will be damned before it lets her young women drop dead in such a manner! And, that's an industry unto itself, with a lot of US investment tied up there.

Third, the Latino population in America votes and are not peachy fine with their cousins dropping dead. The Mexican contingent within that Latino population is pretty large. Fourth is the giant, hardly monitored stretch of border between Mexico and US. Afghanistan is something like three borders and an ocean or two away from US. Pretty easy to stop violence from spilling over. But Mexico? A bit harder.

And yet on it goes.

Indeed.

It's impossible to end the illegal drug trade != No organization with the means is willing to do what it takes.

The Mexican drug cartel supposedly has close to 150,000 "soldiers." I use the term soldier loosely because its really just a bunch of degenerate shitbags that have been given firearms. They are allegedly larger, more organized, and better funded than Al Qaeda has ever dreamed of being. Still, there are bullets enough in this world to solve such a problem. It would be long, ugly, and bloody for all parties involved, but if we were serious enough to actually go about it the right way, the entire planet would be far better having seen it to completion.

When an ultraconservative thinks about the war on drugs, they are generally thinking of the elimination of mind-altering substances from the face of the earth. When I think of the war on drugs, I think first of finding ways to prevent children from becoming addicted to hard drugs before they are old enough to know what decision they are making, and secondly, the annihilation of the violent, terrorist organizations that currently control the industry. I understand that nothing will ever completely eliminate the recreational use of drugs, but by my definition the war on drugs is absolutely winnable. Unfortunately, just because something can be accomplished, doesn't mean that it's going to happen.

All this would do is raise the price of drugs. Really, mass murder is not going to solve any of this and lack of resolve is definitely not the first cause of failing to find a solution.

Mexico has killed or captured a large number of drug kingpins in the last few years. The idea that they're not trying is absurdly uninformed.

http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21564897-most-wanted-...

I wasn't trying to suggest that they weren't doing anything, just not enough. The cartel is a massive problem, and to get rid of them would involve a massive conflict. If the Mexican government was acting alone, it would pretty much demand a full-scale civil war. It would be a really shitty solution, no doubt about that, but it's a shitty situation no matter what. Basically, Mexico has to decide what it's willing to tolerate. If they think living under the ever increasing threat of being murdered in a turf war is more acceptable than the casualties they would endure trying to get rid of them, then that's a decision they should be entitled to make.

But what saddens me, as it does in all nations where people face death on a daily basis, is that often, the actual people, the working class Mexicans in this case, don't get to make a real decision. They have an ineffective government on one hand, who is so used to having its members assassinated that it is mostly afraid to do anything, and on the other hand you have an insanely large band of murderers, torturers, and rapists that never should have been allowed to grow as large as it did. No matter what happens now, the general population of Mexico is going to get fucked pretty hard.

Word on the (Mexican) street is that they just destroyed the competition, leaving one big cartel that could be linked to the president.

See, this is a rather simplistic and ignorant comment. I do not mean to insult you - actually, I wish it was as simple as you're saying, just kill them and end with it. However, the problem is incredibly more complex than what you think it is.

I live in Mexico, next to a city that a couple of years back was one of the worst in the country in terms of violence and drug distribution. (In fact, one of the big cartels started in that city.) I've interacted with people involved in those cartels and with their families. I've interacted with officers who're in it, too. The problem is deeply rooted, and it's a problem of, among other things, culture.

The solution is not to "kill them all," but rather to educate. According to one article[1] (note: it's in spanish), Mexico invests less than 0.5% of its GDP into science and research. While Mexico has always had top competitors in international competitions for math, biology, robotics, science and engineering in general, and even chess, they're anomalies and products of extremely expensive private schools. Hell, even GNOME was made by two Mexican hackers. Schools in Mexico are beyond messed up.

Lack of education, mixed with poverty, create criminals. In Mexico you rarely ever see racism, but instead there's classism. Unlike in the US, our government officials aren't old white guys, but people of all kinds of skin color with money. Mexican culture - and maybe I'm wrong in this comparison, but this is from what I understand - is similar to black culture, where you have to fight your way out of your impoverished group by primarily violent means. You don't earn the respect of your fellow poor friends by getting an A on a test, but by having designer jeans or by having the latest iPhone.

And this is what gets most the "bunch of degenerate shitbags that have been given firearms" that you mention. These are literally teenagers (or even younger kids) that want to get out, probably even help our their family or community, and this is the only way they can do it.

I may be going a bit off-topic, but killing them off won't do any good. In fact, starting an all-out war might make things worse. These kids don't fear death because they have nothing to lose. The higher ups also don't fear the government or the army.

Another thing is that, if a war against organized crime were to start, it would create fear instead of peace. It would make the population, at least to my understanding, "uneasy" to say the least.

What I would propose instead of killing people would be to educate and invest in shit other than fighting a meaningless war.

[1] http://www.metronoticias.com.mx/nota.cgi?id=378883

EDIT: Hmm, I noticed that I rambled a bit too much. There are several other things I wanted to mention. I am not in a position to offer a concrete solution as I'm not an expert in this topic. I've only seen this from afar and read almost daily on the newspapers about what's happening in the country. As I mentioned, the problem is far too big to be reduced into a couple of paragraphs. There are countless books, articles, essays, blog posts, etc, devoted to this specific topic and the solution offered varies (albeit slightly) from person to person.

If anyone is interested in more information, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Of course a war isn't as simple as killing the enemy. I assumed that was a given.

I feel sympathy for the people who are forced to join violent gangs. I also feel sympathy for the young, uneducated, impoverished people who join such gangs because they feel they have no other option. But if they are committing violent acts not just against rivals but also against young, uneducated, impoverished people who are completely innocent, then the amount of sympathy starts to fade. When and if the Mexican government decides that they have truly had enough, these misguided youths still have the option of throwing down their weapons.

>When and if the Mexican government decides that they have truly had enough, these misguided youths still have the option of throwing down their weapons.

See, here's the thing: like every other government in the world, those in control are the corporations. Because investing money in something that, to be fair, doesn't actually affect them (and in reality, it benefits them greatly), and which gives them no return, they won't do it.

And this is where these topics usually get a bit tough because any supposition isn't based entirely on fact (primarily because it's so easy to cover up or dismiss accusations, since all of those in power are ultimately working together (and this, again, is also pure speculation)). It borders on conspiracy.

I agree, I touched on this topic below in a response to anigbrowl.

This. The root of all the cartel's power is the army of kids who would rather trade their lives for a couple years of fast money. Lack of education,poverty, and all the other unresolved problems are biting back hard. Let's hope there's a realization that things need to change from the root, with no people willing to hold a gun there's no war. Giving chance to people to have good education, good lives, make it not worthy for them to trade their life for a couple of years of fast riches.

1-"degenerate shitbags, or maybe adults making a rational decision to work for an employer balancing risk & compensation in a chronically high unemployment society working for a company operating in a very high margin business.

2- "there are bullets enough in this world to solve such a problem." the same amount that solved the Afhanistan war, right ?

3- "I think first of finding ways to prevent children from becoming addicted to hard drugs" . what a patronizing & woefully uninformed profiling of the typical drug user.

4- "Unfortunately, just because something can be accomplished, doesn't mean that it's going to happen." 50 years, trillions of dollars & hundreds of thousands of dead beg to differ.

I'd much rather the Mexican people deal with the Cartel than the United States. I wasn't suggesting a U.S. Invasion. Clearly it's difficult to solve someone else's problem. If the overwhelming majority of the Afghan people wanted the Taliban gone, and they had U.S. support, and we didn't fuck a bunch of stuff up, then of course we could have rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. If the Afghans legitimately trusted us, and supported us in large enough numbers, the Taliban would have had trouble finding even caves to hide in.

Also I never made any claim that the "average" drug user was a child, just that it is a huge problem. The drug addicts that you know might have been adults when they first started using, but without exception, every one of the dozens of drug addicts I know started as a teenager. I can only speak from personal experience.

Feigning ignorance to the fact that there is an epidemic of children in our country becoming addicted to drugs is the most "woefully misinformed" thing I've ever heard. Just because someone wants to be pro-legalization, doesn't mean they have to ignore reality.

Edit: Apparently I have a habit of using the terms drug addict and drug user interchangeably. No offense was intended by this and I'll try to be more specific in the future. I understand that there is a distinct difference.

It still sounds like you think of a 'typical drug user' as an addict. I think the point was that a good portion of drugs are consumed by fairly responsible, recreational users.

Just because I was talking about addicts, doesn't mean that I think every drug user is a stereotypical addict. Likewise, just because I said that a large number of kids are getting addicted to drugs, doesn't mean that I said that all drug users started as children. Initially, I just mentioned that there is an absurd number of children being exposed to extremely harmful drugs before they are old enough to legitimately make a decision for themselves. There are drugs that are relatively harmless and then there are drugs that will literally destroy your life in a short amount of time, like Meth or Crack. On a personal level I don't really care what a consenting adult does as long as they keep it off the roads, out of the workplace, and as long as it doesn't cause them to mistreat, abuse, or neglect their families.

I've encountered many types of drug users in my lifetime. Several years ago we let my brother in law live with us for 6 months because he was homeless and trying to get off of heroin. He started doing hard drugs as a young teenager because his adopted parents were abusive drug addicts. We watched him regain his health only to have him get addicted to pain medication just a few months after he moved away.

On the other side of the spectrum, I've run into people who have used drugs for 30-40 years for recreational purposes, while enjoying a happy marriage, successful kids, and a steady job.

If you know that the money you spend on your recreational drug flows to drug cartels and funds murder and torture, then yes, you are a "responsible" user, responsible for murder and torture.

Don't buy the drugs and you starve the cartels. You don't have to wait for legalization to have a direct if small impact on murder and torture. Sure, campaign for legalization, but you can take direct action this minute.

The solution to the problem of money going to drug cartels isn't to get everyone to stop using drugs. That approach has been tried and failed spectacularly. When there are capitalistic, systemic problems with drugs and violence, we need to take a systemic approach and legalize and regulate drugs. Demand isn't going anywhere.

Overall demand may not be going anywhere, but any individual can decide that they don't want to send money for murder and torture. Or they can decide that they don't mind.

Yes because people who use drugs are "drug addicts". And don't forget the "pushers" who hang around outside schools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap2ss-Wz6Fo

>If the overwhelming majority of the Afghan people wanted the Taliban gone, and they had U.S. support, and we didn't fuck a bunch of stuff up, then of course we could have rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. If the Afghans legitimately trusted us, and supported us in large enough numbers, the Taliban would have had trouble finding even caves to hide in.

Ugh. I would be nice if Americans could start learning the right lessons from their past mistakes. Listen, I'm rather sorry to tell you this, but just fuck off. Please.

Why don't you try explaining what the right lessons are instead of telling people to "fuck off?"

Because the right lessons are self-evident and if you can't see that then there isn't much point in bashing my head against a wall trying to explain that, no, the reason you failed in Afghanistan and Iraq and, for that matter, Vietnam, isn't because of some failed public relations campaign.

(But I'll give it a go regardless.)

It's because, regardless of intent, war is hell, and eventually everyone will know someone who has had an arm blown off as collateral damage, or they'll read about the fifth wedding ceremony this year to have been accidentally vaporized by a cluster bomb. Everyone will either have been directly affected by, or at least know someone directly affected by, the ongoing civil war instigated and perpetuated by a foreign power. I mean, can you imagine if the Chinese tried to do nation building the US? No matter how bad it were to get in the States, people would resent that and they would be right to.

And it doesn't help that the US has a well-deserved reputation, in the Middle East and elsewhere, of propping up failed states run by ruthless, brutal dictators. You have no moral high ground to claim. None.

But honestly, this is just a basic, common sense thing. Your military should engage the armed forces of other countries when those armed forces pose some existential threat to you. In no other case is it appropriate. If you don't already know this it's because you are willfully ignorant to it. So, please just fuck off.

I never implied that it was a "failed public relations campaign" that took place in Afghanistan. I also didn't imply whether or not the U.S. was making the right decision to go into Afghanistan. My point in mentioning the lack of support of the Afghan people was pretty much the same thing you were saying. I wasn't suggesting that we needed to win them over, I was simply pointing out the fact that success was always impossible unless we had the support of the overwhelming majority. We didn't have the support, because the Afghan people (rightly) didn't want to engage in civil war, because war is a horrifying experience for anyone. As far as my statement that the war in Afghanistan was "winnable", I was speaking on a technical basis, making no claims whatsoever about the morality. I was also speaking on a technical basis when talking about the Drug Cartels. Other than saying the world would be far better off without such people, I made no claims about who should be responsible for making the decision to go to war with them. I acknowledged the drawbacks to it, and as you said, they are indeed obvious.

From a technical "whether or not it's possible" standpoint, If the majority of the Afghan people wanted to get rid of the Taliban badly enough to start a civil war on their own, the hundred thousand or so members of the Taliban would have found themselves facing an army of millions instead of a hundred thousand foreign soldiers who traveled to Afghanistan and found themselves in a world they didn't understand. The same goes for the situation in Mexico. I wasn't commenting because I think that it's my country's business to act as World Police, I just find it frustrating that somewhere around 200 million people were killed in genocides worldwide during the last century by people who are quite a bit like Hussein, Bin Laden, and the leaders of the Cartel. The world largely responds to situations like this by looking the other way when offered favorable trade agreements, or by stating that we should let other cultures live however they want, when it's never the people getting slaughtered that made the choice.

As far as the United States' policy of putting violent dictators in charge of failing nations, I, like most people in the United States, disapprove. I can't do anything to change it, but I accept the fact that it makes us look like douche-bags.

One more thing. Perhaps you feel like you are bashing your head against the wall when you try to explain your ideas because your hostility overwhelms whatever point you are trying to make. A little civility never hurt anyone.

"soldiers"?

http://nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/narco-war-update

I'd rather fight marines than these guys; at least I'd get a double tap instead of something much worse...

Producing drugs is almost as easy as growing flowers. And people are clamoring to give you billions to get them. How can you imagine to stop that?

Of course it is possible to kill the current 150 000 drug soldiers but it just becomes a giant game of whac-a-mole.

One gigantic waste of money, time, and human lives.

I take it you've heard the Einstein quote on the definition of insanity?

What you describe is basically what we're doing now, to the extent we're willing to fund it.

But instead of, you know, invading yet another country on the barest of pretenses, how about legalizing the drug trade, thereby depriving these cartels of their funding and, indeed, their very raison d'etre. The addiction problem you can solve within the health care and education systems, at far less cost (and much more effectively!) than waging a global, never-ending war on drugs.

Then, if you're up for it, after the members of the now-defunct cartels are weakened, you can go after them with the bullets. Should be much easier.

I mean, you say it right in your post: "long, ugly, and bloody for all parties involved". In fact what you describe is not a hypothetical at all, it is the existing War on Drugs. But then you just sort of dismiss that and continue on with your insane 'plan'.

Thank you Bush administration for meth.

"At one time, the sleeping pill Quaalude was as big a problem in the United States as heroin and cocaine. But then, in a matter of just a few years, it disappeared. If the successful strategy the DEA pursued in cracking down on Quaaludes had been followed when meth surfaced a few years later, experts say it is unlikely the meth epidemic would ever have happened. "

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/faqs/quaaludes....

Under the unrealistic assumption, that this is not a troll comment, it should be nominated as the most loony anti-Bush statement in a while.

Just because the Bush administration (successfully!) got the misuse of a sleeping pill under control, they were getting people hooked on meth?

There is absolutely not causation identifiable in the linked article. Plus the effects and user groups seem to be very little overlapping, illegal use of the drug had surged, especially among teenagers. Users would 'lude out," combining the drug with alcohol to achieve a drunken, sleepy high sounds like a suburban middle class problem, while I suspect Meth a lot less socially accepted. But Meth is a disruptive drug through its super low barriers of entry to become a producer, therefore super price competitive and a tendency for over supply.

Uhhh, the link proves popular drugs can be "disappeared". The link shows the US government only partially limited ephedrine (meth) and thus failed.

To a thoughtful reader the article illustrates going after precursor chemicals used to make drugs, rather than focusing on policing of users as an effective way to eradicate abuse.

Watch a video of the complete Frontline episode. There is an interview of the DEA official describing his higher-ups killing a complete ban due to lobbying from companies that make over the counter cold medicines based on ephedrine.

Bush and Congress were both lobbied effectively by big pharma.

Ephedrine is not meth. Ephedrine is ephedrine, meth is methamphetamine.

Pseudoephedrine is a cold medicine (decongestant) that is used as a feedstock chemical in the production of meth. It is a relatively harmless medicine in prescribed doses. A complete ban of this medicine would greatly inconvenience tens of millions of hay-fever and allergy sufferers, including me.

Currently in the USA, due to the meth industry, individuals 18 years of age and older are limited to purchasing 2.4g per day of pseudoephedrine, and need to provide a government issued ID to make the purchase.

Most meth being sold is made in Mexico, from legit ephdrine/ephedra. Then it is smuggled into the USA for sale.

If there were no industrial sources of ephedra, meth/speed would have to be made from plants like Ma-huang. The economies of making it this way do not support the explosion ephedra drove in meth production.

Millions of dollars of ephedrine based cold 'medicine' are sold over the counter each year making companies like Pfizer serious profits. So they lobbied Bush & Congress not to ban it completely.

These events created the meth hell America has been living in, and it could have been stopped.

Millions of dollars of ephedrine based cold 'medicine' are sold over the counter each year making companies like Pfizer serious profits. So they lobbied Bush & Congress not to ban it completely.

And good for them. I'm not sure why you are placing 'medicine' in quotes. I have found that pseudoephedrine helps allergy and hay fever sufferers like me to deal better with dry winter weather and spring pollen. Substitutes like phenyleprine are weak at best.

Every time I purchase pseudoephedrine, I am reminded of the government's futile war on drugs, when the clerk scans my ID and has me sign the keypad stating that I won't buy more than 2.4g per day or start a meth lab.

Which I won't. I just want to use a legal OTC medication for its intended purpose.

What he is saying is that it is in human nature to get high. And we better accept this and tailor our legislation accordingly, instead of trying in vain to deny it.

Legalizing would stop violence, increase taxes, allow for open research of the substances, would de-stigmatize use, which in turn would make users more willing to seek cure or support of others and would allow for better education of future potential users (aka children) on the caveats of drug use and abuse.

Drug use has produced a great deal of 'positive' outcomes for our society. They have drastically changed our culture, art, economy and technology.

Of course, their dark side is well known, but I think it would be a lot easier to deal with the dark effects of drugs if they were legal.

I'm glad there's lots of signs that this is about to happen all around the world pretty soon. Let's see what happens.

There are so many ramifications, specially with what happens in terms on the national relationships once the money flow is cut to some with drugs being made legal. We don't know how bad things could get for Mexico, and which strings are being pulled when the wrong people being left out of the money. There's also the people. It's easy to think a narc will become a happy member of society and do the nice drugs business once it's legal and stay there in a bubble. You're talking about people knowingly poisoning others and murdering by the hundred. Legalizing the substance won't make those people ethical well behaved persons caring for society. With truckloads of capital to move to other industries, imagine if the doors are fully open for top cartel people to move freely and move to rule the food, communications, or health industries. They're not the kind of people who would rather loose money to stop producing a bad batch of food that poisons people or avoid making people sick to increase profits.They can easily threaten a government inspector, wipe whoever gets in their way since they already do that, plus they have many of the law enforcers in their payroll. It's not like making new law will stop them from doing things their way. If legalization is the solution, at least first their economy and power can't be big enough so that they won't wreck other hubs in the country. So far seems like a fight to make cartels as small as possible to be controllable.

Without ongoing revenue the shadow government cannot sustain its own life. It's blood is bribes (quite literally sadly).

This idea that cartels can take their capital on hand and then move directly into being the monopoly player in some other market is more than a bit fantastic.

They already do it, but it's the extend of it the worrying thing. There's plenty of known "Narc owned" businesses in mexico. I'm from there and it's quiet a thing to see strange things like 3 car washes in the same block, with no clients, open 24/7 and some escalades parked. Now imagine if they had a steady flow of clean fully open income to invest and the doors open to become public persons.

Where is this clean open income coming from?

What I was saying is that, given how much money comes in from drugs, they are already able to own plenty. Even when drug money can't be spent freely or things done openly. If drugs are legal then 100% of the money is available freely to a handful of people from cartels, who may even own a significant % of Mexico's Gdp. I'm imagining a situation similar to Italy, there are articles on the Naples trash monopoly owned by the mafia for example. With so much money, cartels can easily own larger industries in Mexico and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I don't think you understand what's being discussed when people talk about legalization in the US. If the US legalizes, the cartels are not going to be the ones supplying drugs to anyone in the US. Legalization in the US will not legitimize the cartel's business, it will destroy it.

Usage rates of marijuana in Mexico are one tenth the US, and Mexico has one third the population. Without the US black market, the cartels' revenue will be reduced to just a couple percent of their current intake.

I've read quite a bit about the situation in Italy as well. It's not easy to compare what happened to Italy with what's going on in Mexico now. The Cosa Nostra were never dependent on drug or smuggling revenue in the same way as the Mexican cartels are currently. The US military directly supported them as part of the invasion of Italy in WW2. After the war during reconstruction, Cosa Nostra was able to monopolize nearly all construction revenue in southern Italy and integrate itself into every corner of Italian government and public life. The Mexican cartels are terrifyingly powerful, but they are nowhere near close to that yet.

He does have a point though, that they may get there eventually.

I don't think the cartels will disappear overnight, either. But they will see a large chuck of funding dry up, and it will then be easier to after them for their previous crimes as well as whatever they get into next.

I have a feeling you mean drug lords or cartel or drug dealers when you say narc. However, narc is actually a good guy, ie a cop or federal agent enforcing the drug laws.

You're right, My bad. I was thinking of narc as "Narco", the drug lords.

In Mexico it's common to refer to people connected to the cartels as 'los narcos'. A bit backwards from what you'd expect in English, but that's how things go when languages collide.

It's short for "narcotraficante" - drug trafficker. Hence, "el narco" is the drug producer/dealer.

"knowingly poisoning others"

Tobacco and alcohol dealers do the same, yet they are quite civil...

Wow, a politician who gets economics 101! Can we get some more of those?

Most politicians get economics 101. The problem is most do whatever it takes to get votes/popularity.

Another outgoing politician.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I'd rather have some more politicians who get economics 585.

Not until they retire, it seems.

A lot of politicians display hidden depths of intelligence, clarity, and insight -- usually after they no longer need to run for office.

We have plenty such politicians. We need an electorate that understands economics 101.

Surely the simpler solution is a restoration of dictatorship (it worked wonders for Paraguay under Dr. Francia), with a Benevolent Dictator (plenty exist!) who understands Econ 101 (and, one insists, a great deal of other things the electorate is ignorant about that are highly relevant if one's job is running a country). It also tidies up the problem of inaction. But I'm sure the new report from the Organisation of American States will bring about radically new ideas that everyone will agree to implement immediately!

In a way I am indifferent to legalizing drugs, because I won't buy them anyway. However, I wonder what it would be like in reality? Would it mean you could walk down the supermarket aisle and buy a substance for 9,99$ that ruins your life within seconds? The danger seems to me to signal "drugs are safe" by legalizing them - usually the government is supposed to ban dangerous foods, I think?

Sure, you can already buy cigarettes and alcohol, but I don't think they make you addicted after just one shot.

Just asking - perhaps there are plans for distributing them in a different way?

Also, even if they were legalized, would it mean those drug cartels would go away? They are now an organization embedded in society, why should they loosen their grip? Like if an independent drugstore opens to sell legal heroin, what would stop them from setting it on fire and shooting the owners?

There's not really anything out there that makes you addicted in one shot. Oftentimes people have awful experiences on first dosages of heroin, because overwhelming nausea is a common side effect of high dosages of opiates. It takes more than once to be addicted.

Cigarettes are mostly as addictive as crack cocaine and it still takes sustained high levels of use over days to develop a physical addiction to either.

The FDA would still exist, and would still have a job to do. You wouldn't be able to just sell literal poison in the supermarket alongside the oatmeal. The FDA currently classes items approved for sale into a broad number of categories: food supplements, medicines, etc., but there is nothing there for recreational psychoactive substances and there would probably need to be. The difference between that and the current regime I imagine would be that the focus is on the purity and relative safety of the product rather than 'does this have any medical use' because often it simply doesn't. And as a result of this some things would still be illegal, but it would be more about selling heroin that is only 20% actual heroin and the rest is who knows what, or selling something as marijuana when it's actually low-quality shit laced with PCP or whatever. Banning an entire class of a substance would be a rare thing, I imagine.

As to your second point, I think it's more likely that existing cartels would, in trying to transition to legal enterprise, find that running an actual business takes a set of skills that your typical pack of thugs just doesn't have, and you'd see some retaliation against legitimate suppliers who are kicking their ass on price and consistency. But unlike now where it's law enforcement taking on organized criminals with a shitload of money, they're taking on a husk of an organization that has seen its primary source of funding evaporate almost overnight. Different set of rules, there.

Honestly though I don't know what the cartels would do. It's hard to say. But one thing they wouldn't be doing is spending billions terrorizing innocent people, because they wouldn't have that kind of coin, anymore.

I for one am grievously offended. This degree of Truthspeak is a Droneable offense, and the number of priceless American jobs that would be lost with marijuana reform is an insult to the tens of thousands of Mexicans slaughtered for them.

I still dont understand they governments, especially the uber capitalist ones like the US, make damn sure with their laws, that the money and power are in the hands of drug dealers and cartels.

Restricting supply ups the price. You cant control demand in anything close to a reasonable way. Frankly people want drugs. Americans know this better than most since they had prohibition.

I have always wondered if some how it suits government to have violent criminals controlling the supply and money. If just the money which goes to the war machine, or something else?

It's impossible to end any trade for which there is a market. Drugs, sex, nuclear weapons, state secrets, etc. all seem to create markets to satisfy demand. It might be that the best way to protect innocent lives is to actually encourage the development of the markets to keep them above board and in the public eye.

Shall we create a liquid, transparent, legal market for murder as well?

I would guess that one would only want to create a legal market for an illicit good when the illegality of the market is causing more harm than the market transaction itself. I think that many countries, for example, have tried legalizing prostitution as a way of tackling forcible sex trafficking, unfortunately as far as I've read these efforts have failed to thwart sex trafficking.

I read people saying "duh, this is obvious". Of course it is, and everybody knows it, but it is still important when political personalities start to say it publicly.

Duh!!!

Where there is demand, there is supply.

This is as inviolable as the law of gravity.

Ending fraud, speeding, the sale of body organs or any number of crimes is also impossible. Impossibility is a poor rationale for appeasement.

When people say 'impossible' there is a mutually understood subtext of 'without going absolutely off the fucking rail to make it happen'. In order to stamp out the drug trade you need to:

* Render extinct-in-the-wild (or just plain extinct) a great many species of plants, fungi, and even a few animals, many of which have a rather large range and are difficult to kill.

* For whatever you miss in step one either because the precursors have legitimate uses we can't do without, or because we find we just can't kill them all, you need to tightly regulate and enforce a strict prohibition on those precursors in order to track who is doing what with what.

* Implementing the above step in a way that will really effectively reduce drug availability to nearly zero would require nothing short of global, endless warfare and a dystopian police state that would make Oceania look like - I don't know, Iceland? This is because some drugs are synthesized with very common materials and as such the only way to be sure no one is making them is to know what everyone is doing, all the time.

* To the extent you can't implement the previous step in full, you need to be sure the punishments meted out for failure to comply are especially harsh, so that enough people who think they can skate by under the radar are deterred.

* If you can do all this, you will drive the prices of drugs so high that the reward for manufacturing even a small quantity of something, provided you have the means to move the product, will definitely motivate people to try anyway. And if they achieve some success, they now have resources to fight you/bribe your allies.

So, doing the War on Drugs 'right', means giving up anything more than a pretense of freedom and democracy. Meanwhile, the cost of just legalizing the shit and treating addiction as a medical issue seems far less dire in comparison. When people say 'impossible' they mean 'impossible to do so in a way consistent with our values'.

Can you say the same for fighting fraud, speeding, and the sale of body organs? I think that you cannot.

Or you can go after the wall street bankers who launder the drug money, pulling the plug on the pushers' finances.

Are you suggesting this in addition to the above, or as an alternative? It is not an alternative.

Duh. We've been saying this for years.

Legalize all drugs and tax them.

You can't stop something that people want them.

If you think it's bad for somebody's health or is addictive, then I've got news for you: alcohol, sugar, caffeine, bacon.

I've never even tried pot or anything stronger, but I still support legalization.

But let's cut to the chase, this is not about drugs and health issues. This is about money and jobs for DEA. Essentially, we're pissing away our tax money to pay for DEA agents and their expensive toys, who, in turn, don't provide any real service.

This drug war is expensive, it costs dollars and lives. It's trivial to end it, but it's not happening. Too many dollars at stake.

and probably spend the tax dollars to educate society about using said drugs responsibly in a controlled fashion, and you probably have a pretty good system.

After all, a big part of the problem is a lack of knowledge in the users on how to manage their use of the substances.

I think what people want and what people need run counter-current. I know too many people who wasted their lives getting high: there is a feedback here. Opportunities close, more time is spent getting high and `smoke weed everyday` becomes a mantra. The only flip side is that some of the folks I know can play a mean bass guitar.

I smoke weed every day, and have done for a number (perhaps 7? years).

In those seven years I have done: 1) a undergraduate degree 2) a PhD (almost) 3) Spent three years as a full time professional student representative (nee politician). 4) Written approximately 80K words of fiction and non fiction. 5) Learned statistics, programming and web analytics.

So, perhaps weed is necessary but not sufficient for someone to waste their lives. That being said, I have seen many people who get lazy and just waste their lives, but I suspect that many of them would have found another crutch, if they didn't have the weed.

By the time one is 42 like me, one has seen many people waste their lives without any help from weed whatsoever.

This drug war is expensive, it costs dollars and lives. It's trivial to end it, but it's not happening. Too many dollars at stake.

I was with you until this, not because I disagree but because I think it's an irrelevant issue. There are many examples of enforcement/regulation wings of the government being rolled back when the political tide turned against them. The issue is that law enforcement expenditures, like military expenditures, are pitched as a response to public fears.

If you talk to older generation, suburban family folks who support criminalization instinctively, their number one stated concern is, in my experience, that they are afraid of drug-related crimes -- robbery, burglary, theft i.e., crimes being committed to support a habit (so the hypothesis goes). Now the obvious response to that is to point out that those things happen now, but then you are engaging an issue of the heart by attacking a point made in their head. This will probably segue into an argument about stiffer criminal penalties -- the exact opposite of what we want -- because the person is still afraid.

DEA toys don't figure into this argument, even if that is the end result, so if you want this to happen before that generation is old and gone you have to have an argument that addresses the core concerns people actually have. If you have to talk about the DEA, even if you are technically correct, I doubt anybody can be swayed by such an argument -- it's all cerebral and doesn't address the central issue, which is fear.

That's MHO anyway.

Law enforcement dollars is much bigger than the DEA. Think of all the local and regional task forces, and especially the prisons. That's a lot of money, salaries, services, profit.

So there's a source of campaign contributions and other lobbying efforts, or bribery.

And then there's the purely political side. Very few politicians will come out in favor of legalization or decriminalization. Not because they care one way or another. They just don't want to hand a brick to their opponent, which will be used. "Candidate Sluggo is soft on drugs, soft on crime!"

To play devil's advocate: do you think that drug-related crimes would increase or decrease as a result of legalization?

It's a question I haven't considered before, but one that takes a bit of consideration. I certainly don't see it decreasing. (I support legalization by the way, I side with libertarians on issues regarding the choice of what to do with one's body. However, the libertarian camp also advocates a government who's primary concern is protecting citizen's from violence. Just an aside.)

By "drug-related crimes" are you referring to crimes of trafficking, or crimes committed while under the influence (because the perpetrator is under the influence).

For the former, I don't see how it could do anything but decrease. As to the latter, I suspect initially it would go up, but I don't think that would last. And, the drop off in crimes related to trafficking would more than make up the difference. Having said that, crimes related to trafficking do tend to be heavily concentrated into fewer areas, so the typical suburban white fear-loving voter would probably perceive that crime has gone up.

> Legalize all drugs and tax them.

I would not tax them anymore then they are taxed allready.

> But let's cut to the chase, this is not about drugs and health issues. This is about money and jobs for DEA. Essentially, we're pissing away our tax money to pay for DEA agents and their expensive toys, who, in turn, don't provide any real service.

The burocratic overhead is one reason for sure but I do not think its the most importend one.

I think the most importend one is that the politics does not want to admit that the ware wrong for 50 years. How would that look if the democrats came out with legal drug policys? Tell people X for 50 years and then switch to telling them (not X).

The next reason is the ignorance of the people, 50 years of anti-drug propaganda had a effect. This kind of propaganda becomes self-enforcing after a while. Many people actually belive all that crap that is said about drugs.

>I would not tax them anymore then they are taxed allready.

This is something you hear far too much, as well. "Legalize them and then tax the hell out of them." It's a good way to find ourselves right back where we started: an illegal drug market (where the market is illegal this time rather than the drugs) which drives up crime.

Alcohol and tobacco are taxed heavily in most countries, and most people still prefer to buy it legally.

Counterpoint: New York has a thriving black market in smuggled cigarettes.

Which parties win more in the war on drugs even if most battles are lost? Hmm... let's see...

Firstly, government agencies that are in the frontline they get as they get hefty budgets to spend on whatever they find necessary to carry out their mission. Since they fight a war that means weapons, vehicles, communications and surveillance tech, etc. here profits go to industries that provide the goods, lobbyists, and corrupt government agents.

Secondly, by having no illegal cheap alternatives, people who like to get stoned will have to resort to legal drugs. Alcohol, and nicotine come to mind as being equally cheap, but not as effective. Also, prescription drugs, harder to get and a little more expensive, tough widely accept by society. No need to layout the parties who profit the most here.

In the end everyone else in society has something to loose by dealing with the aftermath of yet another hopeless war. Something much worse then educatating peers about the drug use and spending tax money in improving society as a whole.

We have to end this nonsense. But, here's the the trillion dollar question. How can we do it when so many people profit on this?

Decriminalization for all substances but legal production only for the ones that do not severely harm the body in short-term (not heroin, crack, crystal meth and similar ones)

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