Hacker News Reader

Comment by OvidNaso | Hacker News Reader

But your analysis specifically excluded the source of all of this violence, the wholesale procurement of the drugs by the end user dealers. None of that is different with the Silk Road.

View on HN

That's the locus of the violence. The source of the violence (and of most of the other harms) is the prohibition.

Alcohol and tobbacco dealers aren't involved in shootings in the streets - instead we find them in their shops, carefully following laws and doing business peacefully. Nor are their customers suffering from adulterated goods, or committing robberies to afford black-market prices.

Yep, exactly. The Zetas cartel for example, do not necessarily import & export themselves. They are simply a gang of thugs who move into an area already teeming with drug smugglers/dealers, and extort them for taxes. Since these drug dealers can't go to the police for protection since they are doing something illegal they either pay up or the streets turn into a bloodbath. If you notice the Zetas are mainly concentrated in Northern Mexico where the major smuggling routes into the US are. By controlling those they can siphon off 20-30% of all drug shipments from every other cartel into the US and never have to touch drugs themselves, so are unlikely to be caught. They are just parasites off other people's hard work of manufacturing, smuggling and building sales networks. This business model will only work under prohibition.

Zetas do not hold up trucks full of tequilla and beer going into the US for extortion because they would be arrested. When your business is legal the solution for dealing with thugs is simple: call the cops or sue them. When you are gray area/illegal your only negotiation is to pay them or pick up a gun creating an all out war.

During the prohibition this was a bit different.

It depends on the drugs. There are a lot of cases of producers selling on these market places. Look at a lot of the marijuana vendors, the vetted LSD vendors, the mushroom vendors, etc. Beyond that, there is violence involved in later steps of the drug trade: smuggling, gang turf wars.

{I am strongly in favour of legalising all drugs}

There are problems with some of the manufacture of cannabis. Criminal gangs use trafficked workers, forcing them to work in cannabis farms.

If I was a criminal gang using slaves to grow cannabis I think I'd market it as some home grown organic low yield crop with images of open fields and nice trees.

Just like eggs from caged hens don't show battery farms, but happy chickens walking in green fields. http://www.ecolovers.co.uk/wordpress/labelling-matters-the-r... etc.

Maybe in Mexico they do this. Here there are investors who buy up a dozen houses through shell corps and hire one grower who sets everything up, and is paid a lot of money. The grower then hires people to maintain and protect the grow usually for pretty good money as well. http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3268.html

> Maybe in Mexico they do this.

It happens in England.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com