Politicians constantly talk about stopping the illegal immigrants that are coming from Mexico, but putting a wall has never and will never be a solution since the reason why so many displaced keep coming across the border is mostly to escape the crime, corruption, inequality, and violence of they have to live in their home countries. The worst part is that most of these terrible things is that happen in third world countries are rooted in constant subversion by developed countries, primarily the US. I feel like since we caused this (even if in part) we should help stop it now, even if we didn’t publicly admit guilt to save face.
So, how do we do it? Do we straight up invade Mexico and go on a full out war against the cartels like we did against Osama Bin Laden?
If not, why not? And, is there anything that can be done?
I would like to keep things civil. Please, let’s keep this respectful as I know this is a tough issue and there is anger on both sides of this issue.
Legalize all the drugs. Stop providing them a market.
Just a reminder that, while drugs are the cartels’ biggest income, it’s not the only one. They’ll just move onto produce and other goods like avocados and lemons. This was news years ago but I’m not at the computer to link.
For that it would help to properly design and enforce laws against tax evasion, money laundering and criminal financing. But i am afraid the rich around the world would rather have another world war than pay fair taxes and be barred from doing business with murderers.
I like how you use the word ‘rich’ instead of ‘cartel’ as if there were a useful distinction between them. They differ only on the scale of how openly they embrace violence as a solution.
Good. Let them justify their private armies to the accountants when police protection for legal operations is free.
You say that as if illegal operations is a valid justification (to the law) for having a private army.
Yeah, that’s why they do end up legitimizing after some time for some of these reasons. lol So maybe it’s a good thing in the grand scheme of things, even if it’s kind of shitty for the people who played fair to get to where the others got for free.
In that case subsidize the techniques to grow that stuff domestically.
They’re displacing and controlling domestic farming operations. It’s the reason why lemons and avocados shot up in price a few years ago despite there not being a shortage. They essentially monopolized the entire industry across the northern half of the country and would squeeze newcomers out via intimidation and other mob tactics. At least, that’s what my family tells me who used to have a lemon processing factory.
Right so break it. Every monopoly has fallen eventually this will just be another one. We have all this tech and smart people and we can’t figure out how to grow a lemon?
Think of how many tens of billions of dollars of damage are caused by the cartels and how little it would take to make Florida the chief lemon producer. Much like OPEC the only way they could stay operational is by lowering their prices, with lower prices they are less successful at getting recruits and maintaining them. Who wants to work harder and harder for less money?
These are cartels, dude. They have people infiltrating the government and policemen who have been threatened to death to comply or die. Corruption is rampant at very top levels of government and part of it is fueled by the US itself, directly and indirectly. We’ve been waging a war against them for for decades and you know what they do when the local government “oversteps”? They go on shooting sprees downtown killing anyone in sight and go decapitate politicians so they can hang their heads off bridges. It’s brutal. This is not the USA.
There are so many things I’m not even touching that have happened in the past decade that make this so much more complicated than it seems. They can easily rile up a month-long standoff with authorities, as they did in Michoacán vs the local government and then the military. They’re well-coordinated and they have modern equipment, warehouses, free labor in the form of slaves, an underground network, connections to people in high places, and anything you could ask for to avoid the law. It’s quite insane.
Just to paint you a picture, a local government kidnapped and murdered 43 students who dared protest in 2014 with the help of the cartels in a top-down operation, and where 26 more people were murdered who dared investigate. That’s the level of shit we’re up against.
Including stuff like fentanyl and tranq and allow anybody to buy it?
Here’s the thing - most people aren’t actually interested in trying hard drugs. The people who are, will probably obtain them irregardless of legality. Given that, what is the harm in mass legalization? It keeps money out of the cartels and back into the community via taxation; it ensures the drug is pure and safe to consume with no additives; and for the individuals who afterward decide it is not for them, they can get the help that they need without worrying.
Exactly this. When Portugal decriminalized drugs, they saw a decrease in usage-related deaths, drug crimes, and an increase in rehabilitation. Overall, there has been a decline in drug use as a result.
But you have to put the money into the treatment. Oregon isn’t quite doing that yet, and the lag between legalizing the drugs and actually increasing services has been pretty bad for everyone involved.
Hopefully we get it straightened out in the next year or two.
Dont you love how every country in the world just acts like this didnt happen (and still is very successfully)?
It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, the way part is legalizing, the hard part is intensive treatment required for success. Some US tried harm reduction and it majorly backfired drugs were now cheaper and easier to get.
What was successful is the method of treatment, but that’s expensive and countries simply don’t want to do that. Plus it would catch a ton of flak from Republicans so it’s screwed.
Predictable dosing will save lives from overdoses.
I’d imagine some sort of NIST to maintain a standard would make it more expensive, which would result in people looking for their local dealers again.
Yes. The same as alcohol.
No. Regulate and offer known recreational drugs pure.
Very few people take fentanyl on its own or intentionally. Even tranq (which I hadn’t heard of but just looked up) is primarily harmful because it’s often tainted with fentanyl or other potent yet potentially fatal additives. Fentanyl does not need to be legally sold, because there is no real market for it.
Hell, even fucking weed is tainted, primarily with silica-based desccants, in countries where it’s still illegal (*cough* UK *cough*).
However if people could get pure, laboratory tested recreational drugs then these issues could disappear overnight. Heroin is bad when you fall deep into addiction, but most heroin users wouldn’t get into that state if they could take the drug legally without taboo or victimisation of illicit dealers. 100 years ago opium dens were a thing, and there were some people deep in the poppy - but there were also people just as deep in their alcohol suffering worse. Alcohol is less of a problem today, and back in the 90s there was a study funded by DARE (and subsequently unpublished because they didn’t like the results) that determined most heroin users were in fact business men and women earning large salaries with enough income to support their habit with high quality product.
Just like digital piracy is a service problem, drug addiction is a societal mental health problem, and criminalising it only allows the problem to fester to extremes.
Decriminalise possession, keep supply of the most fatally harmful drugs illegal, legitimise and tax known recreational drugs.
But if you legalise all drugs, as you say, no one will want to use shit like fent at all. Fent was legal for decades, it’s older than most opioids. It wasn’t an issue until the crackdown on pills.
I think possession of any drug should be legal. However, the intent behind its use can still be illegal. If you have fentanyl and can demonstrate you only have it for some genuine use, and aren’t looking to cause harm with it, then that shouldn’t be a problem. Supplying fentanyl is much more likely to be a harmful circumstance, and its supply should be controlled.
Imo spending the effort to educate people instead of cracking down on sellers or producers makes much more sense.
In a world with clean accessible morphine, no drug user will seek our fentanyl, no matter how easy it is to find.
I’d argue to legalize everything including the extremes and price the extremes to barely undercut and drive out any illicit market. It is always better to have control over a legitimate market than it is to have a black market. There is no way to regulate demand and creating market choke points is totally ineffective. So use state run capitalism to make the market uncompetitive and drive out any competition to gain full control. The State as the dealer makes more sense than the State playing wack-a-mole in the middle.
I dunno, I think it’s more complicated than that. First off, there are some things that should be prohibited - it’s illegal to privately own nuclear weapons, for the most extreme example. Second, many of these truly harmful drugs have tiny markets, and these markets are in fact propped up by other, more conventional drugs being illegal. If heroin were legal, very few if any people would even consider fentanyl, such that fentanyl could be prohibited entirely without having an out of control illegal market.
In some sense, though, we do already have a controlled legitimate market for these prohibited things. Even cannabis, even during the prohibition, had some legal purchase avenues for the purpose of research. Even nuclear, that’s manufactured by private businesses with permission from the government. That works for the vast majority of drugs, it only fails with popular, relatively low harm recreational drugs where the law just isn’t reasonable against the potential harm.
No one wants that crap. When I did drugs I wanted pain pills but they kept cracking down, so here we are with worse stuff.
I don’t support that. I support a FDA regulated opiod pill that has known dosages. It will get you high and if you OD posion control knows exactly what to do. Even forgetting about human dignity for a moment, it will save us all money to do it this way. If someone really wants to spend the next 18 hours of their life on a couch zonked out they should it do safely.
The pill will be in certain stores, on the outskirts of town. It will be taxed. You will have to sit through a video on exactly how you are to use it safely. You can camp out in a safe usage site and have a locker for your keys. At least in my ideal version of it.
As expensive as this all is it is nothing compared to what we have now.
They would rather the addicts all die from Fentanyl laced bullshit than do that. They make way too much money with it being illegal
Maybe instead of invading the US should stop arming cartels? https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/02/stopping-toxic-flow-of-gun-traffic-from-u-s-to-mexico/
Maybe the US and their DEA should stop funding and working with cartels https://world.time.com/2014/01/14/dea-boosted-mexican-drug-cartel/
https://jacobin.com/2023/03/us-mexico-war-on-drugs-garcia-luna-calderon
Maybe the US should stop israel from selling tools like pegasus which are used to hack and attack journalists https://web.archive.org/web/20240116033152/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/world/americas/pegasus-spyware-mexico.html
Or maybe the US should stop doing coups across latin america and putting dictators in power (too many to link)
But but but muh free market
“Hey, I’d like to buy some drugs”
“NO! NO FREE MARKET FOR YOU!!”
This is a very simple take that fails to capture any of the nuance or depth that these stories require for context. It’s rage bait.
First link: contains the allegation by Mexico that the US is largely responsible for flow of illegal guns across the border. Case dismissed by federal court.
Second link: cited an investigation by a local Mexican newspaper that appears to have deleted the story. No other coverage of this claim except from Business Insider that copy and pasted this article. Each one has broken links to the original newspaper story. My understanding of thr allegations are that the US policy preferred one large cartel instead of numerous medium sized ones, so the DEA backed off Sinaloa to successfully focus on the smaller cartels, and then turned their attention back to Sinaloa.
L E G A L I Z E
Cartels gone overnight. Handle addiction as a medical problem. With legal MDMA, mushrooms, weed and acid, the hard stuff isn’t going to be anywhere near as big an issue as it is currently.
That doesn’t stop the cartels, not by a long shot. Ending prohibition in the US didn’t eliminate the organized crime families in the US, it just moved them to different areas of corruption. If it’s not alcohol, it’s drugs. If it’s not drugs, then it’s gambling, tax evasion, prostitution, loan sharking, organized theft, and so on and so forth. And without correcting the underlying issues driving alcoholism and drug addiction in the US–particularly poverty–complete decriminalization would lead to huge problems. Has led to huge problems in some cities.
While decriminalizing drugs would help to a degree, you need to correct the underlying problems that have allowed cartels to amass so much power in the first place, like weak governments, lack of opportunities, and high rates of poverty.
Dude it’s 90% of their income - of course it will hit them. They won’t disappear but believe me legalisation is the biggest thing they fear.
All I can do is point to how much power the mob amassed in the US during prohibition, and how long they held that power after prohibition ended. Sure, their revenue took a hit, but they moved fairly smoothly into other areas, and corrupted other power structures in order to build and maintain illicit revenue streams. It wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that the mob families in NYC really saw significant consequences.
As an example? Mozarella cheese on pizza. That was fully controlled by the mob for a long time.
Who cares man? Gambling, prostitution, cheese, trash? Those are legit businesses.
As long they’re out of the murder and dismemberment game that’s the win right?
Gambling should never be considered a legit business. IMO casinos et al. should be shut down, for the same reason that payday lenders should be beaten to death in the streets: they’re fundamentally predatory businesses.
The problem with prostitution and organized crime is that it’s not victimless once the mob gets involved. “Bitch better have my money” is a threat; you pay the pimp, or you get beaten, and possibly killed. You want to hire an independent escort? I’m fine with that. But significant amounts of prostitution involve sex trafficking, esp. “agencies” that constantly advertise “new girls”.
All of the businesses that the mob–or any organized criminal gang–is in end up increasing costs due to corruption, and involve the threat of violence if anyone disrupts their money. People that try to compete in sectors controlled by criminal groups tend to end up dead very, very quickly, regardless of what the nature of the business is.
“Prohibition…goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.” - Abraham Lincoln
I get that you personally might have moral issues with gambling etc. but making something illegal doesn’t stop it, it just pushes control into the hands of criminals. Want to give me a single instance where prohibition has ever worked?
If you want to stop cartels legalisation is literally the only path.
but making something illegal doesn’t stop it,
That’s… Not a good argument. Child pornography and prostitution is illegal because it’s morally reprehensible, and incredibly, profoundly harmful to children. Same with murder, robbery, theft, etc. By definition, anything that is illegal is going to be done–or controlled–only by people that are criminals.
Does prohibition stop those things entirely? No, of course it doesn’t. But it gives society tools to fight against them in a way that decriminalizing does not.
A. Consume less cartel produced drugs.
B. Stop giving the cartels guns
Honestly, we shouldn’t consume drugs at all, but to each their one I always say.
However, I completely agree that the ATF should change their policy and prohibit ALL gun sales without a US identification and simple background check at least.
Decriminalize the use of currently illegal drugs, and increase penalties for the dealing of illegal drugs. Then increase funding for the medical treatment of addiction. And homelessness. And food insecurity. Too bad none of that will ever happen, since our stupid government prefers to solve all of its problems with cruise missiles.
Snort less coke, mainly.
Demand will never wane. It is human nature. It’s like yelling really loud “stop being hungry humans!” (well kinda, hunger is not a good analogy but the opinion is that drugs are a fundamental flaw with our human design. Just asking to stop does not work. Also, jailing those who do doesn’t help any either.
The attack has to be financial. Outsell them. Legalize, tax and monitor. Make it a health concern not a law breaking issue. If it is no longer profitable to export, cartels will hurt and weaken and that is how this very powerful organizations are taken down. Take their money away.
The obvious answer: Start producing locally
So, how do we do it? Do we straight up invade Mexico and go on a full out war against the cartels like we did against Osama Bin Laden?
That sure went well, huh? Afghanistan sure is a better place now! Oh, wait…
From what I understand, the US is actively investing in the Mexican economy right now in order to both shift our manufacturing reliability away from China and also to provide economic stability in Mexico to shift power away from the cartels. Please take this with a grain of salt as I do not remember where I read this and cannot provide a source. But from what I recall, the long term plan is to setup manufacturing in Mexico for the above reasons with the bonus of reducing shipping costs, time, and shipment vulnerability. I really hope it works, because if you think about it, it just makes sense all around. If we make Mexico our biggest trade partner, we both benefit in big ways. And the more options people have in Mexico for jobs, the less they have to rely on the cartel.
Aside from that, I used to agree that legalizing drugs would take the market away from the cartels, but then you have to remember that the cartels have since diversified. So stop eating Haas avocados??? I don’t know, I’m just a graphic designer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That’s exactly true, I can only imagine it isn’t widely published because the GOP would rather rant and rave about TEH IMMAGRINTS!! and take any opportunity to say the government isn’t making things better. Meanwhile, a Republican President (you know which one) would rather sell even more production to China with no checks whatsover in exchange for a very cheap bribe.
I think what kick-started this was all the tariffs that were implemented under the Trump administration. It led corporations to move their manufacturing to other countries and in the process, it was generally discovered to work best to move manufacturing to Mexico. Now under Biden, they are trying to actively encourage moving things from China to Mexico.
BUT THE WALL!!
Universal healthcare in the US if breaking bad is right.
“do we straight up invade… like we did…” Do you know the mess that actually comes from there? And How much it had enforced extremist behaviour in other countries.
“What US needs to do?” Start by taking care of your own issues like guns, they will inevitably end up in dark market serving cartels and others, it would also stop massive killing happening in your own country at the same time… Priorities to education and healthcare, Stop invading countries (can’t remember last US invasion which was actually useful…), start supporting smart guys instead of bad/extremist guys so they don’t get more powerful (exemple: Masoud instead of Bin Laden in Afghanistan against Russia).
Had to scroll way to long to find this. Funny to see how Americans think imperialism is a solution.
« Best way to help Mexico ?» stop capitalism and switch to a social system.
The US could stop buying the drugs or stop supplying the weapons. The CIA was heavily involved in the creation of the cartely so the US should stay the fuck out of it. Whenever you try to fix stuff you make it worse. Mostly because you only act like you try to fix it while at the same time looking how to profit from it.
While it’s true that the U.S. is the most convenient market for Mexican cartels, it’s worth knowing that it’s far from the only one. Mexican drug cartels have major connections to markets across the globe. and that Mexico specifically is the de facto administrator of drug trade in the western world. For example, a drug bust in India found fentanyl that had been purchased in Mexico from China. . That’s not the sort of arrangement that the US can ever hope to do away with through domestic legislation without undermining the autonomy of dozens of states around the globe.
While removing the cartels’ access to the American market via decriminalization would certainly take away a lot of funds, let’s not act like black market operations don’t exist in legal markets anyway.
In this hypothetical situation where the US is responsible for Mexico’s drug cartel problem (which I disagree with), I don’t think the road to success ends at the US legalizing drugs.
The US is the key source from war on drugs legislation and still a major fighter against efforts to decriminalize and legalize drugs. If it would change its attitude, it would open up political space for other countries that typically follow suit to the US. Also it would serve as evidence that legalisation with good regulation is better than criminalisation.
This is true, another example is Ecuador who is fighting an incredible surge in gang violence because the Mexican cartels are now operating in the south American country.
When there’s a clean supply of drugs green-lit by a superpower like the US, wouldn’t it naturally be exported to other countries? Sure, the cartel would still exist, but for the drug trade specifically, better availability of safe, quality drugs internationally would reduce international demand for cartel drugs, no? Wouldn’t other countries start manufacturing said drugs to import into the US as well, making it easier to fill the black market with regulated products?
There are definitely some good ideas in this thread, I would like to know, however, where I can go to escape the crime, violence, inequality, and corruption in the United States?
Canada? IDK
I guess we keep going up right? /jk
But seriously, it’s very concerning how much worse the corruption in the US is getting
Definitely. It’s built right into the system. Fucking lobbying. How does any rational person let that continue? We need the zombie of Teddy Roosevelt to run in ‘24.
(Is there a high demand for process managers with decent AI skills in Canada?)
I would also add “Repeal Section 1” to this list. Let Philip Morris, Phizer, and their ilk deal with the problem. The cartels think they have power, they have no idea.
Never heard of this, do you have more information on this section 1?
I’m going to search it up myself, but if you have a good source, please share a link.
I meant schedule 1. My brain is much today. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538457/
Ah gotcha, makes sense, and I absolutely agree, however we still need some form of control on the sale and distribution (like what we have on alcohol for example), as well as a system to be able to help addicts with the medical help they need to get out of addiction.
Wtf is Section 1??? That’s not specific enough.
Ah, my bad. Feeling like crap today. Schedule 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538457/
No worries.
I think you’re referring to the Controlled Substances Act, which details all the shit.
Fun fact, all the links I found at the top of a search about this law seem to have “DEA” in the URL, rather than any regular link to actual legislation. It’s almost as if they’re monitoring them. Most of them were broken lmao.
The thing is, a law needs to exist, it just needs to be written by people who don’t chew crayons. I’m not talking about those tasty ones the Marines gnaw on, but the dodgy import ones that the DEA think make them look classy.
In all seriousness, we don’t need to remove the law (which has a pretty solid name) we just need to reclassify all the drugs and change the penalties to be appropriate for the good of society. Possession of anything in general should not be a crime, except for possession of a significant amount of a potentially fatal drug, as such possession could only reasonably point to intent to supply. Supply of fatal drugs (eg fentanyl, maybe certain bath salts or whatever) should remain illegal. Beyond that, recreational drugs would be better legitimised such that any issues with them can be faced in daylight, instead of dark alleyways. Even the worst of the major recreational drugs wouldn’t be all that harmful if people had support around them - certainly no more harmful than alcohol.
However drug policing is literally the DEA’s bread and butter, they’re not going to give up their job for the greater good.
Legalize and regulate the drug trade and prostitution. Would overnight make those activities significantly less harmful and you would be able to put all that blank check DEA money into treatments and going after child traffickers which is the only market that shouldnt be regulated or exist. Wow. Problem fucking solved. Let them keep their avocadoes and shit. Boom, we just solved billions of dollars worth of problems and can actually use these things to better society for ourselves and the people that the cartel terrorize with this shit. Almost like, they dont want the problem to be solved.
A thing to remember is that legal prostitution is still a vector in the human trafficking trade. Even where it’s legal, women are forcefully relocated to those nations and forced to work.
Most of the prostitution issues would be handled, but you would still need to account for it.
You would have to make it legal everywhere or at least as many places as possible. The world followed the US lead on the drug war Im sure they could follow our lead with this too. Especially if you could demonstrate how it would hurt these criminal operations. If prostitution is legalized in 70% of countries, you just destroyed 70% of their human trafficking operations. Yes there would be the remaining 30% of countries but they already are experiencing that the demand isnt going to go up 70% in those few remaining 30% of countries.
Even in countries where prostitution is legal women are being trafficked against their will to those countries to be forced into sex work.
They’re already being trafficked to the US to be forced into prostitution, why would they care if it’s legalized. It wouldn’t affect their trafficking.
But I also feel you may be inflating the ramifications of legalization of drugs and prostitution. I believe it was Canada or one of the US states where the cost of legally sold Marijuana was still too high and people turned to their old dealers. You’d see the cartel enter the market again with cheaper, more dangerous options for those who can’t afford the higher priced, taxed, and regulated products.
We can regulate those who wish to operate above board, but you can’t stop the pipeline.
