Or the flood of easy access to stunningly dangerous substances could turn out to have a devestating societal effect overall despite any upside from inceased education.
Or the cost to the economy from an workforce impared beyond what you can imagine today could vastly outstrip and tax revenue.
I’m no fan of this so call “war on drugs” but I’m really not about to get behind some bold social experimet where we just say “Fuck IT!” and throw open the pharmacy doors.
Could you be a little more specific on how Operation Hammer of Justice works?
I’m assuming that the criminals aren’t beheading their victims in view of the authorities. So who is the army supposed to go after? Should they just round up everyone they think might be involved in the drug business? And then what? Are there going to be trials or do we just skip right to the executions?
Seems kind of counter-productive to try to solve your murder problem by killing a bunch of people.
I want to one day. Mexican chicks are hot. I want to nail one before I die.
I think it has something to do with every problem looking like a nail.
That was actually already the point appleciders has made, to which I was replying that the increased supply of education and prevention programs might also counter any resulting societal costs. So replying to that with his original point again just creates and endless loop.
People who choose to participate in the workforce impaired already can do so with alcohol, prescription, or illegal drugs. Just like with alcohol or legal drugs they would likely lose their jobs and might still face criminal charges depending on their work.
I understand your point of view but I never suggested we say “fuck IT” and throw the doors open. They would have to be at least as controlled as alcohol and tobacco are now, and I’m sure most employers, governments and public places would adopt strict policies about employees and the general public not using them on their premises just as they do now with alcohol and tobacco.
But I disagree that regulating and taxing drugs would necessarily cause a huge increase in overall drug abuse in the first place. They are readily available to anyone who wants them in almost any town in the US now. The only difference is who makes a profit on the sale and how the money is used. Right now it is used to buy lavish villas in the mountains, sports cars and yachts and other luxuries for a handful of guys who are overseeing the brutal murder of tens of thousands of people in order to allow this illegal transaction to take place. At the same time we are spending billions to prosecute and jail a bunch of drug addicts who are already addicts even with the current laws.
Making the transaction legal and offering free help with addiction and prevention programs would just cut out all the criminal middlemen (and there are plenty in the US too.) The money it saves us and the additional money it raises might, paradoxically decrease drug abuse overall if used wisely. But even if it didn’t the problem would be no worse than it is today while all crime and violence related to transporting and selling them would be eliminated.
According to a book review by Vinyl Turnip, “Nobody likes a Mexican”. I guess this applies to other Mexicans as well.
I just don’t see how this is supposed to solve things in Mexico. Drugs are legal and all the cartels just retire? They give up on having control over territory? Stop killing those viewed as enemies and start playing nice because the US has looser regulations on drugs?
No, the supply chain is queried and regulated openly. Drug users can make ethical decisions when there are competitors they can purchase from.
Hire Danny Trejo. Give the dude a machete. He’ll straighten things out.
I don’t think changing US policy is going to change much of the situation in Mexico. What if Mexico just legalized drugs and the cartels? Anything would be an improvement over the current Mexican policy of militarization.
How do you reconcile these two statements? You can’t drive 20 kilometers without being stopped for a contraband search, yet the cartels still have guns?
They no longer have billions of dollars flowing into their coffers from the United States, which in turn means they have no money to pay the troops, buy automatic rifles and RPGs, and bribe cops and politicians. They then take what money they have on hand and launder it for investment in more legitimate enterprises.
The value of a hundred kilos of grass in a black market is much higher than a hundred kilos of grass in a legal market. A billion dollars in black market trade doesn’t automatically become a billion dollars in legal market trade. Tax revenues would still be considerable, but I doubt they’d be nearly as high as you seem to think.
Just for reference, Federal, State, and local alcohol & tobacco taxes brought in all together about $45 billion in revenue in 2009. Cite. That should give a good upper range figure of how much money taxes on currently illegal drugs could bring in if they were legalized and taxed. I say upper range because alcohol and tobacco are currently quite popular, and taxed fairly heavily; at least enough so that black market cigarettes and moonshine are an issue.
Not everything has to have a monetary profit to be worthwhile. If this means less or the end of violence I think it is worth more than whatever extra pocket change you can scoop out of it. Why do Americans have to be presented with a financial analysis of things before they approve of it?
Legalize the damn thing already!*
*And I say this as somebody that never smoked, does not drink alcohol, never tried drugs and drinks decaf.
They remove the visual evidence to identify the corpses. Faces and prints.
They don’t know about DNA down there? Man, it IS a backward country.
Sending in the army to “drop the hammer of justice” seems to be what led to the situation being as bad as it is. Report on a Nov 2011 paper published by Human Rights Watch about the escalation of violence over the past five years, since the military got involved. The full report has more
There was a report specifically on the part of the violence which was due to the military committing atrocities on civilians issued in 2009.
Sending in the army seems to have been a terrible idea. The problem needs a different solution. I’m not convinced legalization of the major abused drugs is it though. Although Mexico is the number one source of illegal marijuana, it’s also the number one source of meth, a huge part of the heroin trade, and pretty much holds a monopoly on the US imports for cocaine with over 90% of the coke coming in through Mexico. As of now marijuana is the biggest portion of the cartels revenue, but shutting down demand for weed wouldn’t be the silver bullet people think it would, and cocaine, heroin, and especially meth would be a much harder case to make legalization-wise.
DNA isn’t particularly useful in identifying the body of a John Doe. Firstly, the testing is time consuming and expensive. Secondly, it is worthless without a national database of DNA profiles to match it up to. The US has the largest DNA database in the world. The FBI tracks the number of entries and it currently says “The National DNA Index (NDIS) contains over 10,662,200 offender1 profiles and 423,000 forensic profiles as of March 2012.” About 11 million total, or about 3.5% of the estimated 313.5 million US citizens are in this database.
On the other hand, fingerprint data is EXTREMELY useful for identification. The FBI’s fingerprint database “is the largest biometric database in the world, housing the fingerprints and criminal histories for more than 70 million subjects in the criminal master file, along with more than 31 million civil prints.” That’s still just 32% of the US population. A body with a missing head and hands would be a huge problem to identify in the US as well as in Mexico.
Enjoy,
Steven
Pfizer and Merck aren’t going to make crystal meth, because the liability risk would be too high. And the cartels may not be content to simply let a hundred meth labs bloom around the US without taking action, if that were to mean the end of their profitability. The US suppliers could very well end up still simply being fronts for various cartels.
By way of comparison, consider that garbage disposal is entirely legal, but the industry nonetheless has been dominated by organized crime in parts of the country.
[Nitpick] PCR makes DNA testing very quick and relatively inexpensive. [/nitpick]