Cartel Crackdown

[Californiaman]

Milod you make some good points, as do these guys.

But I don't agree with them on most of their points.

[YOUTUBE]

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[jnastynebr]

Nothing will happen as long as every party keeps making money. Police and Army in Mexico barely make enough money to eat and keep a roof over their heads, so if some thug offers them 3 times their salary in cash to look the other way, whose going to say no? American banks make billions washing money for the cartels, and when the trade commission catches wind, they fine the bank what ammounts to one quarter of a percent of what the institution nets laundering money, so why would they stop? American dealers spend their proceeds on new cars, new houses, and bottles of Dom at the night club, so whose going to complain?

Its terrible to read about the violence that going on in Mexico, but I doubt they are killing random people just for fun. Even money says these bodies that turn up in mines or at the side of the road are people that are involved with the cartels. If you want to fix the problem, you have to develop an infastructure in Mexico that encourages hostility toward the drug lords and pays the police well enough that they wont flip the first time a criminal waves a little paper in front of them. An average person needs to have the opportunity to make a good enough living that they wont choose carrying a machine gun for a gang to put food on the table. Poverty breeds crime, and drugs mean money.

Mexico needs to fix itself. No one can do it for them. Right now the US is providing material support for the Mexican army and police that are on the cartel's pay roll.

As for the US, people that screw with blow and crank will get what's coming to them. Most of the weed smokers I know either grow their own stuff or buy it from a buddy who does, so I doubt that having a good burn after a hard days work puts bullets in the guns of the Mexican mob. If anything it means increased profits for potato chip and frozen pizza manufacturers.

[milod]

Okay, frankly what bothers me most is that everybody "knows" the problem; but I've not yet heard a practical solution beyond marijuana being treated roughly like tobacco and alcohol.

 

There's still a problem of what might constitute "under the influence" in terms of driving, etc., but let's assume that could be handled with a bit of technology. The pot puffer still will have some problems in that THC can remain much longer in fatty tissues than alcohol, for example, and that could be a problem for those who wish to use it "recreationally" as alcohol.

 

But the other stuff I think we still have some problems with the effects of behaviors in a modern mobile society. We don't take trains or cabs in most of America. We drive. Opiates may be relatively easy to handle, too, as with alcohol, but not "uppers" of various sorts that do bring on some pretty bad side effects.

 

It sounds easy to say, "legalize the stuff," but there's a lot more to legalizing much of anything nowadays than there was a century or so ago.

 

m

[adlankj]

well for all of human history' date=' at least as far back as [b']Cain and Able[/b].

 

;)

[jaxson50]

Since 2006, more than 22,700 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico.

[mcmurray]

It's about time.

I was wondering if they were ever going to do something to stem the flow of drugs from Mexico into the United States.

 

There is a way to achieve this' date=' and there is only one way. Legalize, regulate and tax.

 

You may think that this is a win on the war on drugs. It isn't. 400 arrests won't stop anything, other criminals will take their place. Drug use will continue to rise.

 

This guy gets it;

[YOUTUBE']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVtQaHmaO3o[/YOUTUBE]

 

Legallizing currently illegal drugs is NOT a victimless crime. I've seen what 'recreational' usage does to families. Alcoholism is bad enough' date=' but multiply the drug that times ten when one or more parents in a family is a drug user. Loss of family money, loss of employment (not always due to popping positive on a drug test), infidelity, destruction of the nuclear famiy, child abuse and neglect....

[/quote']

 

TommyK - unless you're dead set against alcohol and have never partaken, I suggest you leave this thread. Alcohol is far more dangerous than a lot of illegal recreational drugs - fact. The effect on families you witness has more to do with the legal aspect of a substance than anything else. And guess what? Child abusers will be child abusers, drugs or no drugs.

 

Drunk driving is hard enough to police without adding psychotic drugs to the fray.

 

Wrong. Ever heard of a swab test? It's been used with great success in my country for the last few years. Besides, people already take drugs and drive. Legalization will not add anything to the 'fray'.

[milod]

Yeah, but legalize, regulate and tax what??? Marijuana, opiates and similar stuff probably could be done relatively easily. "Uppers" have another set of problems as does stronger psychotropic stuff - and frankly I don't see how they could be regulated in a practical way. Do we need licensed "opium dens" for LSD?

 

How 'bout other types of "prescription drugs" that are not intended for mood alteration? Where is the line, what are the rules? That's the question from my perspective. What about "viagra," birth control pills and steroids?

 

Allow pills but not stuff you need a needle for? Cocaine, and if so, in what form? How will tests be done on drivers "under the influence."

 

Frankly I think one reason we haven't had the "legalize, regulate and tax" thing so far is that the "how will tests be done" is not an easy question to answer, nor is the "what do you allow and what do you not allow in an over the counter sort of environment." I've seen kids whose bodies will fall apart in 20 years or so from trying to off themselves with "Tylenol."

 

As I said, I can feature stuff like laudanum and mary jane being legalized and taxed and regulated as they were over a century ago more or less - but meth?

 

When I was a "kid," some idiots were mainlining mayonnaise and peanut butter - no kidding - because rumor was that they could get high from it. I covered a major coroner's inquest on the death of a kid resulting from an OD of belladonna when it was sorta legal otc in spite of its known character as a poison as well as the sorta less than lethal doses of alkaloids that bring various hallucinations. Leave it illegal? Or legalize it so kids won't try a forbidden fruit?

 

I have yet to see a bill that seems to make sense to state or federal legislators regardless of politics, and even among some who philosophically agree with legalizing. The problem always comes in "how do we..."

 

m

[mcmurray]

Frankly I think one reason we haven't had the "legalize' date=' regulate and tax" thing so far is that the "how will tests be done" [u']is not an easy question to answer[/u], nor is the "what do you allow and what do you not allow in an over the counter sort of environment." I've seen kids whose bodies will fall apart in 20 years or so from trying to off themselves with "Tylenol."

 

But it is Milod. Swab testing will identify drivers/pilots etc that are under the influence of many different types of drugs. Our police force and aviation authority has been using this method for years, successfully.

[milod]

It's the cost and time element.

 

With minor amounts of various stuff and in relatively minor numbers, yeah.

 

At the level to match alcohol testing? I don't think so.

 

Also the swab tests aren't going to catch anything that isn't suspected in the first place. It's a moving target. Basically what I've seen done nowadays in general by law enforcement has been that if a driver acts odd, and if mary jane is smelled by the officer(s), they run a drug dog through the outfit and take things from there.

 

And again, which drugs are gonna be legal, regulated and taxed? I've never seen a list beyond marijuana. Do we include birth control hormone pills and viagra? Or just stuff intended to get you high or into another world one way or another?

 

I don't wanna sound flip on this because I take it quite seriously. But we're talking about powerful stuff whether it's LSD or meth or ... stuff that could blow your heart almost right out of your chest.

 

The concept gets a lot of support from adults, but I say again, I ain't seen one piece of legislation beyond legalizing marijuana that has been seriously proposed.

 

My prediction is that I'll likely be alive when marijuana is legalized, regulated and taxed; possibly opiates such as laudanum as sold a century and more ago. I think I'll be dead before certain other substances are legalized for over-the-counter sale. I doubt I'll see, for example, cocaine or LSD being legalized OTC.

 

Oh - and you haven't mentioned various antibiotics, hormones, steroids and other pharmaceuticals. Where's the line?

 

m

[G McBride]

Maybe we could all sit around that fire and play guitar.

[mcmurray]

Good idea.

[heymisterk]

Last night, I went to see two Case Western Reserve University professors talk about this very topic (at a brewery, ironically.)

 

One guy - who wrote a book on the drug economy - was particularly enlightening. I think the audience was hoping for a full scale endorsement of legalization. He did not rule that out, but he said looking at other countries where legalization is the norm does not necessarily mean it will work here; not where, in these drug communities, violence is such a normal way of life. He made a case that those who participate in the drug wars will most likely turn to other illegal ways of making money, though perhaps not at the same level. It was one question he was clearly still wrestling with.

 

One thing he was clear about though was his dislike for locking up addicts and users. He said that it takes an addict SEVEN TIMES in treatment before they are able to kick the habit of a hard-core drug. But that is STILL cheaper - and ultimately much more productive for society - than locking them up repeatedly, where they are more likely go get out and repeat their habit, and often graduate to dealing thanks to the skills learned in prison! In addition, it frees up law enforcement to focus on other tasks.

 

On every level, locking up users doesn't make sense.

[Notes_Norton]

It's the cost and time element.

<...>

 

As if the over $1,000,000,000,000 we've already spent on the DEA budget alone, not to mention all the money spent on local police forces, have done anything to curb the "problem".

 

I think testing can be done with a smaller budget than that. And if it gets 20% of the people off the road, it will be better than it is now.

 

The fact is that people are going to get high.

 

In the Brazilian rain forest there is a tree that has a nice high-giving fruit. The problem is that it is so thorny, it is impossible to climb. Since pre-Colombian days, the natives have planted an easy to climb tree right next to it.

 

We have an invasive plant here in Florida that some people call the "Florida Holly". In the winter the berries get damaged and start fermenting. The robins come through in early spring and seek out the fermented fruit so that they can get high and fly around drunk.

 

Even "lower" animals like to get high.

 

During alcohol prohibition, people got rich smuggling it, people made their own, people died drinking tainted alcohol, and innocent people were killed in the crossfire due to the fact that criminals were the suppliers.

 

People are going to get high. You can't stop it.

 

The illegality of the problem is worse than the problem itself.

 

How many robberies and burglaries have been committed against law abiding people to support an illegal drug habit?

 

Contrast this with the number of robberies and burglaries that have been committed against law abiding people to support cigarettes and alcohol?

 

The exorbitant price of the drugs is due to the fact that they are illegal. If they were legalized, most people could afford them and wouldn't have to hit old ladies over the head to snatch their purses, rob the mini-mart clerk, break into someone's house, etc., just to feed their habit.

 

And as I said before, if someone is driving towards me on a two lane highway, I'd much rather they be under no drug influence -- but I'd rather they be under the influence of pot or coke than under the influence of alcohol or a cell phone.

 

And yes, people will be driving under the influence. But they already are. Our trillions of tax dollars haven't made a dent in the numbers of users.

 

And the Liberty thing really upsets me. I'm a patriot and I believe in Liberty but the government doesn't. We aren't nearly as free as they tell us. In fact, we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any other industrialized country. The drug prisoners are political prisoners; therefore we have a larger percentage of political prisoners in jail than does China or Russia. Land of the free?????????

 

If half the money we spend on the DEA and the prison system were spent on education, and half the tax money acquired by legalizing it were spent on testing, I personally feel we would be ahead of the game.

 

Not that legalization would be without problems, especially at first. But I think the problems will be much less for the non-drug user than they are now.

 

I'm getting pretty old. When I was in high school, the drug we all abused was alcohol. The policeman was still our friend back in those days. He was like an uncle to us (there were no policewomen back then). If he caught us drinking, he would confiscate our liquor, give us a lecture, and perhaps call our parents. That was it.

 

He didn't want to put us in jail for 20 years, he wasn't afraid of us shooting him to keep ourselves out out jail, and we weren't afraid that one wrong, fast move would mean he would shoot us. We didn't have to "assume the position", no handcuffs, just a stern but friendly lecture letting us know we were too young to drink this stuff, and if I catch you again, I'm going to call your parents.

 

It was a better world back then.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ?

[milod]

Notes...

 

I ain't arguin'. Especially about a world with a degree of greater decency, at least where you and I were raised.

 

My problem isn't with the concept of drug legalization, but rather a recognition that it will take years and years of effort getting a practical working way to handle this stuff into law. At risk of sounding like a broken record, what "drugs" would be included? Steroids too? Etc., etc., etc.

 

It seems here that there are lotza folks in government who would like to legalize "drugs," but beyond mary jane bills, I ain't seen one serious effort to go further. The reason, it seems to me, is that there's a difference between concept and a functioning effort at legislation.

 

Other than some of the politics involved, I think the feds could remove marijuana from the "bad list" within a year of enabling legislation, given the changes in bureaucracy, tests for drivers, requiring age 18 like tobacco or 21 like booze... And how about taxes? Tobacco already is taxed probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 percent, far more than alcohol. What taxes would make the cut? Federal and state taxes and additional employees would be added. Certainly no narcs would be fired, cuz they're union, right? How does that get set up?

 

So even with a bill passed tomorrow, marijuana legalization and regulation would likely take 2 to 5 years.

 

Beyond that? I dunno. Among other things I can imagine even good science and honest people disagreeing on much of anything having to do with opiates and uppers, steroids (which can also be very mood altering) and so forth.

 

My experience with legislators at various levels suggest 10 years even if there's a 66 percent majority of voters in favor of the concept right now might be too short a time span the way government functions in today's world.

 

m

[Californiaman]

Since 2006' date=' more than 22,700 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico. [/quote']

 

I'm sure that's just what the Mexican government is saying.

I'll bet it's a lot more and that's just in Mexico. What about the spill over into the US?

[jimmiJAMM]

Just yesterday 27 people were killed in Mexico among drug violence. WTF? No wonder Arizona's got the right idea. We have enough troubles of our own.

[Big Bill]

[Piro]

I think everyone needs to relay and get high[cool]

[duane v]

Locked for now....

 

I'll see if the Admin wants to re-open the thread.