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An ultimately futile thing to do until we change our own drug policies which fuel the economic incentives for such cartels to exist. Unless we change out laws a

• HillaryBriss 11y ago
  It's a fantasy to think that the cartels and their violence would stop existing. Even if governments legalized all drugs by eliminating all anti-drug laws and agencies, the cartels and the people who run them would quickly find another path to profitability. They would find or create another industry in which applying their violence gives them a competitive advantage.
  • armitron 11y ago
    Let them do that then. It's not as if it would be easy. Prohibition showed how effective legalization can be (and I don't mean just marijuana). Legalize everything across the board. That means pharma-grade cocaine, heroin being sold without prescription (and taxed) to any adult that wishes to buy them. Alas, let's not pretend that the 'good guys' (at least the americans) want to solve the drug problem. It results in lucrative profits that can be kept off the books and fed into various "programs", and has also led to the establishment of a massive bureaucracy that will be hard if not impossible to dislodge. Someone else mentioned the movie Sicario in this thread. It's pretty bad in terms of plot, but one line comes to mind: One of the characters that plays a CIA agent says: "If only 20% of the population could be pesuaded to stop smoking and snorting that shit..." in order to conveniently shift the blame towards the populace. As if that worked with alcohol, or cigarettes or anything that can short-circuit the pleasure/reward neural pathways. But I'm digressing here. A bad movie does not a point make. The real CIA knows full well I imagine that legalization is the only real solution to the problem (even if it comes with its own costs) but of course the real CIA also needs endless suitcases full of dollars to fund its operations.
    • HillaryBriss 11y ago
      "Let them do that then" Do you really mean that? Forget about drugs. (All drugs are already legal in this hypothetical scenario.) Let your imagination soar. Think of all the other things the cartels could control.
      • stickfigure 11y ago
        Not all forms of crime are equally lucrative. It's hard to imagine another form of crime that is capable of sustaining even 1/10th of the income of drug smuggling.
        • venomsnake 11y ago
          How many people with means in the US need organ transplant? From involuntarily donor. Just asking for market research.
          • zouhair 11y ago
            Harveting organs from such donors is as easy as harveting poppy seeds.
    • petra 11y ago
      Actually prohibition was quite effective, it reduced alcohol usage by 30-50% , according to an history professor[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibiti...
      • jpatokal 11y ago
        That's actually a pretty shitty result given that the target was 100%, and the side effects were extreme: people dying from dodgy moonshine, birth of the Mafia as we know it, etc.
      • armitron 11y ago
        This is an opinion piece with 0 citations. Point us to something better than useless drivel. These links paint a different picture and make the situation appear less than clearcut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Rates_of_consumption_during_Prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States#Organized_crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
  • DanielBMarkham 11y ago
    Think through this. How many other high-margin, high-volume products exist that can be moved through Mexico? Sure, they'll continue existing, probably get into government. But they'll be nothing at all like they are now. It will be a huge net gain for all, even the gangs themselves.
    • Natsu 11y ago
      They don't need a 'product' at all, just a way to get money. They can go to old-fashioned 'protection' rackets and such.
      • armitron 11y ago
        Impossible to make this kind of money with old-fashioned protection rackets (or gambling or prostitution) these days. The effort for someone used to drug profits is clearly not worth the reward. Will there be a few who turn to that? Sure. But I claim that the effects on society will be miniscule if felt at all.
        • Natsu 11y ago
          I would like to share your optimism, but I don't believe that sufficient evidence exists yet to back it. After all, it's not always true that changing black markets into white markets is a net good for society. There are still black markets for slaves, after all, and more slaves today than in the past, even if the proportions have gone down.
    • HillaryBriss 11y ago
      Please. They're already in Mexico's government.
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    If there were other industries in which the application of violence was a competitive advantage, why are there not currently organizations in those industries.
    • pault 11y ago
      Human trafficking?
    • HillaryBriss 11y ago
      Look at the kidnapping industry in Mexico, for example. They could also expand into controlling the building trades, the railroads and highways, the flow of oil, etc.
  • HiLo 11y ago
    I know most people here mean marijuana legalization when they say drug legalization, but there is absolutely no way meth, cocaine, or heroine will be legalized within the next 15-20 years, which is fairly long-term from a business perspective, by which I mean that they are not worried about their status as a going concern even if marijuana is legalized in the US. Their violence also is a complement to their ability to hold control of the routes / networks to actually move these products in any significant volume. It ensures they get paid whether they control production or not. Furthermore, one industry in which violence will prove to be an asset but hasn't yet had an opportunity (like the guy below me claims) is profit recovery from legal dispensaries inside the US. Dispensaries and their owners have huge targets on their backs.
    • WildUtah 11y ago
      Mariguana is most of the weight and the volume of cartel operations but Mexican intelligence analysts say it produces only a quarter of the revenue. That leaves the majority of cartel revenue still viable as long as amphetamines are restricted. Opiates are a rising profit center as DEA policy blocks branded opioid distribution equally to addicts and chronic pain sufferers. -- Parent describes legal marijuana businesses as targets for cartel violence because they do business in cash. Foreign cartels can't compete against local US gangs if that emerges as a racket. Also, it may become possible for mariguana businesses to use banks if cash starts driving crime. States may have to charter or run state banks eventually if federal officials continue to block the federal banks. In any case there are no black markets as persistently profitable as the cartels' current drug business.
      • HiLo 11y ago
        Fair points, but I didn't say it was because of their cash dealings. I was suggesting it more because of how the cartels operate. Also, claims that local gangs would be able to compete against cartel-aligned gangs (which is already making a huge assumption that they aren't one and the same) strongly disagrees with spikes in violence in Chicago, arguably (obviously) the largest hub for Sinaloa volumes, as well as Baltimore. My suggestion was merely that I would be balls paranoid about security if I was tied to a dispensary in the US, no matter how legal, not because of cash, but because once one person uses that strategy (violence) they all will, such as how cocaine dealing became significantly more violent permanently once there was a wave of violence in the late 70's / early 80's.
  • clort 11y ago
    One of the problems with people who are in the violent gangster industry is that they are trapped there. The business which enables them to live is illegal, so its difficult to go to the police when they are forced to do things they don't like. If your competitor is providing a substandard product and undercutting your sales and putting you out of business, then there is no recourse but to shoot him, eh? In the legal world, you can go to a regulator and when he is prosecuted, he will be losing sales. Most drug takers I would say aren't really interested in funding violent gangs.. If drugs were legalised, then you might find it unpalatable that the same people were now providing the drugs legally and their past sins seemingly forgiven, but the incentive to commit violence is now a lot less, and things will change. I don't know the history exactly, but after prohibition I bet the gangsters didn't immediately become peaceful CEOs of successful corporations.. but then after a few intervening years, the alcohol companies are no longer violent, so obviously something has changed.
    • HillaryBriss 11y ago
      I would not bet on the cartels and existing drug dealers to continue to control the trade after it was legal. I would bet on big retail corporations like Amazon, and existing big chemical and agricultural corporations like Archer Daniels, et al
  • awakeasleep 11y ago
    Thats not true. There isn't another product on the planet that has the margins or demand of illegal drugs. I agree that cartels and violence would continue to exist, but they'd do so in a vastly reduced form. Raketeering is orders of magnitude less profitable and more difficult than selling drugs.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • dllthomas 11y ago
    If "applying their violence" in another industry is more profitable than drugs, why aren't they doing that anyway? If it's less profitable than drugs, then forcing them to make that change reduces their power and growth.
• HiLo 11y ago
  This is a very simplistic view of the cartels, and a very US-centric view as well. This doesn't really factor in the local / native view of these groups, which see them much more as semi-heroic for standing up to the imperial Americans and corrupt, oppressive home governments. The cartels recruit heavily and are huge organizations - giving those poor, unemployed guys from backwood areas a mission "greater than themselves" really is a timeless strategy that has worked well for thousands of years, especially when that vision involves power (violence) and wealth.
  • tptacek 11y ago
    The suggestion that violent Mexican drug cartels enjoy public support is an extraordinary claim that you should support with evidence. Polling suggests otherwise; cartel violence is one of the top concerns of the Mexican public. The idea that organized crime syndicates that rape and murder men, women, and children might be seen as a symbol of independence from American oppression strikes me as an argument that might make sense in the airless vacuum of an Internet message board, and in no other place.
    • WildUtah 11y ago
      Thousands showed up to protest the arrest of el Chapo Guzmán last year [0]. The cartels fund schools, parks, businesses and public works in Mexico. Of course, some communities also organize to fight against cartels with autodefensas. The federal government works to shut them down and leave them vulnerable. That just leaves more communities in the hands of cartels. Polling is against cartels because most Mexicans live where cartels aren't based. [0] http://m.eleconomista.mx/sociedad/2014/03/01/narco-ya-prepara-nueva-generacion-capos-sinaloa http://m.eleconomista.mx/sociedad/2014/03/01/narco-ya-prepar...
      • tptacek 11y ago
        77% of all Mexicans list cartel violence as the most important problem facing the country. Crowds of people in Culiacan may consider Guzman a hero, just like crowds of people in Medellin mythologized Pablo Escobar. The Sinaloa cartel kicks back money to the whole state, and Guzman is a hometown hero. With Guzman at the helm, the Sinaloan cartel was also less violent to civilians than its competitors, particularly the Zetas. The government of Mexico is among the most corrupt and least trusted in the world, and is itself implicated in the mass slaughter of groups of civilians. It does not follow that Mexico as a whole, or even the state of Sinaloa as a whole, sees the Sinaloan cartel as a force for good. They are clearly not that.