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The worst side effect of the drug trade is that it funds a worldwide network of highly capable smugglers. To them drugs are just an arbitrary material to be mo

by uuilly 16y ago

The worst side effect of the drug trade is that it funds a worldwide network of highly capable smugglers. To them drugs are just an arbitrary material to be moved from point A to point B. Drug networks move terrorists, weapons, nuclear material, slaves and child prostitutes just as easily as they move bags of powder. But drugs are the smugglers' bread and butter. The other more harmful things are just the salt. But demand for the more harmful cargo is not sufficient enough to fund such a large and competent industry. I worked in the MIL/INTEL world for a long time and a staggering number of really nasty things turned up amongst bags of powder all over the world. Drug networks are like VPN for physical objects. And drug producers would happily abandon that protocol for FEDEX if they could. The remaining market for moving things we truly cannot live with would be reduced by many orders of magnitude if we gave up on the drug war.

xelipe 16y ago
I like how everybody is an expert on the drug trade because we've all seen a 60 Minutes piece on violence in Mexico. Violence in Mexico is not a new trend and neither is the hysteria of violence spilling over. The fear of violence spilling in to the United States from Mexico was prominent one other time, during the Mexican Revolution. The current thread of drug related violence in Mexico is often attributed to the presidency of Felipe Calderon but it can actually be traced back to at least 25 years as it is evident in the culture of the narco that is prevalent there. We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. The next country to be promoted as a drug state will be Afghanistan with it's fields of poppies fulling the growing heroin demand. I'm all for Proposition 19, but legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic.
- uuilly 16y ago
  I was talking about Afghanistan, opium and RPG's. I was also speaking from personal experience not from TV experience.
  - rdl 16y ago
    Afghanistan is actually much simpler than Mexico, making the case for either decriminalizing opium or at least doing the Italian red cross plan of buying all the opium produced much more significant than it is in Mexico, as I'm sure you're aware. Drug smuggling out is fairly widespread and finances bad stuff; very little else is smuggled in or out, except for a bit of quasi-legitimate reimport of stuff on the Pakistan border to get around absurd Pakistani tariffs on stuff like cars, and moving fighters across the Pakistan border. Child (or general human trafficking) isn't a viable market: Afghanistan can't afford to smuggle children in, and Afghan children mainly are consumed in the domestic market. ("woman for breeding, boy for pleasure, melon for sheer delight"). Very few Afghan women become prostitutes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan (unlike Iraqi women in the neighboring states/Gulf). There aren't many migrant workers moving across the borders either, mainly due to a lack of an economy in any of the neighboring states. Iran and Pakistan have a fair number of refugees, but they are fairly static, and don't actually work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran. Eliminating opium as a profit source would eliminate the weird choice between befriending farmers as local allies AQ/Taliban vs. destroying opium (and thus making those farmers into enemies or enemy sympathizers for purely economic reasons), and would definance most of the Taliban (if not AQ, still financed via Saudi recreational jihadis).
- kablamo 16y ago
  > We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. Sounds like an argument for legalizing drugs. > legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic Why not? Legalizing alchohol did seem to stop the flow of moonshine.
  - xelipe 16y ago
    Mexico has decriminalized possession of drugs for personal use[1]. The most noted country to do so is Portugal. But this alone does not address the drug trade. Touché in regards to the commend on moonshine. But it is well document that The Netherlands, who have a long standing liberal view on prostitution, are a leading destination of human traffic[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands#Human_trafficking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands...
    - seabee 16y ago
      [2]'s only example is a case where women were brought to the Netherlands then sent to neighbouring countries for prostitution. If this is the norm, then it's not unreasonable to think the liberal laws are merely a low-risk funnel for traffickers rather than increasing demand for sex workers.
- nico 16y ago
  > We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. The next country to be promoted as a drug state will be Afghanistan with it's fields of poppies fulling the growing heroin demand. So American, lets just go and make a mess where nobody called us. Anyway, if you were so successful shutting down the cartels in Colombia, how come it is still the world's leading producer of Cocaine[1]? [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/co.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    >if you were so successful shutting down the cartels in Colombia, how come it is still the world's leading producer of Cocaine[1]? who said that it is the cartels who produce the cocaine nowdays? How about government for example?
randallsquared 16y ago
"Drug networks move terrorists, weapons, nuclear material, slaves and child prostitutes just as easily as they move bags of powder." Taken literally, this seems extremely unlikely.
- anthonyb 16y ago
  Why? Drug cartels move tons of drugs at a time, and have the mechanisms to move them across borders relatively unnoticed. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they would be able to move other things too.
  - tlack 16y ago
    He said "just as easily." Smuggling coke is much easier than children.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      A lot more people and money are looking for coke, I'm not so sure it's easier.
    - kaens 16y ago
      Smuggling children is probably just as easy as smuggling thousands of pounds of coke, which happens regularly. The largest cocaine bust was on the order of 48,000 pounds. Drug smugglers, on the high end of things, have access to submarines and secret tunnels that cross nation boundaries. Child trafficking happens, and it the overlap between the major drug movers and the child traffickers is significant -- because they are both serving black market commodity on the level of distributors. There are, however, a whole lot less people out there interested in buying children compared to the number interested in buying pick-a-substance. The reduced amount of profit available to high-level black-market distributors when you take away the market for drugs would, in my opinion, make it harder to find people willing to smuggle children.
      - rdl 16y ago
        Smuggling people is actually easier than smuggling drugs (well, adults, either as migrant workers or prostitutes; children are kind of borderline depending on the country). In a lot of places (US Southwest especially), the penalties for drug smuggling are far higher than for escorting groups of people -- if you get caught, you might go free if it's just a group of workers. The humans can transport themselves on foot. The humans can be held hostage afterward and you can try to extort more money from their family; if a $20k kilo of coke is held for ransom, no one is going to pay more than the discount to an alternative kilo for it.
Groxx 16y ago
Which is a fantastic reason to get it legalized. If there's profit, there will be a business around it, which can then be regulated as any other food / drug business can be.

by uuilly 16y ago

xelipe 16y ago

I like how everybody is an expert on the drug trade because we've all seen a 60 Minutes piece on violence in Mexico. Violence in Mexico is not a new trend and neither is the hysteria of violence spilling over. The fear of violence spilling in to the United States from Mexico was prominent one other time, during the Mexican Revolution. The current thread of drug related violence in Mexico is often attributed to the presidency of Felipe Calderon but it can actually be traced back to at least 25 years as it is evident in the culture of the narco that is prevalent there. We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. The next country to be promoted as a drug state will be Afghanistan with it's fields of poppies fulling the growing heroin demand. I'm all for Proposition 19, but legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic.

uuilly 16y ago
I was talking about Afghanistan, opium and RPG's. I was also speaking from personal experience not from TV experience.
- rdl 16y ago
  Afghanistan is actually much simpler than Mexico, making the case for either decriminalizing opium or at least doing the Italian red cross plan of buying all the opium produced much more significant than it is in Mexico, as I'm sure you're aware. Drug smuggling out is fairly widespread and finances bad stuff; very little else is smuggled in or out, except for a bit of quasi-legitimate reimport of stuff on the Pakistan border to get around absurd Pakistani tariffs on stuff like cars, and moving fighters across the Pakistan border. Child (or general human trafficking) isn't a viable market: Afghanistan can't afford to smuggle children in, and Afghan children mainly are consumed in the domestic market. ("woman for breeding, boy for pleasure, melon for sheer delight"). Very few Afghan women become prostitutes outside of Afghanistan or Pakistan (unlike Iraqi women in the neighboring states/Gulf). There aren't many migrant workers moving across the borders either, mainly due to a lack of an economy in any of the neighboring states. Iran and Pakistan have a fair number of refugees, but they are fairly static, and don't actually work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iran. Eliminating opium as a profit source would eliminate the weird choice between befriending farmers as local allies AQ/Taliban vs. destroying opium (and thus making those farmers into enemies or enemy sympathizers for purely economic reasons), and would definance most of the Taliban (if not AQ, still financed via Saudi recreational jihadis).
kablamo 16y ago
> We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. Sounds like an argument for legalizing drugs. > legalizing marijuana will not stop drug cartels just like legalizing prostitution does not stop the flow on human traffic Why not? Legalizing alchohol did seem to stop the flow of moonshine.
- xelipe 16y ago
  Mexico has decriminalized possession of drugs for personal use[1]. The most noted country to do so is Portugal. But this alone does not address the drug trade. Touché in regards to the commend on moonshine. But it is well document that The Netherlands, who have a long standing liberal view on prostitution, are a leading destination of human traffic[2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_liberalization [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands#Human_trafficking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands...
  - seabee 16y ago
    [2]'s only example is a case where women were brought to the Netherlands then sent to neighbouring countries for prostitution. If this is the norm, then it's not unreasonable to think the liberal laws are merely a low-risk funnel for traffickers rather than increasing demand for sex workers.
nico 16y ago
> We can shut down the drug cartels in Mexico, like we did in Columbia, but the drug trade will be next be passed to another country like a baton. The next country to be promoted as a drug state will be Afghanistan with it's fields of poppies fulling the growing heroin demand. So American, lets just go and make a mess where nobody called us. Anyway, if you were so successful shutting down the cartels in Colombia, how come it is still the world's leading producer of Cocaine[1]? [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/co.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- VladRussian 16y ago
  >if you were so successful shutting down the cartels in Colombia, how come it is still the world's leading producer of Cocaine[1]? who said that it is the cartels who produce the cocaine nowdays? How about government for example?

randallsquared 16y ago

"Drug networks move terrorists, weapons, nuclear material, slaves and child prostitutes just as easily as they move bags of powder." Taken literally, this seems extremely unlikely.

anthonyb 16y ago
Why? Drug cartels move tons of drugs at a time, and have the mechanisms to move them across borders relatively unnoticed. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they would be able to move other things too.
- tlack 16y ago
  He said "just as easily." Smuggling coke is much easier than children.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    A lot more people and money are looking for coke, I'm not so sure it's easier.
  - kaens 16y ago
    Smuggling children is probably just as easy as smuggling thousands of pounds of coke, which happens regularly. The largest cocaine bust was on the order of 48,000 pounds. Drug smugglers, on the high end of things, have access to submarines and secret tunnels that cross nation boundaries. Child trafficking happens, and it the overlap between the major drug movers and the child traffickers is significant -- because they are both serving black market commodity on the level of distributors. There are, however, a whole lot less people out there interested in buying children compared to the number interested in buying pick-a-substance. The reduced amount of profit available to high-level black-market distributors when you take away the market for drugs would, in my opinion, make it harder to find people willing to smuggle children.
    - rdl 16y ago
      Smuggling people is actually easier than smuggling drugs (well, adults, either as migrant workers or prostitutes; children are kind of borderline depending on the country). In a lot of places (US Southwest especially), the penalties for drug smuggling are far higher than for escorting groups of people -- if you get caught, you might go free if it's just a group of workers. The humans can transport themselves on foot. The humans can be held hostage afterward and you can try to extort more money from their family; if a $20k kilo of coke is held for ransom, no one is going to pay more than the discount to an alternative kilo for it.

Groxx 16y ago

Which is a fantastic reason to get it legalized. If there's profit, there will be a business around it, which can then be regulated as any other food / drug business can be.