5 ms·
There was an article recently about how the drug cartels in Mexico pivoted into stealing gas. Much easier and less risky than drug trafficking. This is why end
by lifeeeeee 7y ago
There was an article recently about how the drug cartels in Mexico pivoted into stealing gas. Much easier and less risky than drug trafficking.
This is why ending the war on drugs in US will not improve the Mexico violence problem much.
- mschuster91 7y agothe war on drugs should have been aborted years ago. If that had been done, there would not be any gangs blowing up pipelines today.
- threezero 7y agoWe haven’t fought any drug wars in Venezuela, and they have routine gas theft, including tanker truck hijackings. It sounds more like economic causes than “the US did it!”
- privateSFacct 7y agoGas theft is rampant in a number of countries that are not meaningfully part of the US war on drugs as they are not on shipping / growing routes. While less critical than the injuries, there is often significant environmental impact in the cruder cases of pipeline theft. There also ends up being some pretty bad behavior by the private security / mercenaries hired to try and protect some of the infrastructure. Clean goverment, effective law enforcement, pro-social behaviors and economic improvements etc all might reduce some of these issues.
- ch 7y agoAnd we certainly have never interfered in any economic sense in Venezuela ... hold on, my producer is telling me that this is incorrect.
- antidesitter 7y agoElaborate?
- hombre_fatal 7y agoThis type of sarcasm adds nothing and is noise compared to you just making your simple counter-assertion. No need to dress it up in extraneous LARPing where you have a producer.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoVenezuela is a narco state[0], but it wont be till this is in every media outlet that anything will be done about it. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/venezuelan-vice-president-just-latest-to-be-called-drug-trafficker https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/17/venezuelan-vic...
- xrd 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Venezuela_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Venezuel... Hugo Chavez's rise was definitely a response to US (and other powers) involvement in Latin America. The US did not "do it" (where it is directly causing gas theft). There is more to the history in South America and directly inside Venezuela and what the US was doing. These issues are much more complicated than "the US never sent troops to Venezuela to fight against drug dealers..." [edit]: removed assertion that parent was purposefully ignoring history. That was my assumption, not what they said.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jopsen 7y agoRemoving one revenue source might help... Even just reducing it. Obviously, no single thing will fix it, and whatever you do it'll take a long time. Economic opportunities might be just as important too.
- catacombs 7y agoLike a Hydra: Once you caught off one head from the beast, three more appear.
- wil421 7y agoThe gas theft is just a way to reduce the risk of drug trafficking. The drugs make far more money than theft or kidnapping.
- stickfigure 7y agoNonsense. It's orders of magnitude easier to protect a pipeline than to stop millions of people from engaging in secret commerce. You could secure that infrastructure with a mere tiny sliver of the tens of billions of dollars spent annually to fight the drug war.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoAgreed. Cartels aren't run by idiots. There's a reason they didn't pivot years ago and it's not because stealing fuel was too easy/lucrative.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoJust getting rid of the guns for drugs trade would eliminate a lot of Mexico’s violence: Mexico’s gun production is trifling compared to the USA, they would be underwater on gun violence without that illicit trade link.