Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels

[23536]

FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country’s vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels’ drug profits. Legalization would move that trade into the open market, driving down the price and undermining the cartels’ power and influence.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Marijuana legalization has many merits, but it would do little to hinder the long-term economics of the cartels — and the violent toll they take on Mexican society.

For one thing, if marijuana makes up 60 percent of the cartels’ profits, that still leaves another 40 percent, which includes the sale of methamphetamine, cocaine, and brown-powder and black-tar heroin. If marijuana were legalized, the cartels would still make huge profits from the sale of these other drugs.

Plus, there’s no reason the cartels couldn’t enter the legal market for the sale of marijuana, as organized crime groups did in the United States after the repeal of Prohibition.

Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels — if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.

Indeed, in recent years cartels have used an extensive portfolio of rackets and scams to diversify their income. For example, they used to kidnap rivals, informants and incompetent subordinates to punish, exact revenge or send a message. Now that they have seen that people are willing to pay heavy ransoms, kidnapping has become their second-most-lucrative venture, with the targets ranging from businessmen to migrants.

more http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/opinion/19longmire.html

 

[onthenodintulsa]

The author has a valid point, cartels won't just say fuck it and close up shop but I do think we'd be better off with them out of the drug business.

 

[SangerRainsford]

The author has a valid point, cartels won't just say fuck it and close up shop but I do think we'd be better off with them out of the drug business.

I dunno, it was a decent point but that point is something everyone already knew. No, the cartels won't close shop until there's no funding(read: black markets) to fund them. The article should be retitled "**Marijuana**legalization won't kill the cartels". Rename it "FULLlegalization WILL kill the cartels", and then we can talk - although it'd just be stating the obvious. Make meth, pot, coca/poppies legal, and the cartels would lose membership at obscene rates, and the remaining criminals would do criminal stuff. Continue to criminalize stuff that shouldn't be criminalized, and you'll continue to see corporations keeping things going (only w/o the rules that 'traditional' corporations have to legally abide by)
/oh, and cartels CAN'T say 'fuckit and close up shop' while prohibition is active. Cartels are a direct by-product of prohibition, so long as there's prohibition there'll be cartels, and plz don't delude yourself into thinking "but not *these* cartels".

 

[justsomeguy]

Pretty obvious we should legalize all drugs.

 

[onthenodintulsa]

I should have been more clear. I think it's naive to think the cartels would say fuck it and close up shop if all drugs were legal. To survive they would expand into other ventures. I mostly agree with the author's view but it's not an earth shattering revelation, just common sense.

 

[TouchN' Stuff Blvd]

It would not magically stop the cartels - obvious, as people have said. But the article seems to take a defeatist attitude, what is it really suggesting? It seems to just be supporting the status quo. It would still decrease profits probably forcing the cartel to downscale at least a bit..

 

[Cambo]

I should have been more clear. I think it's naive to think the cartels would say fuck it and close up shop if all drugs were legal. To survive they would expand into other ventures. I mostly agree with the author's view but it's not an earth shattering revelation, just common sense.

Well, they're probably involved with pretty much everything illegal & profit making, but even if they were to expand into other things, I highly doubt it would make as much as drugs.
So if say 90% of they're profit is gone, 90% of the problem is gone, because if there is no money to be made then nobody would do it.

 

[qwe]

For one thing, if marijuana makes up 60 percent of the cartels’ profits, that still leaves another 40 percent, which includes the sale of methamphetamine, cocaine, and brown-powder and black-tar heroin. If marijuana were legalized, the cartels would still make huge profits from the sale of these other drugs.

Plus, there’s no reason the cartels couldn’t enter the legal market for the sale of marijuana, as organized crime groups did in the United States after the repeal of Prohibition.

Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels — if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.

okay, so we should go back to prohibition?

if they are engaged in all of this crime, why not take away 60% of their fucking money, money that fuels those crimes? this looser argues against himself, and this high school style position paper is not journalism.

 

[SangerRainsford]

QFT
take away their pot market, and you cripple them financially (they cannot easily replace that w/ other ventures, as some seem to suggest), AND you move their primary market far more towards legalization (we all know there won't be blanket-legalization, mmj prohibition's almost surely going to need to be the 1st step)

 

[DavisK4high247]

I think that by legalizing marijuana , the 60% of the cartels profits would make a difference in the power they have. No big corporation could really stand to lose 60% of the main profit making product and not have a lot of trouble maintaining thier present activities, the same goes for cartels. Elimainate the 60% profit the make from low grade shitty marijuna and they have less money to spend on production of tar heroin, guns, and paying off political leaders in Mexico. And to say they would just enter the market in the uS if weed was made legal is not that easy. Most weed grown in the US is higher quality than the seedy, low potency mexican marijuana. It would take them a number of years IMO to improve the quality of the weed they grow, through better grwoing techniques to obatining better quality strains and having more growers for smaller plots of weed, instead of planting 10 acres in one plot and watering it, and then letting it grow, and not disposing of the males before the pollinate and cause the females to produce seeds, thus lower THC and more weight from the seeds. They could grow sinsemilla in Mexico ,and already do in small amounts, but they could not compete with marijuana produced already in the US and Canada, as well as the new foreign souces of weed that would become available in the US if weed was legalized. Mexico has the plant it, water it, let it grow,let it get pollinated for seeds to add weight and then harvest the whole plant and compress it into a brick way of growing now, they simply could not compete with skilled indoor and outdoor growers in the US and Canada, especailly the Californian,Oregon,and Washinton outdoor high grade sinsemilla growers, who produce high grade outdoor weed with no seeds(sinsemilla) that is 10 times higher in THC often than the best Mexican outdoor brick trash that they grow.
Thats the main reason Mexcian cartels make so much profit from weed, they spend a small amount on growing it and little to no care for the plants other than watering them, and maybe spend $20? to grow a pound ,and wholesale the same pound for $200-400 a pound at the border or in border states! Thats a hell of a profit margin. And tar heroin is equal to bathtub crank of the heroin world IMO, nasty ,dirty shit that will get someone high ,but fuck up their veins and body much quicker in the process than would the powder heroin from Colombia and SEA.

 

[TheLostBoys]

If we do legalize all drugs, then maybe we will have a price war with the cartels & government selling the drugs, LoL!

 

[captainballs]

Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels — if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.

Indeed, in recent years cartels have used an extensive portfolio of rackets and scams to diversify their income. For example, they used to kidnap rivals, informants and incompetent subordinates to punish, exact revenge or send a message. Now that they have seen that people are willing to pay heavy ransoms, kidnapping has become their second-most-lucrative venture, with the targets ranging from businessmen to migrants.

Legalize drugs, and you will score a "hit" against the cartels. But a hit against the cartels is really a hit against the Mexican people, as the cartels will delve into worse forms of crime such as the highly lucrative kidnapping trade cited above.

It's a lose-lose situation with cartels. You can't fight them with policies and expect economics to win the battle for you like a domino effect, and if you fight them with violence it just makes life in Mexico that much more horrible for the majority of the people there who are hard working, honest, great people (excellent people, even). I empathize highly with Mexico's plight, and I think they have an even harder fight ahead of them for survival when the oil markets start contorting in all sorts of strange ways over the next decade. The trend to bet on, unfortunately, is that those cartels whose willingness to inflict suffering is their strongest capital will be the best suited to deal with any major legalization moves by the United States.

 

[SangerRainsford]

If we do legalize all drugs, then maybe we will have a price war with the cartels & government selling the drugs, LoL!

won't be any price 'wars', there would only be a market. of course, that means that guzman('el mayo'; head of CDS, most supported cartel wrt gov.'s) could be the head of the next Kennedy dynasty
/maybe that wouldn't be so bad...cds doesn't slaughter civilians the same way other cartels do

But a hit against the cartels is really a hit against the Mexican people, as the cartels will delve into worse forms of crime such as the highly lucrative kidnapping trade cited above.

but that's not a hit to the mx people - if you remove mj trafficking, you remove all the social-ills related to it. This cannot be offset by a switch to other crimes (if these other crimes were more profitable, they'd have already usurp'd moving pot, but they're not lucrative like that, so the # of people involved would go down, the drama would go down. There absolutley *would* be a surge in (all other)criminal activities, including kidnappings, but it would be in place of the narco-violence they're experiencing(for instance, let's say it was just 30k dead in the past 6yrs - that'd be 5k people dead, in mx, from the drug wars. If we remove 60% of that, or 3k of the 5k currently dying in the drug war, well, kidnapping would have to claim 2k lives in mx annually to make this any sort of negative for mx )
[/QUOTE]
/will reply to rest in a sec ;P

 

[SangerRainsford]

You can't fight them with policies and expect economics to win the battle for you like a domino effect,

y not? if we're talking about, say, colombian cartels, then i'd agree with you (to an extent). they are actually involved in ideological struggles wrt their gov., and use drugs to finance it.
mx cartels, otoh, are pretty much corporations acting in a black market. they're motivated by profit, not ideals. as such, economics is central to their existence, and has the power to dismantle them completely(from the drug world; as said b4, your typical criminals will continue to commit robberies/rapes/etc, but the problem isn't some high ratio of criminally-minded people in mx, it's the appeal that the black market of drugs offers).

and if you fight them with violence it just makes life in Mexico that much more horrible for the majority of the people there who are hard working, honest, great people (excellent people, even).

no way. fighting them w/ violence quells the bigger fights/disputes that've been occuring. mx military ends fights that would otherwise boil over badly (fights that're already massive shootouts when the military arrives, and makes it a 3-way fight). us military wouldn't break a sweat. fighting them w/ violence, IF we were truly trying to fight them, wouldn't cause suffering for anyone outside of the cartels <except the expected loss of officers/soldiers/collateral damages>. but we don't want that, we choose to stay in this limbo where we say "it's not acceptable to move that product", yet we don't use our power to stop people when they ignore the laws. this isn't an issue of getting enough force into place, it's an issue of legalizing/controlling drugs - we choose to keep them illegal, yet relatively undetered(sp?), and it's kind of violence this mix produces that's bad for society. Legal=safe enough, illegal+enforced=safe enough, illegal+kinda-enforced=bloodbath.

and I think they have an even harder fight ahead of them for survival when the oil markets start contorting in all sorts of strange ways over the next decade.

what do you mean about oil?
/curious
//not as versed on oil as i should be

The trend to bet on, unfortunately, is that those cartels whose willingness to inflict suffering is their strongest capital will be the best suited to deal with any major legalization moves by the United States.

i'd imagine cdz/zetas would win then, based on that paradigm. i disagree, i think the cartels are, at this point, pretty solidly rooted companies, so imo it really would come down to who tptb wanted to see remain in business.

 

[captainballs]

Originally Posted by SangerRainsford
y not? if we're talking about, say, colombian cartels, then i'd agree with you (to an extent). they are actually involved in ideological struggles wrt their gov., and use drugs to finance it.
mx cartels, otoh, are pretty much corporations acting in a black market. they're motivated by profit, not ideals. as such, economics is central to their existence, and has the power to dismantle them completely(from the drug world; as said b4, your typical criminals will continue to commit robberies/rapes/etc, but the problem isn't some high ratio of criminally-minded people in mx, it's the appeal that the black market of drugs offers).

What kinds of tactics are used in violent ideological struggles that are so different from those used in struggles over the idea that it is a god-given right to make money by any means available? I'm not being rhetorical. I do fail to see how the effects would be different in Mexico if these cartels' purpose is to provide for themselves and their families, with regard to attempts to take pieces of that security away from them. Economic sanctions such as legalization will affect the cartels negatively in an economic way, but given their penchant for responding to nearly every threat of any kind with incomprehensible violence, I do not see how this kind of animal will be sacrificed by taking one piece of revenue away when there are many more things that can be done to replace the revenue - all of them terrible. And corporations are ideological beasts as well, with symbols and plans for the future. They're composed of people who could be doing anything else, but instead they are doing "x" as a team.

Sigh. In an enlightened world, a plan for legalization would include a plan to integrate and legitimize the cartels' knowledge of drug distribution to ease the sudden vacuum of revenue. Of course, this would also require an imaginary cartel who would consider the social value of compromising a macho power structure instead of cutting people's penises off and sticking them in murder victims' mouths as a first response diplomatic policy to... everything.

no way. fighting them w/ violence quells the bigger fights/disputes that've been occuring. mx military ends fights that would otherwise boil over badly (fights that're already massive shootouts when the military arrives, and makes it a 3-way fight). us military wouldn't break a sweat. fighting them w/ violence, IF we were truly trying to fight them, wouldn't cause suffering for anyone outside of the cartels <except the expected loss of officers/soldiers/collateral damages>. but we don't want that, we choose to stay in this limbo where we say "it's not acceptable to move that product", yet we don't use our power to stop people when they ignore the laws. this isn't an issue of getting enough force into place, it's an issue of legalizing/controlling drugs - we choose to keep them illegal, yet relatively undetered(sp?), and it's kind of violence this mix produces that's bad for society. Legal=safe enough, illegal+enforced=safe enough, illegal+kinda-enforced=bloodbath.

I'm not sure you've offered a solution to my marked lack of solution, but for what it's worth i can't answer back by disagreeing with you on much of what you're saying. The only reason being that you admitted collateral damage, although since you used that term you probably have softer connotations associated with it than I do.

i was in Juarez most recently last month trying to get someone very dear to me who is a Mexican national the fuck out of there permanently before the city becomes a NATO no fly zone. The city shuts down completely after dark. As the sun goes down it is silent and everyone is indoors. It looks, smells, and feels like martial law right down to the Federales who have machine guns and wear black masks to avoid identification by cartel members. if you walk on the grass by a sidewalk, a police officer will motion for you to get back on the sidewalk with a baton. I don't really know if this adds to your perspective, but I'm not really disagreeing with you about any of this except that you might take it that I am against legalization because I don't think it will work. On the contrary, I am for legalization but I recognize its consequences for the cartels and the Mexican people.

Putting U.S. troops down there wouldn't directly kill a shitload of innocent Mexican people. But you have to look at the way the cartels operate - they would make sure that, given the U.S.'s relatively delicate approach to civilians in situations like this, horrible things would happen to Mexican people as a form of protest against an otherwise superior military force invading and attacking (our weak spot is that we care about civilians, which naturally makes them potential hostages and shields - this is not speculation on my part, just check out how the cartels send messages and fights in general) - and then, of course, since we don't negotiate with terrorists, it would build and build and build in suffering. It would stop, sure. But it would get worse before it got better which you may argue is inevitable anyways.

I just hope you don't come back and try to say that the U.S. would have this one in the bag in less than a month, or some nonsense like that.

"Illegal" and "kinda enforced." I don't think there's any other way. It's like a marriage, and yes, bloodbath is the child. A culture of bribery doubles as both the nanny and family attorney. I wish I could offer a clever solution to this problem.

what do you mean about oil?
/curious
//not as versed on oil as i should be

Almost exactly a month ago, el presidente said that Mexico's reserves would run out in less than a decade. I don't think he really meant that they would run out, but I think this was his way of dumbing down for the Mexican press the possibility that production would slow drastically relative to demand, causing oil prices to spike. Yes, higher prices means more money for oil producers, but it also means higher fertilizer costs for farmers. There are other things that can go wrong, plenty of things, and I'm sure Mexico will think of a way to accidentally trip over all of them economically no matter where the price of oil goes. If you're interested in how crazy things are going to get for all of us in our lifetime because of oil, start doing some digging and you'll see that the rabbit hole gets pretty deep.

if you remove mj trafficking, you remove all the social-ills related to it. This cannot be offset by a switch to other crimes (if these other crimes were more profitable, they'd have already usurp'd moving pot, but they're not lucrative like that, so the # of people involved would go down, the drama would go down. There absolutley *would* be a surge in (all other)criminal activities, including kidnappings, but it would be in place of the narco-violence they're experiencing(for instance, let's say it was just 30k dead in the past 6yrs - that'd be 5k people dead, in mx, from the drug wars. If we remove 60% of that, or 3k of the 5k currently dying in the drug war, well, kidnapping would have to claim 2k lives in mx annually to make this any sort of negative for mx

I'm sorry, but you're dissecting this way too rationally, as though the cartels are made of boardrooms, charts, and powerpoint presentations about how to operate and maintain efficient market mechanics. I really can't go here with you on this, other than to say that the cartels will react violently and unpredictably to any major change or perceived threat. These guys are gangsters, from top to bottom. They may be organized and the chain of command may be clear, but whenever there is a vacuum of power of revenue, shit gets ugly and disorganized for a while until someone in the structure figures out using his gun and a lot of bullets how to maintain not only the money situation, but also the power structure itself - it's business and politics together, and by assigning them the rationale of being able to decide not to kidnap x people per year because y mj is more profitable, you're corporatizing them too much in your mind. try to imagine a cartel more as a country who is operating at war constantly with larger forces and whose source of funds depends on a broad set of international political decisions and stuff like that. You push them against the wall, take away their ability to eat one way, and they're going to flip out and do a bunch of shit that probably isn't even the smartest way to make money at first before they gradually figure out another equilibrium point, amidst the challenges of reigning in a crew full of people who are already dedicated to moving marijuana and suddenly don't have anything to do and may not give a fuck what the boss says. These guys are where the increase in kidnapping would come from - it wouldn't be a necessarily top-down major financial decision. It would just happen, because it's a great way to make some extra cash if the marijuana crops aren't worth shit anymore.

 

[SangerRainsford]

What kinds of tactics are used in violent ideological struggles that are so different from those used in struggles over the idea that it is a god-given right to make money by any means available?

o i didn't mean that tactics are different. rather, ideological motives tend to be inacheivable, people will fight to the death for them. cartels don't operate ideologically as much as financially - they're not moving product because they wanna get people hi, or believe in legalization, they're doing it for profit. remove that, and you remove their reason to be criminals, to battle other cartels, etc. Some will obvi stay criminals - a cartel operator may've been a petty thief in another country, and will become that if prohibition ends. Others, however, would've run legitimate businesses, and are more likely to become white collar criminals than pickpockets.
/ideology is much harder to fight, given the circumstances. i'd much rather the beef be over drugs/$ than, say, religion/nationality.

I'm not being rhetorical. I do fail to see how the effects would be different in Mexico if these cartels' purpose is to provide for themselves and their families, with regard to attempts to take pieces of that security away from them.

if it were ideological (religion, nation, race, whatever), it can't really be 'won'. if drugs were legalized tomorrow, the cartels' members wouldn't be rushing to washington looking for blood. i'm not saying there wouldn't be (violent)repurcussions, but they'd die out quickly. all of this violence, whether it's cartels/civilians/LE/military, is about moving illicit products. make the products licit and you remove almost every single reason for violence, save a small, potential wave of 'revenge' as you mentioned (food from the table - but that violence would be minimal in comparison to what we're seeing now, and it'd only last a little bit)

Economic sanctions such as legalization will affect the cartels negatively in an economic way, but given their penchant for responding to nearly every threat of any kind with incomprehensible violence, I do not see how this kind of animal will be sacrificed by taking one piece of revenue away when there are many more things that can be done to replace the revenue - all of them terrible.

i think there's a tendency for people to see the cartels as some type of larger than life monsters, but the truth is they're simply a result of the WoD. They wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the WoD; some would, obviously, as that's just society - but not nearly as many would. removing WoD removes the catalyst for the brutality (and furthering the WoD as, say, calderon did ~5yrs ago, adds to the brutality).

And corporations are ideological beasts as well, with symbols and plans for the future. They're composed of people who could be doing anything else, but instead they are doing "x" as a team.

w/o wanting to dictionary it and get into semantics, i gotta disagree. corporations are, by and large, financially-motivated. those people are only together to make money, they tend to have extremely low psychological stakes in the products/people they're involved with in said corp. the presence of a shared financial motive in teh absence of shared beliefs/philosophies /= ideology.
(in terms of the cartels, they could give a shit whether it's blow, pot, dope, whatever - it could be rockets and vests, they don't care, it's about $/package, and packages/time-period, nothing more. they don't move drugs to get people high any more than bank robbers rob to teach insurance co's a lesson. cartels have far more in common w/ citigroup than AQ)

Sigh. In an enlightened world, a plan for legalization would include a plan to integrate and legitimize the cartels' knowledge of drug distribution to ease the sudden vacuum of revenue.

i honestly question how much they could teach us put corps into an open-market for drugs tomorrow, and by wednesday they'll have just as efficient routes, packaging, etc as the cartels do now. hell, if every single dollar of the WoD was wasted, at least its intel has already given us tons of knowledge on distribution. the stuff they could teach us would be stuff that'd be irrelevant at that point (namely, how to avoid detection).

collateral damage, although since you used that term you probably have softer connotations associated with it than I do.

didn't mean to come off that way. i don't make light of it at all, the situation is a mess, and honestly there's no 'easy' solution here :/

i was in Juarez most recently last month trying to get someone very dear to me who is a Mexican national the fuck out of there permanently before the city becomes a NATO no fly zone.

mx is, what, our 3rd largest trading partner? don't think we'll be seeing blue helmets there ANY time soon.

On the contrary, I am for legalization but I recognize its consequences for the cartels and the Mexican people.

no matter how botched the solution, almost *anything* - aside from neutrality/furthering prohibition - would be better for the mexican people, this war is becoming a fuckin parasite on that country

Putting U.S. troops down there wouldn't directly kill a shitload of innocent Mexican people. But you have to look at the way the cartels operate - they would make sure that, given the U.S.'s relatively delicate approach to civilians in situations like this, horrible things would happen to Mexican people as a form of protest against an otherwise superior military force invading and attacking (our weak spot is that we care about civilians, which naturally makes them potential hostages and shields - this is not speculation on my part, just check out how the cartels send messages and fights in general) - and then, of course, since we don't negotiate with terrorists, it would build and build and build in suffering. It would stop, sure. But it would get worse before it got better which you may argue is inevitable anyways.

no i don't think it's inevitable, if drugs were fully legalized tomorrow things wuoldn't have any reason to get worse (the 'revenge' elements mentioned wouldn't even approach the normal toll this war takes).
o, and the us actually interfering in any way, militarily, that is even partially 'open' would be a catastrophic mistake. the us can approach this through drug-legality, economic aid to mx./economic sanctions(lol), covert military aid/training/equipment, covert us troops. i can see even light amounts of open engagement of cartels by us troops as about the most blowback-inducing decision we could make here.
((their capacity for guerilla warfare is very underrated, i actually just read a pretty alarming piece on hamas/cartel coordination in mx ))

I just hope you don't come back and try to say that the U.S. would have this one in the bag in less than a month, or some nonsense like that.

we would if we legalized it ;PPP any other way, no.
actually, in straight up open warfare, i don't see why it'd be hard to go in fast, but for obvious reasons that wouldn't (and shouldn't) fly in today's world.

I'm sorry, but you're dissecting this way too rationally, as though the cartels are made of boardrooms, charts, and powerpoint presentations about how to operate and maintain efficient market mechanics. I really can't go here with you on this, other than to say that the cartels will react violently and unpredictably to any major change or perceived threat. These guys are gangsters, from top to bottom.

even gangsters can be businessmen. guzman(head of sinaloa/cds) was ranked in, what, the top 10 richest by forbes some years back? this is business; ugly business, but business.


///falling asleep @ my pc, will address the rest tomorry ;P

 

[Love In Vein]

FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country’s vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels’ drug profits. Legalization would move that trade into the open market, driving down the price and undermining the cartels’ power and influence.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Marijuana legalization has many merits, but it would do little to hinder the long-term economics of the cartels — and the violent toll they take on Mexican society.

I agree. But that's not their primary source of income, either way. And nobody in their right mind wants legalized marijuana. It needs to be regulated like alcohol and tobacco.

The benefits of regulation is what it would do to US.... our prison system here, the money that would be saved, the lives people would be able to enjoy, the more time cops would actually have for crime fighting, the tax revenues, et cetera.

So the author of this story has done high school level research on the subject at best.

For one thing, if marijuana makes up 60 percent of the cartels’ profits, that still leaves another 40 percent, which includes the sale of methamphetamine, cocaine, and brown-powder and black-tar heroin. If marijuana were legalized, the cartels would still make huge profits from the sale of these other drugs.

So what? That's a different issue. It's like the mafia. They will continue to have their hands in anything and everything they can profit from. It's called underground economy.

And the cartels have gone far and beyond drug trafficking organizations. At this point they are terrorist organizations making money at whatever they can.

Plus, there’s no reason the cartels couldn’t enter the legal market for the sale of marijuana, as organized crime groups did in the United States after the repeal of Prohibition.

Yeah, so how is that going today? I know of a peoples that produce moonshine. They are far from dangerous or involved in violent syndicates.

And why would the cartels have any influence on US producers? They would NOT be able to send their own people here to start businesses because the government would require stringent background checks. Extortion? Maybe their law enforcement agencies are completely impotent on their side of the border, but on our side, for as many faults as I can think of.... what are they going to do when the DEA, FBI and ICE come around? They aren't going to be having fight fights with automatic weapons on our side of the border.

Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels

It doesn't matter.

If every drug in the United States was regulated, it wouldn't matter. They would simply look for new markets or come up with new products.

They are CRIME syndicates that are resorting to terror. That's what they do.

The mafia has existed for HUNDREDS of years. It is dwindling, but it has adapted over the centuries. If there is a dollar to be made in a niche, someone will come up and fill that niche.

That's reality.

— if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.

Again, how is this relevant to regulating marijuana in the United States?

It's obviously a problem. And no, regulation would not dismantle the cartels. And if they had no market in the United States, they would obviously look to other places. And not to sound heartless, but that is a foreign matter that we should not involve ourselves in. We're not the world police, and if we we are, we're awful at it, as seen by Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Serbia, Libya, Syria, et cetera.

As a nation with morals and values (misguided or not), that has a history of TRYING to do the right thing, we should care and do something when we see injustice. But there are 191 other countries in this organization called the United Nation.

We're not the world police.

Indeed, in recent years cartels have used an extensive portfolio of rackets and scams to diversify their income. For example, they used to kidnap rivals, informants and incompetent subordinates to punish, exact revenge or send a message. Now that they have seen that people are willing to pay heavy ransoms, kidnapping has become their second-most-lucrative venture, with the targets ranging from businessmen to migrants.

So to end the opinion, the author just dismantled his own thesis?

That would get a D at most in a community college level debate assignment.

It's a step up from the people who have their opinions published in the editorials, however, still amateur and shows no signs of research on the subject. Even if I had agreed with the views, I still could have torn this apart.

 

[Herbal~Jah]

I don't believe ANY substances should be illegal except for poisions and shit that could kill a lot of people (basically shit that terrorist or a psycho path would use to kill lots of people). And don't blab to me saying that drugs like heroin is what terrorist use to kill people, b/c that is just nonsense and u know that.

 

[captainballs]

Man, if heroin is what terrorists use to kill people, then I will gladly sacrifice myself for the good of the free world lol.

 

[captainballs]

Originally Posted by SangerRainsford
i think there's a tendency for people to see the cartels as some type of larger than life monsters, but the truth is they're simply a result of the WoD. They wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the WoD; some would, obviously, as that's just society - but not nearly as many would. removing WoD removes the catalyst for the brutality (and furthering the WoD as, say, calderon did ~5yrs ago, adds to the brutality).

I'm starting with this quote because I think this is where you're coming from ultimately, and everything else we've been tossing around is peripheral compared to the agreement with or disagreement with this viewpoint. I'm going to have to do a little bit of both. I'd like to reiterate my standpoint that the cartels, whatever their catalyst for formation was, are now political entities within Mexico akin to any group vying for power and control over whatever piece of the cake they can get. I agree with you that the War on Drugs and its formal escalation (in 2006, I think) by Calderon, is a catalyst for almost all of the brutality we see today. However, I do not have the scientific standpoint that you have where the removal of the War on Drugs quite logically should remove the brutality. Over the long term, yes - absolutely.

But in the short to medium term, a choice like legalization in the United States will cause the Cartels to continue to find ways to preserve their power and relevance within the Mexican economy by any means possible, which will cause serious problems for the majority of Mexicans. Like you said, these guys are more similar to a corporation than a communist uprising (i.e. ideological entity) which means that they don't care whether the product is MJ, cocaine, or gold, so long as it works to fund their organization. Your viewpoint that ideological struggles differ from this kind of beast in that ideological struggles are designed to be perpetual (i.e. 'perpetual war' concept) is flawed in that corporate structures are also perpetual entities designed to maintain their entity forever. Leaders and workers die or get fired, but the tool for maintaining power, the organization itself, is definitely designed to be permanent.

Throw a monkey wrench in that machine, and you will shake things up and cause problems for the way cartels currently do business. But if the cost of labor in Mexico is cheaper with regard to marijuana production than it is in the United States, the Cartels will not magically give up their trade routes and power over the farmers' sales and distribution network. Another misconception I have a feeling you have is that legalization will oversimplify the means by which marijuana, heroin, and cocaine can be imported and exported, causing the cartels to lose ground because they would no longer have a monopoly on the balls it takes to move these items around since now, hey, big, peaceful corporations can do it instead.

But you're missing an important piece of the puzzle: taxes and tariffs. Legalization would allow legitimate corporations to step in and navigate the maze of marijuana production, export, and distribution, but they will be subject to playing by the rules: high taxes and the cost of administration related to every package that passes through customs. Mexican officials are pretty entrenched in a culture of bribery, and this would be reflected in the export and taxing policies that would be levied against legitimate organizations. This is where the cartels are in their zone - they understand how to work this kind of machine, and they have the added competency of being able to enforce their way of doing business with violence.

So, I think you can sum up my viewpoint as "Legalization would greatly reduce the brutality associated with the drug trade, but would have little effect on the Cartels' continued quest for financial security and power through other means. They are well-armed and have a corporate culture that promotes getting what they want through violence and terror, and they would not hand over the reigns of the drug market easily should legalization occur. They would continue to control as much of the distribution as they could, even if they had to resort to kidnapping corporate competitors and demanding ransom as a means of negotiating a piece of the action when it comes to MJ should a major corporation come in and try to magically 'take over."

I'll try to talk about some of your other points later today.