Posted on 02/02/2009 3:55:36 PM PST by AuntB
You obviously live in some white picket fence enclave of America. Mexico is not the United States.
Why would legalizing drugs make the cartels more wealthy? That makes no sense. If drugs were legalized, production and sales regulated, the cartels would lose all the business. They'd go broke.
I'm definitely not for legalizing drugs like cocaine and meth and heroin though. Very few people actually use those drugs, but a portion of those few who do use those drugs cause us major problems. Prohibition is at least working in that it keeps those drugs expensive, and it has kept them such that for the most part they are not extremely available everywhere in this country. And while I think most people would be smart enough not to mess with them if we legalized them a few more would than do today and it wouldn't take many before we had double or triple or quadruple the number of hardcore problem causing addicts that we have today. That would be a disaster for us.
Marijuana is a different story though. More than half of all American adults under sixty have already tried it, over a 100 million Americans. Americans use more marijuana than all other illegal drugs combined. It is relatively cheap to use and can be found easily anywhere in this country even though it is illegal. It's not particularly addictive, unlike drugs like cocaine, heroin and meth. And it is the illegal drug that the Mexican drug trafficking organizations make most of their money from. Take marijuana away from them, grant permits to American farmers and let them grow it to be sold through licensed retailers, and we'd be depriving these Mexican drug trafficking organizations of the lion's share of their income. That would be a devastating blow to them, and I don't even think we'd have that much of an increase in the number of Americans who use marijuana. The far remote chance of getting caught and getting slapped on the worst isn't deterring many folks at all. Most people don't smoke it because there are plenty of good reasons not to smoke it that would still exist even if it was legal.
You mean the way repealing Prohibition made the Purple Gang even more powerful and wealthy.
Oh, sorry..you mean that didn't happen? Well repealing Prohibition surely made Capones gang rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Sorry...that didn't happen either.
The money, power and most certainly the violence isn't going to go away by legalizing anything.
I for one am getting really tired of the almost daily shootouts between the guys driving the Miller trucks and the Budweiser trucks. I mean we have dead beer truck drivers littering the streets in my neck of the woods.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you're an idiot.
L
Prohibition was the greatest boon to crime in the history of the world.
And to the power vampires inhabiting the Federal government.
L
Mexico - - - Democracy ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Gimmie a break!
That’s part of the crime ;o)
Which has exactly zero to do with your laughably wrong-headed post.
Marijuana isn’t the only illicit drug smuggled across the border. Narcotics isn’t the only business that the Cartels operate. You obviously know very little of which you speak.
Prohibition of alcohol has very little in common with the problems associated with the Mexican Cartels. The American government was in no danger of being taken over by Al Capone. There weren’t mob paramilitaries killing the directors of the FBI and other Federal Agencies. You didn’t have mobster invading other countries and kidnapping or killing it’s citizens as we have with the Mex Cartels.
The Mex Cartels haven’t flourished as they have because they are stupid. They don’t live in a vaccum. They are well aware of the debate about legalizing drugs.
You are comparing apples and oranges. You are comparing a prohibition that took place in a country that largely values the rule of law to a country that values mordida or bribery. The power and influence of the Mexican drug cartels goes far beyond anything of the Prohibition era. Any person that thinks legalizing a pathetic illicit cash crop like marijuana is going wipe out the power and influence of those running the Mex Cartels is sadly naive.
Most of the money these cartels make is coming from drugs. The ONDCP estimates that Mexican drug trafficking organizations gross about $13.8 billion dollars a year on drug sales to Americans, $8.6 billion from marijuana alone. Marijuana accounts for about 62% of their gross proceeds from drug sales to Americans. Their second biggest seller is cocaine. The ONDCP estimates that they gross about $3.9 billion a year selling that to Americans, but they have to purchase and smuggle that from South America before they bring it here. They’re only the middlemen for cocaine. They aren’t producing it like they are producing marijuana so their net proceeds from marijuana are probably greater than 62% of their total net proceeds from drug sales to Americans.
I’d say marijuana is more than just a pathetic little cash crop for these guys. It’s what they are making most of their money on. We wouldn’t wipe them out by legalizing pot and allowing for regulated production and sales in this country, but we’d certainly deprive them of a major source of income. They’d end up being smaller and less powerful.
And lets think about alcohol Prohibition for second. That period was the heyday for organized crime in this country. Millions of Americans where involved to some degree with the illegal production, smuggling, transportation and sales of illegal alcohol. Bribery and corruption were rampant in law enforcement and government. The violence wasn’t as bad as it is in Mexico now, but there was plenty of violence.
Of course alcohol Prohibition only lasted a few years though. If we had have given it a few more decades things would have probably have gotten much worse. Organized crime grew from little street gangs into massive and powerful organizations in a few short years and they were getting stronger and more violent as the years went on. It was the money that did this, the money from alcohol sales. It made these organizations grow. It lured many people into criminal enterprises. It corrupted officials. It was only going to get worse as time went on. We’d have had more and more of a culture of corruption and crime in this country.
I can’t believe you can’t see the parallels between alcohol Prohibition and what we are seeing today. I can’t help but think that you are being willfully ignorant here.
What it DOES have in common is obscene profits and corruption of government officials. The fact that today's cartels are more of a threat than the 20's mobsters is all the more reason to end the same failed policy that created them.
In any event, no one is buying your cockeyed assertions about the economics of regulated vs underground markets.
marking
Firearm ownership in the US is legal right? Yet it hasn’t stopped the Drug Cartels from trafficking in illegally acquired arms and murdering thousands of people with those weapons.
Even if you somehow were able to manage to magically make all narcotics disappear the Cartels would still exist and they would continue to be violent and murder thousands of people minus the drugs.
It’s not the drugs that makes people violent, it’s their own evil character.
I think this is an underestimation of these people. It's a knee jerk reaction to a falied counter-drug policy that overlooks who the traffickers are and the environment in which they flourish. What makes people think that traffickers are just going to suddenly go legit and stop the violence at the legalization of narcotics? They can take advantage of legal products. They do buy and sell things that are legal for the rest of us. These people run a multi-billion dollar illicit enterprise. They are able to intimidate both Mexico and the US. They have infiltrated every level of law enforcement in Mexico and the US. These people are quite capable of overcoming the legaization of something like marijuana.
When you make billions of $$$, you can acquire all the guns you want. You can even hire a unit of ersatz Mexican drug warriors trained by the US, for crying out loud!
And I'm not sure what the legal status of guns in the US has to do with it. My understanding is that the cartels do not get a significant number of their arms from legal US sellers.
Even if you somehow were able to manage to magically make all narcotics disappear the Cartels would still exist and they would continue to be violent and murder thousands of people minus the drugs.
I thought most of the killings were drug related - members of rival gangs, uncooperative officials, informers, etc. as opposed to random murders. Again, your claim makes no sense.
It's not the drugs that makes people violent, it's their own evil character.
Agreed. But when you have a multibillion $$$ illicit empire, you have the means and the incentive to kill anyone who threatens it. That's what is driving the murders.
You contradict yourself here. Firearms are not totally legal in the US, some types of arms are illegal to own and these are the types that the cartels use, fully auto weapons that takes a ton of money to buy. They have the money because of drugs, legalize drugs, money to illegal drug cartels goes away, weapons are no longer being purchased with illicit drug money, reasons to shoot people with non-purchased weapons dissapears because they will no longer be in the drug business.
Your arguments are full of holes and everything you put up as proof has long ago been disproven.
If you outlaw anything it will become readily available on the black market, thus automatice weapons, explosives, drugs and, soon, tobacco, are all available if one simply has the money to buy it. When things are legal to own the price goes down, legal businesses get the money and illegal cartels don't.
Stop filling the air with nonsense, you will feel a lot better if you allow common sense into your brain and quit feeding your goody two shoes syndrome.
The very bottom line is this: If Cartels really wanted drugs to be legalized, they would be, period. The cartels are the very ones paying lobbyists to make sure drugs stay illegal by feeding the delusions of do gooders who somehow think they have the right to "protect" people from themselves.
And I do think that when the money dries up a lot of these people will “go legit.” We did see that happen after alcohol Prohibition. Obviously not everyone involved left crime behind, but many did. John F. Kennedy's father is one example of this. He made millions in the illegal alcohol trade and after Prohibition was in normal businesses and politics. Many others who were involved to varying degrees did not continue with criminal activities to make their money. I had a grandfather who distilled whiskey in the woods with his brother and sold it during that period to make extra money. When Prohibition was over they built houses. They were carpenters during Prohibition and later became contractors. Probably most of us have some great uncle or other relative who was involved in one way or another with the illegal alcohol business during Prohibition. Whether they were driving vehicles loaded with alcohol, acting as lookouts, helping with smuggling, production or sales in some way, most of them probably didn't move on to some other form of criminal activity after Prohibition. The hardcore criminal types did but they weren't all hardcore criminal types, and not all the people involved in the drug trade today are hardcore criminal types. If it wasn't for the obscene amounts of money to be made a lot of these people would be deriving their incomes solely through legitimate means.
Most of the drug war is taking place in the North because that is where the dealers largest market is located.
“I’m thinking that Satan is numero uno?”
Save this one for those who refuse to believe the mess in Mexico. It was sent by a retired border agent friend with this note.
“WARNING!!! This is VERY graphic video of decapitated bodies in Mexico. This is already beginning in the US.
Looks like about 7 were related —pops and his sons. No mercy. Muslim style—alive when decapitated.”
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