Think it's just about drugs? Think again.
Posted on 02/14/2009 3:59:00 PM PST by AuntB
I mean the only people coming to America from Mexico are "hard working" gardeners, restaurant help, baby-sitters, and tomato-pickers...
Oh - and they bring with then "family values" because I believe every word President George W. Bush has ever said about them and other Third World Illegal Invaders...er I mean immigrants - including, the phrase, "Islam is a Religion of Peace."
Wooo Hooo.... the last time prohibition gave us the Kenedies, and the Capones.
This time it looks like MS13 backed by AQ.
It's legal under state law in Alaska to possess up to 3 or 4 ounces in your home, and they were clear headed enough to elect a decent governor.
What say you drug warriors?
And borders give us coyotes
Breathing gives us murder
Genitalia gives us rape
Without drugs they’ll just find another means of funding their brutality. In fact, smuggling terrorists sounds extremely lucrative.
The cartels are slaughtering each other over market share in the drug trade, so clearly there is the incentive to seek new markets. If smuggling terrorists were extremely lucrative, they would already be doing it.
There is simply nothing as profitable for them as contraband marijuana. Why not deprive them of it?
You really don’t pay much attention to what’s going on in the world do you. For one thing, they’re already smuggling islamic illegals into the country at many times the price they can get for a gardener.
any time you take one product out of black market control, another pops up. In west Africa as the UN gets control of the illegal diamond market, they have simply moved into smuggling other things. Charcoal has been surprisingly lucurative. Poaching is another old standby for africa.
Making things legal doesn’t make problems go away and I support decriminalization of Marijuana. However I don’t live with the fantasy that it will fix anything other than to stop filling prisons with nonviolent offenders.
Think it's just about drugs? Think again.
Works for me. Makes more sense than what we’re doing.
And money is what makes these people powerful enough to wage the kind of war with one another and the government that they are waging now in order to get more money and more power.
Nothing is as profitable to these people as the drugs. The drug money, or the ability to keep what they have coming in and make more of it, is what they are fighting over, with each other and with the government. Without the drug money, they’d be street gangs, nowhere near as powerful than they are now. Taking a huge chunk of the money would make them much smaller and much less powerful.
You're correct, of course. Here's the point I meant to make. Since the cartels are in a deadly war with each other over market share, I see no reason why they would not already be maximizing their profits from smuggling terrorists.
As I understand your argument, you're saying that if drug profits were removed, there would be an increase in terrorist smuggling by the cartels. Is that your position?
any time you take one product out of black market control, another pops up. In west Africa as the UN gets control of the illegal diamond market, they have simply moved into smuggling other things. Charcoal has been surprisingly lucurative. Poaching is another old standby for africa.
During the years of the illegal diamond trade, did poaching go down significantly? Afterward, was there a significant rise? As I understand your argument, that should have been the case.
Making things legal doesn't make problems go away and I support decriminalization of Marijuana. However I don't live with the fantasy that it will fix anything other than to stop filling prisons with nonviolent offenders.
Agree that decriminalization would do little to the drug cartels. However, a well regulated legal mj market would deprive the cartels of their most profitable market. Do you agree or disagree with that assertion?
Do you agree that a legal market in the US would deprive the cartels of that portion of their funding which comes from marijuana?
And I also wanted to clarify whether or not you are contending that denying drug profits to the cartels would increase the smuggling of terrorists into this country.
Thanks for posting this.
Nope. According to the ONDCP Mexican cartels bringing in about $13.8 billion a year selling Americans drugs, $8.6 billion from marijuana alone. That's about 62% of their their gross proceeds from drug sales to Americans. The second most popular drug is cocaine. The ONDCP estimates that the cartels bring in about $3.9 billion a year from that, about a billion from meth, and around $270 million from heroin.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-02-21-2221217072_x.htm
According to the USDOJ’s National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 these Mexican drug trafficking organizations produced 15,500 metric tons of marijuana in 2007, with most of it coming here. The last government estimate I saw on total supply here was that between 12,000 and 25,000 metric tons are available on the market in a given year. It is probable that most of the marijuana on the market in the US comes from Mexico. In the part of the South where I live I am sure that is the case. I have handled thousands of pounds worth of marijuana mule cases and more marijuana possession cases than I can count. About all I ever see in the little evidence bags the police bring in is compressed Mexican pot.
2009 National Drug Threat Assessment:
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs31/31379/marijuan.htm#Top
In the same drug threat assessment you will estimates for Canadian production are much lower, about 1,300 metric tons or so and their government at least believes most is consumed in Canada. Many tons will come in from Canada but it is still only a small amount of what is on the market in the states. Most of the Canadian pot that comes in is sold to end consumers in states on the Canadian border.
Also, just FYI, Mexican pot smuggled into this country is increasing in potency too, according to the government's potency reports and everything I've been hearing. It's still nothing like indoor grown bud but they're using better seeds to begin with and doing a better job of removing the male plants so that it is not always so seedy like it used to be.
Zetas ping!
Even more specifically, we are at war with Satan.
My solution is that all the potheads can move to mexico and create utopia.
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