As cited by zenpundit, population cleansing along the US border…
…Last week, at least 30 Mexicans from the town of El Porvenir walked to the border crossing post at Fort Hancock, Texas, and asked for political asylum. Ordinarily, their claim would be denied as groundless, and they would be turned back. Instead, they were taken to El Paso, where they expect to have their cases heard.
No one doubts that they have a strong claim. Their town on the Mexican side of the border is under siege by one or more drug cartels battling for control of the key border crossing. According to Mike Doyle, the chief deputy sheriff of Hudspeth County, Texas, one of the cartels has ordered all residents of the town of 10,000 to abandon the city within the next month.
“They came in and put up a sign in the plaza telling everyone to leave or pay with their own blood,” Doyle said. Since then there has been a steady stream of El Porvenir residents seeking safety on the American side of the border, both legally and illegally. Among them are the 30 who are seeking political asylum.
Here’s zenpundit:
There’s nothing magical about geographic proximity to the United States that would prevent this tactic, if applied widely and backed by lethal examples, from working. What has been done in the villages of Bosnia or Dar Fur can be done in towns of northern Mexico.
Chris Van Avery, one of his commenters writes:
In watching the world, it looks more and more like the lawless among mankind are beginning to figure out that order hangs on the most tenuous of strings. With enough violence and coordinated effort, criminal organizations are discovering they can become a law unto themselves and governments just don’t have the resources to deal with the problem.
It’s going to be an interesting decade…
–
As Mao said, political power flows from the barrel of the gun. If you’ve got guns and the will to use them, the only way you don’t end up in charge is if someone else with more guns stops you.
Laws and other such are irrelevant unless backed by the biggest, baddest group of guys with guns.
It’s not resources; it’s will. Governments lack the will.
I think it’s an open question whether the Mexican government has either the resources or the will to successfully fight the cartels. Mexico is not Afghanistan or Somalia, and despite those examples there are numerous examples of criminal groups badly underestimating their host governments.
However, if the Mexican government cannot contain the cartels, then the cartels will inevitably completely misread the abilities and will of the United States government, and consequently they will inevitably create a situation that the United States considers intolerable. (And by “intolerable,” I mean anything from increasing violence and drug flows on the border, to crime groups getting really stupid and getting used by foreign government or terror groups, and I’m sure a half a dozen scenarios I haven’t thought of.)
We’ve seen increasing signs of concern through both the second Bush and the Obama administrations, with Clinton and Gates paying a personal visit to Calderon on the subject just last week– this is not a Republican or a Democrat concern. (Although, it does admit to different solutions depending on whose lap it falls in.)
So my guess is that if the Mexican government can’t handle it, they will either ask for or be made to accept increasing forms of “help” from the United States. (And we’ll probably charge them dearly for it.)
Because God knows, the simple solution of legalizing drugs, cutting their money supply, and starving them outright will elude us yet again.
I live in Mexico and have for years.
The drug lawlessness here is fed by the demand side mental health problems in the United States. The out flow of billions of dollars from the US directly into the hands of theses characters seems to be only attacked by a War on Drugs outside U.S. Borders while not much of a war is being fought to stamp out demand.
What is the problem in the U.S. that causes its citizens to support this trade? Where is the will of the United States to take on this issue?
I have no doubt that there will be troops in Mexico within the next five years. I have no problem with legalization, but that still does not answer a question that the U.S. does not want to ask
What the hell is wrong with our society if people want to spend that sort of money on debilitating and deadly drugs.
Well, I think you might be able to come up with a better one, Marc. You seem to be a pretty bright guy and from what I have seen not to tolerant when it comes to blame shifting.
The mental problems in the U.S. will destroy Mexico by handing it over to the society’s worst elements, simply by not controlling demand. By continuing to shift the blame to foreign Cartels, a fancy name for gangs of thugs, and supporting them at the same time, the United States is asking for another war, all so we can deny that the society has a terrible problem.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Every culture develops drug use.
We’re what happens, though, when the material success resulting from the protestant work ethic crashes headlong into the Puritans’ great abiding horror that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time.
The public, government, Puritan face of the collective psyche bans drugs, and the repressed, private face needs the relaxation all the more.
It’s a stupid, stupid cycle, and damned right it’s harming the rest of the world. We did the same dumb-assed thing with alcohol less than a century ago. We’re by no means the only country with a drug problem– Russian alcoholism and heroin trade stats are shocking to behold– we’re just the ones that determine global activity by virtue of the sheer size of the economy.
Nice term paper. It in no way addresses what I see to be a suicidal tendency in the U.S. that has persisted and grown throughout my live time. In fact, from my perspective it is just another means of denying that there is a problem and a continuation of sweeping this consumption problem under the rug by shifting blame to other factors other than a deep societal problem.
Without a serious attack on that consumption problem, I think it is certain that you will have to send troops to Mexico which, believe me, is a terrible, terrible idea.
toc3,
Could you possible be more condescending?
toc3, from an entirely different perspective, I agree that the War on Drugs is a massively stupid waste of resources on our side of the border. It didn’t work against alcohol, and there’s no reason to think it can work against cocaine and marijuana.
I’ll admit the problems on the Mexican side of the border wouldn’t have the fire under them that they do if recreational drugs were legal and regulated in the U.S. But that doesn’t let Mexico off the hook for failing to protect its law-abiding citizens. Shifting blame is a loser’s game.
Columbia seems to be coming to order. It is doing so because the Columbian state is finally acting like a state instead of a parasite on its society.
Call us sick and depraved all you want. It’s Mexicans coming here looking for political asylum. Let us worry about our house; Mexico needs to look after its own.
*But that doesn’t let Mexico off the hook for failing to protect its law-abiding citizens. Shifting blame is a loser’s game.*
When did I ever let Mexico off the hook?
*Shifting blame is a loser’s game*
Couldn’t agree more. but it is exactly what you did in your reply.
First you said that I let Mexico off the hook
Then you intimated that I was a loser and then you shifted the blame that the U.S. is due by ignoring a problem that will most certainly not get any better by shifting that blame.
Sorry it doesn’t fly!
As far as Columbia is concerned the situation last time I heard from my Friend is Cali is as follows
1. 25 people were killed in Drug related violence on Christmas day alone.
2. Kidnapping is rampant.
3. The interior of the City is a no man’s land due to drug related violence.
4. The Police force is either intimidated or on the take from the drug Lords.
5. What is left of the Middle class is fleeing.
6. Those that still remain do so in High Rises and compounds protected by arm guards.
The reason for this further deterioration in Cali since the fall of the large cartels is that more people are free lancing and their are more small gangs in play for control of the drug trade. Therefore, less centralized control of the psychopaths.
We now have 6 military bases in Columbia, but no one is addressing our drug problem.
After years of failure in the War on Drugs, we are essentially Arming the people that we will soon be having a a real war.
But, of course, this has nothing to do with the tens of billions of dollars we export to these guys on a yearly basis.
We are seeing the same thing happen in Mexico, but the Mexican government is not getting the billions in military aid from the United States that the Narcotraficantes are getting from Middle class Americans.
This sort of puts them at a disadvantage.
So, your reply is nothing more than the typical Ostrich like response that a series of Administrations have taken in “The War on Drugs”.
Spend Billions to no effect, blame everything on foreign bad guys and turn a blind eye to any culpability inside our borders.
A perfect plan to insure more power in the hands of the bad guys and the dispatching of our troops to pacify large swaths of Mexico.
Doesn’t sound too smart to me.
Sorry, toc, was being flippant. It’s clear that we need to do something about the demand side of the equation, and to do that we can change quantity (we’ve failed) or price (we could, but a lot of cops will have to look for other things to police). I’ve advocated legalization and taxation for quite some time; drugs will get cheap, the cartels that supply with will have their cash flow cut off, and lots of people will OD. Net-net we’re better off, but not without significant costs.
I’ll go back and look for some old posts to bring up to date.
Marc
I’m glad you have a friend in Cali. But I stand by what I’ve written.
You let Mexico off the hook by defining the problem solely in terms of U.S. degeneracies. If we only would solve our problems, those bad people who are cleansing border towns wouldn’t be sweeping the broom.
Let’s just change the broom metaphor to a plow metaphor, and say that Mexico has for generations been adding to the fertility on the ground. And that the fall of the large cartels meant that money got invested on fertile ground.
But it isn’t just you shifting the blame of course. It will be the cri de coeur of all those who are (a) domsetic moralists (b) domestic internationalists[*] and (c) international anti-imperialists[**] as the situation deteriorates.
By making it an American problem, all three groups feel they’ve done their duty in solving it, no matter how bad it gets.
This is the problem with feel-good politics.
Sorry, I’m afraid you’re right. At some point in the future the U.S. military will take northern Mexico (probably in the summer of 2012, when political winds in the U.S. will make it seem like a good idea to very stupid people) and that it will turn out to be a very bad mistake.
But again, that doesn’t mean that the Mexican government isn’t making some very bad decisions right now, and it doesn’t mean that your focus on “demand” isn’t making excuses for those decisions.
[*] Domestic Internationalists being those who hold the opinion that U.S. perspectives have not inherent superiority to non-U.S. perspectives, and prove it by always choosing the Devil’s Advocate position in any position involving the United States and any entity that can sew a flag together.
[**] International Anti-Imperialists being any entity that can sew a flag together.
*I’m glad you have a friend in Cali. But I stand by what I’ve written.*
I am glad to see you have the courage of you “convictions”
*Columbia “seems” to be coming to order. It is doing so because the Columbian state is finally acting like a state instead of a parasite on its society.*
*Seems* is such a powerful word and adds so much to the strength of your perceptions.
*You let Mexico off the hook by defining the problem solely in terms of U.S. degeneracies*
I never let Mexico off the hook and your repeating that doesn’t make it fly any better than it did when you first said it, even backed up by the with the very weak fact that I only pointed out U. S. degeneracies. I simply pointed out a part of the problem that has been repeatedly ignored. So stop repeating something that is not true.
*But it isn’t just you shifting the blame of course. It will be the cri de coeur of all those who are (a) domsetic moralists (b) domestic internationalists[*] and © international anti-imperialists[**] as the situation deteriorates.*
*By making it an American problem, all three groups feel they’ve done their duty in solving it, no matter how bad it gets.*
*This is the problem with feel-good politics*
Oh, I didn’t realize I was aiding and abetting Pinkos, Fellow Travelers, Stalinists and the like. Even worse, engaging in “feel-good politics.”
Ground Control to Major Tom
*But again, that doesn’t mean that the Mexican government isn’t making some very bad decisions right now, and it doesn’t mean that your focus on “demand” isn’t making excuses for those decisions.*
So, If I speak to a major part of a problem, I am prima facie making excuses for those on the other side?
Sorry, that just doesn’t hold water, even in tandem with your constantly repeated nonsense that I am letting Mexico off the hook.
Regardless of what happens in the drug war, we would be better off physically separating our borders. Notwithstanding the skepticism so vocally displayed by those who prefer a wide open border, as a matter of utility its not a problem. Walls are our oldest form of technology. They aren’t foolproof but they do work astonishingly well for how little they require in resources. They don’t sleep and they don’t even need a pension, which in todays atmosphere is probably why they can’t find work.
toc3,
I see you’re perfectly capable of dismissing everyone else’s contribution here. OK, so how about if we stand back and let you propose your Grand Unified Solution the problem? I challenge you to post a comment outlining what it is you think the US should do, and without a single reference to anyone else’s wrong ideas.
Drug legalization is a non-starter unless you figure out what to do with the X% of people who will become non-functionally addicted.
The drug war is effectively a method of placing addicted people who can’t support themselves in their addiction on welfare, by placing them in jails/mandatory rehab programs.
The jail part assuages the feelings of those who’d rightfully scream at the thought of paying for addicts lifestyle/rehab, and keeps the addicts from dying in the streets.
So far both outright welfare and the dying in the streets are non-starters, and without any other viable alternative, the drug war stays.
Expanding the drug war to go after the middle and upper classes never happens for the same reason, they are functional, aren’t a drain on society, and people don’t like to see the government going after them.
As for trying to interrupt the money laundering. Heh. The money is hopelessly mixed in with the flood of money legal and illegal immigrants are sending back home to grandma and any attempt to mess around in that flow is guaranteed to sink without trace into the swamp we call immigration policy.
Which is why Mexico is sunk ultimately. The only realistic way to end the flow of drugs into the US involves the US locking down the border and ending illegal immigration. So the Mexican elite can either deal with the cartels or with their own populace minus the US safety valve.
Frankly, it’s hard to feel sorry for them, they’ve had decades to turn Mexico into a first world nation, and instead deliberately chose to keep it in second world status as their personal feeding trough. And now the poor Mexican people are caught in the cross-fire between two different sets of elites battling for the right to vampire off them. Personally I think we should be equipping villages with weapons and translated Patrick Henry, but that’s just me.
Generally, your outlook is very reminiscent of that of the Democratic Administrations that allowed New York City to become a cesspool before Giuliani’s election.
Their reaction to what they felt were intractable problems, like yours to the supply side problems with drugs in the U.S, was simply to shrug their shoulders and mutter what can you do.
The change that Guiliani brought in was astounding, simply because he enforced existing laws and didn’t listen to the the very defeatist Liberal view that you seem to hold.
As far as productive parts of society being immune, Guiliani was famous for prosecuting high level Wall Street Financiers during business hours, handcuffing them behind their back so the couldn’t hide their faces during their “Perp walk”. Plenty of Productive types also spent the night in the Tombs, the city jail in Manhattan for peeing on the sidewalk, which had become a sport during the previous administration But disappeared overnight once the work got around that a night in the holding pen there or on Riker’s Island wasn’t the same as a night at the Ritz.
So your Elitist/Defeatist stance of not going after the “productive” part of society doesn’t hold a lot of water with me.
*As for trying to interrupt the money laundering. Heh. The money is hopelessly mixed in with the flood of money legal and illegal immigrants are sending back home to grandma and any attempt to mess around in that flow is guaranteed to sink without trace into the swamp we call immigration policy.*
Also, can you cite any numbers or studies that back up this statement or is it just based on your intuition.
My guess is that you don’t, nor do you really have any idea about the flow of 60 billion dollars a year that flows into Latin america from the United States each year. But that is my point.
If you think a fence is going to quell this insatiable appetite for drug north of the fence and the profit it brings to the Narcotraficantes from Bolivia to Baja, well mazel tov. I think you are instead creating an Ostrich farm.
“I never let Mexico off the hook and your repeating that doesn’t make it fly any better than it did when you first said it, even backed up by the with the very weak fact that I only pointed out U. S. degeneracies.”
A very weak fact, huh?
Scream louder, works every time.
toc3:
Well, yes. You put the money in some sort of container, and you take it out of the country. This is easier than hauling tons of marijuana into the country. Is any significant portion of it laundered in the US? The DEA doesn’t think so.
Pure cocaine is not cheap, but crack cocaine is, and that’s the main market. How much cocaine is sold on Wall Street? Not nearly as much as 25 years ago. The big money is in sales to lots of small-time users. And lots of people have been busted for cocaine, so whatever deterrent effect it has is already in effect.
These would be the drug-soaked communities that have declared themselves sanctuary cities? Now they’re going to be Junior G-Men? When pigs freaking fly.
Legalize what, and at what price? Legalize heroin and cocaine? That will require:
1. Exemption from the type of taxation levied on tobacco
2. Exemption from the controls placed on prescription drugs
3. Flying Freaking Pigs (absolutely essential)
Otherwise people would rather buy from dealers, and the effect on crime and drug profits will be nil.
_”Drug legalization is a non-starter unless you figure out what to do with the X% of people who will become non-functionally addicted.”_
Why? Have we figured out to do with the X% that aren’t in prison or institutionalized now? That number is surely much larger than the prison number. But regardless, consider the enormous amount of resources that could be shifted from enforcement to prevention and rehab. Is it a magic bullet? No, of course not. Will we be any worse off than we are now? No, of course not. Aside, perhaps, from losing the ability to stigmatize addicts as criminals and hence ignore them.
_”Legalize what, and at what price? Legalize heroin and cocaine? That will require:”_
_”1. Exemption from the type of taxation levied on tobacco”_
Why? Have black market cigarettes spun out of control? Are there Mexican cigarette cartels profiting off them to some remarkable degree?
_”2. Exemption from the controls placed on prescription drugs”_
So what? Or, more to the point, why bother controlling prescription chemicals either? Of course you can continue to control what is sold at pharmacies, but do we _really_ care if some jackass is buying Ritalin from the trunk of somebody’s car? Enough to form the balance of our drug policy over?
toc3,
I appreciate your brief foray into a positive approach (i.e. stating what you think should happen, as opposed to just pooping on everyone else’s ideas.)
Still, might I suggest you didn’t exactly fulfill my request? This is partly my fault, as I asked what you thought we should do, when I should have emphasized more strongly that I was asking what we should DO.
Whereas your answer can be summarized as:
1 – talk
2 – talk
3 – talk
4 – talk
5 – mostly talk
6 – IF xxx then DO something [finally!]
And even then, your stuff is full of the passive voice (#4, “should be encouraged”) and/or implied subjects (#3, “Make information available…”). So it’s still not nearly as clear as it should be, as to who you think should actually be doing something different than they are/aren’t doing today.
Not to you; not any more.
Let me know when you want to actually discuss, rather than just pontificate, and then I’ll have more to say.
Will we be any worse off than we are now? No, of course not. Aside, perhaps, from losing the ability to stigmatize addicts as criminals and hence ignore them.
But the stigmatization is the entire point. It’s required to avoid the moral hazard charge, which is a valid problem, even if the extend of the subsidization is just an addiction -> rehab -> addiction merry-go-round.
For that matter, how exactly do you legalize drugs and then turn around and require rehab for a legal activity? Are you going to require a license to take drugs and then revoke if abused? I suppose that’s a workable solution, if one designed to drive libertarians nuts.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the current solution is ideal, or that drug legalization is an impossible ideal, but I would like to see evidence of a lot more skull sweat, analysis, and design work from the pro-legalization crowd than there is. The pro-legalization crowd runs essentially the same underpants gnome logic that’s all too often rife on the left. See the health care bill, lot’s of big ideas, little concrete planning and strategy, with the result being a scattered incoherent mess with who knows what outcome that’ll need to be tinkered with eternally in a vain attempt to duct-tape fixes to intrinsic structural problems if I don’t miss my guess. Same result as every build first, plan later endeavor.
And while I’ll be the first to admit the current approach is a problem, it’s also a managed and stable one. Drug addiction rates are essentially flat, crime rates are way, way down from the highs in the 70’s and 80’s and stable. Gang penetration is up from the lows achieved prior to the switch in LE focus to terrorism, but not alarmingly so. While it’s true the US has a domestic problem with this, it’s one we’ve successfully lived with for decades and one whose costs we’ve successfully internalized.
Drugs are not, in fact, a huge domestic problem for the US, nor is it perceived as one by the general public. I don’t think the Mexico situation changes either the problem or the perception. Which means the status quo stays, Mexico is going to have to deal with the problem as is.
If you think a fence is going to quell this insatiable appetite for drug north of the fence and the profit it brings to the Narcotraficantes from Bolivia to Baja, well mazel tov. I think you are instead creating an Ostrich farm.
Nothing short of a change in basic human nature is going to change the demand side of the problem. Drug use has been around since man discovered mushroom, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The most we can do is shift around where the supply of mind-altering substances comes from. Make it hard enough and expensive enough to get cocaine and heroin into the country, and the market will shift to easier, cheaper locally produced alternatives, likely chemically synthed drugs like Ecstasy.
As for the money laundering, do you have any idea how far the Feds are already into the financial systems (particularly post Patriot Act)? Any non-trivial cash or cash equivalent movement, and essentially all wire and bank-bank movements are recorded by the Feds.
The only ways to get money out of the country is either to physically move it across the border, or to move it electronically, but in a way that does not alarm the feds. That involves either co-opting a financial institution and deliberately altering the reporting requirements, doable but tricky. Alternatively you simply use the already existing vast sea of, err, legitimate under the table cash payments and transfers across the border to hide your illegitimate cash payments and transfer across the border.
Did you imagine that the money was moving uninterruptedly south due solely to the inattention of the feds? They’ve been attempting to strangle that flow for decades, with results we’re all aware of.
Google the term ‘casas de cambio’. The feds have been watching this already, but it’s darn hard to make a dent in the flood with your fingers. As a matter of fact, “Wachovia”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703457104575122141273545642.html just made the news for just this.
mark:
I don’t know about “out of control”, but black market cigarettes are a huge criminal enterprise, and have been for over 100 years. “Al Qaeda and Hisballah”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23384-2004Jun7.html have been linked to the trade. In the US alone, smuggling cigarettes from low-tax to high-tax states is a multimillion dollar business. This is a product that is legal everywhere in the world, even Saudi Arabia.
Mexico supplies an interesting example. Under Spanish rule, tobacco cultivation in Mexico was strictly limited. Tobacco was a big source of profit for Spain, and they wanted to keep prices high. After independence, the Mexican government retained a monopoly on tobacco, continuing Spanish practice.
When U.S. Grant went to Mexico with the army in 1846, he was surprised to see that nearly all Mexicans, male and female, smoked cigarettes rolled in corn husks:
All of this was black market tobacco, grown illegally or smuggled from the United States. A legal government cigar was for the rich only.
My point is, when you talk about “legalization”, you are proposing to compete against an illegal product with a legal product. It seems to be readily assumed that this competition will be more or less successful, and the illegal product will be either eliminated or made greatly less profitable.
Consumers go for cheap products that are readily available. Is anybody willing to sell meth amphetamine to teenagers, or $5 doses of crack to anybody who wants it? If you are going compete with the illegal trade, you must at least approach that standard.
Of course that won’t happen – hence my sarcasm. What legalization would do, in my opinion, is set up state and federal governments in the drug business, selling to an elite class of users (just like the Mexican government used to do) who are willing to submit to controls and high taxes to avoid breaking the law.
This will hardly destroy the illegal drug trade; in fact, it might prove a bonanza. Legalization will remove many criminal penalties from the illegal trade, saving them lots of money. More importantly, it will remove the stigma from drug users.
The “drug war” will have to continue, meanwhile, under a different name. Instead of drug dealers, we’ll fight smugglers, black marketeers, and tax evaders. They’ll still have guns.
In addition, we’ll have a new type of official corruption to worry about, centering around the legal drug traffic, which might not be so legal after all.
I find this scenario unrealistic to the point being absurd, in spite of the easy way in which intelligent people talk about it. That’s why I was flip, and I apologize.
bq. For that matter, how exactly do you legalize drugs\\\\\ *alcohol* and then turn around and require rehab for a legal activity? Are you going to require a license to take drugs\\\\\\\\\\ *drink booze* and then revoke if abused? I suppose that’s a workable solution, if one designed to drive libertarians nuts.
There, FTFY. The point is, we already have a template for dealing with the situation. Up to a point, consumption is your own prerogative and your own problem. If it makes you dangerous or incompetent, then it becomes society’s problem, and intervention can be justified. Nobody’s claiming that’s a perfect solution, but as you’re pointing out, that may not exist. This is a problem that is satisficed, not solved, for any potentially addictive substance.
The negative side-effects of our futile attempts at Prohibition are well noted above, maybe we should try something else. Alcohol is actually *more* prone to physical addiction than some soft drugs, such as pot. Maybe we ought to legalize them, and see if that soaks up the demand for some of the nastier stuff like crack and meth?
Tim:
Marijuana already competes with everything. Marijuana is by far the most ubiquitous illegal commodity in the world. Drug users have already made their choice – unless one proposes to change their minds through mass marketing and promotion of marijuana.
A wall, then troops, then enlarging the Coast Guard, then even more bases in Latin America, all the time underwriting the armament of our enemies, as we have for the past half Century or so.
Well I guess the 60 Billion to these thugs isn’t that bad for the economy. We get a lot back by way of their buying guns from our home grown thugs. Especially since we can’t do anything about domestic consumption.
Geez, whatever happened to problem solving and Yankee ingenuity?
toc3 –
How do you propose to reduce domestic consumption of drugs?
I take it you support increased criminal penalties, though you seem to suggest these could be targeted at “Middle and Upper class users”, which is plainly not in the spirit of equality under the law, and would not effect the largest and most destructive share of the market. The public is all for nailing “drug kingpins”, but they’re not so supportive of heaping more punishment on pathetic junkies and high school kids who get caught with dope.
We could pour it on with the New England Schoolmarm lectures about drugs, but that has meager effect. I recall when a Colombian minister was assassinated, and Nancy Reagan said that drug users in the US were partly responsible for his death – and likewise the deaths of the many soldiers, police, and officials from Mexico to Peru who have been murdered. I saw her point, and I think you would, too. But cripes, the groans from the liberals and the legalizers threatened to unseat the heavens.
Our current strategy is to promote political stability and law enforcement in countries like Mexico and Colombia, which if ultimately successful would reduce illegal drug traffic to its lowest level – though never eliminate it, of course. In the meantime, we attack the supply.
As unsatisfactory as this is, both in conception and execution, I think this is our only good option.
_”But the stigmatization is the entire point. It’s required to avoid the moral hazard charge”_,
Why? Its an assumption that prohibition is keeping anyone at all from taking illegal drugs that normally wouldnt… certainly as opposed to luring people into doing it simply because its forbidden. I’d like to see the evidence that stigmatization is holding back the floodgates of people who desperately want to be heroin addicts but don’t want to risk prison. I don’t believe legalization efforts in Europe have revealed that type of data.
_”For that matter, how exactly do you legalize drugs and then turn around and require rehab for a legal activity?_”
Require? Why would we require it? Why is all this assumption of forcing and requiring built in to this argument. Somebody wants to go risk becoming a drug addict. Knock yourself out. People do it every day now, whats the difference? Lets take a few of those tens of billions of dollars spent on the prohibition and spend it on prevention and community rebab programs. Why are you making it so much more complicated than it is?
_”Are you going to require a license to take drugs and then revoke if abused?_”
No. I’m not going to require anything of anyone.
_”The pro-legalization crowd runs essentially the same underpants gnome logic that’s all too often rife on the left.”_
I’m sure there is a lot of that in the legalization community. But you’re reading that into what i’m saying. I’m not promising anything, I’m just recognizing some obvious truths. If you are doing something that is vastly expensive, hurts a lot of people, and has precious little to show in way of results, why not just _stop doing it_ and see what happens?
And you clearly underestimate the amount of resources devoted to the drug war. Our prisons are overflowing with different types of drug offenders. Violent offenders keep seeing shorter sentences. If you legalize drugs, you free up an awful lot of space in prisons. Then you can through the book at anybody that commits a violent crime (drug addled or not). That is a _huge_ opportunity cost we suffer constantly.
And as far as the status quo- well, our financial viability isn’t a great thing to make long term bets on right now. We wont have the same resources in 10 years to fight the drug war we do today. We’d be wise to take that into consideration. The only thing dumber than fighting a battle you dont need to fight is losing it slowly and painfully.
_”I don’t know about “out of control”, but black market cigarettes are a huge criminal enterprise, and have been for over 100 years. “_
And yet the tobacco market remains viable. Nobody is saying the illicit drug market would disappear, but the difference between making millions on a marijuana shipment and making a few bucks you can skim by skipping the tax is a _huge_ difference economically. Nations aren’t on the verge of being toppled by cigarette profiteers- guys buy an extra jogging suit and pinkie ring.
_”Is anybody willing to sell meth amphetamine to teenagers, or $5 doses of crack to anybody who wants it? If you are going compete with the illegal trade, you must at least approach that standard.”_
If the multi-billion dollar drug trade was really built on selling meth to high school kids and 5$ hits of crack, it wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry.
Don’t kid yourself, the drug trade is based on millions of people buying recreational doses, not the fringe stuff you see on HBO.
By your logic alcohol and tobacco industries couldn’t exist.
_Its an assumption that prohibition is keeping anyone at all from taking illegal drugs that normally wouldnt… certainly as opposed to luring people into doing it simply because its forbidden._
From the National Bureau of Economic Research, July 1991:
We estimate the consumption of alcohol during Prohibition using mortality, mental health and crime statistics. We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-prohibition level. The level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition, although consumption increased to approximately its pre-Prohibition level during the subsequent decade.
So even at the highest point of alcohol consumption during prohibition, it was 30-40 per cent below pre-prohibition levels. And it took a decade for it to return to pre-prohibition levels. Prohibition did work if you define work as significantly reducing alcohol consumption. My guess is the same is true of drug prohibition. Is the cost, in money and shattered lives, of a 30-40% increase in drug use lower than the cost of the war on drugs? I suspect not, especially taking into consideration Glen’s points about the black market.
Fred… from your own post: “The level of consumption was virtually the same immediately after Prohibition as during the latter part of Prohibition,”
Check me if i’m wrong here, but the drug war has been going on for decades. Why is it appropriate to compare our current state of ‘latent demand’ with early prohibition instead of late prohibition (if then)?
_”Is the cost, in money and shattered lives, of a 30-40% increase in drug use lower than the cost of the war on drugs?”_
You are discounting the shattered lives and costs _created_ by the drug war. You are discounting the opportunity cost of the resources devoted to fighting it. You probably massively overestimating the costs of even a 30% increase in drug use (and i don’t know that heroine is likely to have a 30% backlog of users like a massively popular product like alcohol did).
Of course, if you don’t mind your “prison population”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg exploding, you can change all sorts of behavior. Nothing like locking people up to make your numbers look good. But lets not pretend its not exorbitantly expensive to do so.
Lets throw some Damned Lies into this conversation:
Ok, according to the “NSDUH”:http://www.drugabusestatistics.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k8nsduh/2k8Results.cfm#7.1 in 2008 7.6 million Americans required treatment for illicit drug abuse (as opposed to 19 million for alcohol).
Lets say that increases by 30% (worst case scenario?), so we have 2.3 million new drug abusers. The Federal government alone spends 9.2 billion dollars a year on “enforcement and interdiction”:http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/policy/09budget/index.html (let alone prison costs and state and local funding). You could provide $4000 per new addict per year by simply shifting _federal_ enforcement funding to rehabilitation. Which is indeed the tip of the drug war iceberg. Factor in the tens of billions spent on locking people up and on state and local enforcement and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
“How do you propose to reduce domestic consumption of drugs?”
“I will stick to cocaine.”
I’m not sure if it was intentional but that little question and answer snippet is about the funniest thing I’ve read here in a long long time.
By the way, I completely agree with toc3 about addressing demand as well as supply, and his “Giuliani approach” seems reasonable to me. I just don’t believe legalization would ultimately effectively address either side. It would increase demand, probably dramatically, and there would still be illegal suppliers using drug money to fuel jihads, insurgencies, and cartel wars.
I’d like to see the evidence that stigmatization is holding back the floodgates of people who desperately want to be heroin addicts but don’t want to risk prison.
Err, the stigmatization I was referring to isn’t to prevent drug addiction it’s to prevent welfare addiction. The normally welfare squeamish right supports paying for food, clothes, shelter, and rehab because of the whole attached jail thing. You could possibly design a replacement minus the jail thing that the right would swallow, but that would require some careful planning.
I’m sure there is a lot of that in the legalization community. But you’re reading that into what i’m saying. I’m not promising anything, I’m just recognizing some obvious truths. If you are doing something that is vastly expensive, hurts a lot of people, and has precious little to show in way of results, why not just stop doing it and see what happens?
Really? No plan? No analysis? Just trust me, how bad could it be?
Well, I’m convinced, where do I sign up?
This is exactly what’s wrong with our politics. Cherry pick rosy assumptions and best case numbers. Slather with warm fuzzy emotional arguments. Serve fresh, with a generous side dish of hope and change.
If you want to upset the current state of affairs, the burden of evidence is on your side.
Someone on the pro-legalization side needs to come up with a plan (or better yet, several) laying out all the options, decisions, enforcement mechanisms. It should answer all the tough, ugly questions. Lay it out, let people poke holes in it, fix the holes, iterate until done.
If it is really a solid improvement over current reality, it should beat current reality even with pessimistic assumptions.
If you want legalization to be more than a niche political club you need to convince folks like myself who are morally sympathetic but don’t see it as practical.
Like I said, I’m morally sympathetic, and thus rather disgusted by the abysmal job the legalization crowd does in attempting to sell their side. Pointing at the costs of the drug war amidst much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing is not a game winner, it’s the opening for an alternative pitch.
Even if the political winds suddenly shift, look at what happened to the Dems on health care. They suddenly had everything they needed, super majorities in Congress, the Presidency, and a slight majority in popular support for health care reform. Remember that press conference Pelosi and Reed had back in February (March? I forget exactly) of 2009 when they announced they’d be pursuing health care reform. They went on and on about how horrible the current health care system is and how they’d been waiting decades to do something about it, and that now the time is right.
Then they ended the press conference. I nearly died laughing. Where was the plan?
They had to send the aides, lobbyists and assorted hangars on into back rooms for what, about 6 months worth of all-nighters to quick come up with a plan they could pass.
Imagine how different things would have been if Pelosi had ended that press conference by whipping out the plan and thumping it down on the desk along with glossy brochures hitting the high points and an interactive website and started the political compromise procedure from that point.
Don’t make that mistake. Burn the brain sweat now, just winging it is a plan for desperation, is pro-legalization a desperation maneuver?
_”Don’t make that mistake. Burn the brain sweat now, just winging it is a plan for desperation, is pro-legalization a desperation maneuver?”_
I don’t see the correlation between health care and legalizing drugs. One is a huge takeover over the economy to be micromanaged by the government. Of course that is rife with unintended consequences. The other is to stop the semi-serious, arbitrary, prohibition _by_ the government that is _already_ rife with unintended consequences. When the house is on fire, its rather odd to spend time considering the implications of stopping the flow of the gasoline.
In other words- the level, severity, and implication involved with unintended consequences are not all equal. Erring away from government fiat and mucking around with markets, and particularly limiting the freedom of something the citizens _clearly_ are going to do anyway, is simply not as precarious as going the other direction. Building a house on a bad foundation requires thought. Tearing one down still requires thought, but not nearly as much, and certainly not so much that you need to consider whether you can safely tear it down at all.
Tearing one down still requires thought, but not nearly as much, and certainly not so much that you need to consider whether you can safely tear it down at all.
No matter how horribly designed, badly built, and ugly the house may be, I would rather not be standing inside it when you tear it down. There’s a lot of stuff going to come down with a fair amount of force. You can stand inside and argue with the roofing beams that since they shouldn’t have been there in the first place, they don’t exist and can’t squash you. Let me know how that works.
We’re all stuck in the house, before you start placing dynamite on the house columns I need more than inspirational speeches on the wonders of fresh air.
If you want to discuss Mexico’s culpability in all this go ahead. I might even join the discussions.
That’s mighty white of you, home boy.
Back in Chemistry 101, we learned about what are called rates problems. In these problems, the critical step is to determine what the rate-limiting reaction is, and how to modify it if necessary. Bearing in mind that the U.S. will consume as many drugs as we can get our degenerate hands on (and that no one before or after Carrie Nation has figured out a real way to change that) then the reaction that needs to be quelled is the one south of the frickin’ border.
Assuming, of course, that your point is to reduce the human suffering south of the border, and not to ride to heaven on the backs of your blog comments.
In the U.S., legalization would implode the economic engine that drive our gang problem. In Mexico, the gang problem has become an actual threat to sovereignty. There’s another rates problem to consider; our government simply doesn’t have the skin in the game that Mexico has. Hence, rant all you want, Obama isn’t going to push anything that gets in the way of his domestic agenda. Until, of course, he needs an external crisis to distract from the internal crises.
Hey, toc – I’ve been away kicking off a project, but this isn’t remotely what I want to come back to. Read your comment stream and note the _style_ with which you’re addressing the other commenters (some of whom are certainly rising to the bait).
That’s not how I want to have discussions here.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but we need to reboot here.
Let’s go back to the original premise of the post, which is the risk of social collapse in US/Mexican border areas.
I’ll do a post on drugs later, and we can hash that argument out there.
Marc
My apologies to you, I tend to get Gregory House-like at times.
toc3:
The whole rates thing was a way of saying that you are p***ing into the wind if you think trying to change U.S. consumption habits will have any real effect on the political situation south of the U.S. border.
Of course, advocating more liberal drug laws in the U.S. (and yes, I will p*** into any cup at any time, I don’t use, other than my brain) is also pretty futile at this time. OTOH, my advocacy doesn’t excuse paramilitary cleansing on my country’s borders, either.
Those of us north of the border are asking you (and Mexico) to get real. That is all.
OK, OK, I looked it up…brilliant, acerbic and gimpy?
If Mexico’s civil authority collapses, there are two options:
(a) Try to close the border and pray we can deal with the influx that will get in anyway.
(b) Take active measures to secure civil peace, at least in the northern states.
Both are very, very bad. (a) We let Mexico go to hell in a handbasket, and the people who die by bullets will be the lucky ones. (b) We go in as Imperialist Gringos and deal with the geopolitical consequences for another two generations.
Here’s the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to talk about:
Remittances, or contributions sent by Mexicans living abroad, mostly in the United States, to their families at home in Mexico, are a substantial and growing part of the Mexican economy; they comprised $18 billion in 2005.[26] In 2004, they became the second largest source of foreign income after crude oil exports, roughly equivalent to foreign direct investment (FDI) and larger than tourism expenditures; and represented 2.5 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.[27] The growth of remittances has been remarkable: they have more than doubled since 1997. Recorded remittance transactions exceeded 41 million in 2003, of which 86 percent were made by electronic transfer.[28]
Mexico has developed an existential need for the U.S. economy to be booming. This has nothing to do with our drug consumption, but has a lot to do with how not-poor or poor people are. And in case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. economy hasn’t been booming for a few years now.
(In other words, toc3, we’re back to rates questions, and how to effectively deal with critical interactions. What is the real driver in the problem? Frankly, I think U.S. drug consumption is the least of Mexico’s problems.)
The real question is (and I hope our State Department is up to it) how do we keep Mexico from collapsing without turning it into a puppet state?