I think this is a bit of a false equivalence- at most I might pay $5 for the cobalt in my phone once a year. That is a very harmful $5 but I'd bet most drug users are on 100x that
Unfortunately the only way to kill the cartels is to legalize drugs and force them into legal industries that we can regulate. That won't stop cartels completely, but it would take away tremendous revenue sources. That being said, I believe I've read that cartels have diversified so much that they now make more money from avocados and other sources than drugs.
Cartels do not only sell drugs, they are systems of diversified private security corporations and paramilitary groups which have emerged out of the previous iterations of violence and loss of governmental order which was a symptom of national narcotrafficking disputes in the previous decade. Basically a large portion of the Mexican Government effectively is infiltrated by cartels which also function with public support, hence the mudering of journalists and politicians...cant have people speak out and show that cartels are bad now can we?
If you had a time machine and could boycott drugs in the 1980s then it would have had an impact...now not as much.
It's very easy for people to convince themselves that they are not contributing to the problem. "It's the government's fault for not liberalizing and regulating the drug trade"
Isn't that really where the blame lies? The idea that addicts are going to prioritize an abstract contribution to some far away problem over maintaining their supply, especially when treatment and legal access is very hard to come by, is highly unrealistic.
When the drug war ends and murder rates in the Americas don’t go down to European levels, maybe some will realize it was never the drugs to begin with: https://mexfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/murder-rate.jpg (murder rate in Mexico is far below what it was before the drug war started, and has trended down as the drug war ramped up after 1980).
As is universally accepted by everyone who has ever studied the issue, the situation in Mexico became violent when the old hegemonic cartel structure fractured and new groups rushed to fill the power vacuum. The violence is wholly attributable to the drug cartels and the legal status of drugs, even if it doesn't track 100% with how the United States has funded the war on drugs (which, really, why would it).
I've noticed you have a tendency to pop into threads, lob in an out of context chart or factoid, and confidently assert a contrarian opinion. As someone who shares that contrarian impulse, I'd strongly recommend you try to master that urge. You're a very insightful commentator when you stick to what you know.
idk what it's like where you live, but in my city the overwhelming majority of murders are linked to the illicit narcotics trade. maybe they would think of some other illegal shit to kill each other over if drugs were legalized, but I find it hard to believe that the violence wouldn't subside a bit if their main revenue stream were cut off.
also, it seems questionable to extrapolate the outcome of legalization in the US based on data from mexico.
> maybe they would think of some other illegal shit to kill each other over if drugs were legalized, but I find it hard to believe that the violence wouldn't subside a bit if their main revenue stream were cut off.
You might think that but the data doesn’t really support it: http://polyticks.com/polyticks/beararms/liars/uscentury.gif. Homicide rates were spiking in the US long before prohibition. Likewise, after going down post WWII, homicide rates started spiking before the drug war. They had almost doubled from the previous low point by the time Nixon was elected. Nixon coined the phrase drug war, but didn’t really fund it aggressively. That was Reagan. But homicide were near the peak by the time he was even elected.
> also, it seems questionable to extrapolate the outcome of legalization in the US based on data from mexico.
Not really—the cartels supply demand for drugs in the US. And OP was blaming the US drug war for violence in Mexico.
As a non native living in Mexico I'm not surprised by this but on the same hand I would say its actually not as bad as people think here, you see the cartels don't want tourists to stop coming as the locals wouldn't like it and it would effect the cartels bottom line, as long as you stay out their way the cartels will usually leave you alone, just as gangs in Chicago will most of the time.
Mexico is a beautiful place of warm people, brave journalists and contradictions.
> Casualties are often measured indirectly by estimated total deaths from organized crime in Mexico.[253] This amounts to about 115,000 people in the years 2007 - 2018.
I don't believe for a single second that violent assholes wouldn't give me a hard time if they felt like it. They don't live by some kind thieves' code. It's not a Dickens novel.
They're dangerous as shit and anyone who accidentally crosses paths with them might get killed for the hell of it. You ever read Borderlands Beat? That's real news coming out of Mejico. That country is bullshit and it can't keep its act together and never has. But, oh, my quaint villas and excellent tacos. Yeah, right. Drink the water and get back to me.
As far Chicago, that city is a mess, too. I was there just last year. It sucks there for all kinds of reasons.
You know what Chicago and Mexico have in common? Failed liberal policies.
> As far Chicago, that city is a mess, too. I was there just last year. It sucks there for all kinds of reasons.
How long did you spend here to reach your conclusion that Chicago sucks for all kinds of reasons? I've been here for 6 years, and I like it better here than anywhere else I've lived (Detroit, Indianapolis, West Lafayette, and New York City).
>You know what Chicago and Mexico have in common? Failed liberal policies.
Chicago has a bustling tech scene. My rent for a big, nice apartment is only 23% of my take home pay each month. It's a fine place to live. I assume you're saying that it's a dangerous hellscape because we have a lot of homicides annually, but per capita, about 10 US cities are more violent. And the violence is really still a residual effect from the redlining practice codified in the National Housing Act of 1934, which forced black people to live in bad neighborhoods regardless of their income. Redlining was legal up until 1977, which was only about 1 generation ago, which is not long enough for a significant population to save enough to move to better neighborhoods and give their children educations that enable social mobility. And redlining was a racist policy, which is hardly "liberal" (although both major parties supported racism, until the Democrats reversed course).
So I guess I don't see the basis you use to arrive at your conclusion.
> I don't believe for a single second that violent assholes wouldn't give me a hard time if they felt like it. They don't live by some kind thieves' code. It's not a Dickens novel.
I never said they wouldn't, there are crazy cartel members just as there are crazy gang members.
> They're dangerous as shit and anyone who accidentally crosses paths with them might get killed for the hell of it. You ever read Borderlands Beat? That's real news coming out of Mejico. That country is bullshit and it can't keep its act together and never has. But, oh, my quaint villas and excellent tacos. Yeah, right. Drink the water and get back to me.
Im literally living in Mexico, not in a resort but in a border town.
> As far Chicago, that city is a mess, too. I was there just last year. It sucks there for all kinds of reasons.
Agreed but there are nice places as well.
> You know what Chicago and Mexico have in common? Failed liberal policies.
I agree and corruption.
There's a ton of propaganda in mainstream media claiming that Mexico and America are both heaven and hell depending on what you watch but as an outsider (I'm neither Mexican or American) I can honestly tell you it's somewhere in between.
You know, as someone else living in Mexico, these topics always bait me. The kind of people these topics attract that weirdly brag about how radicalized they are by news always blow my mind.
But in the end it's not so bad. It keeps Mexico interesting and unadulterated by tourists.
Some of these commenters you'd think walk around with a helmet on because they might trip and they won't risk that possibility. I'd love to see someone like that look where I've lived for five years in a beach city and tell me how bad I must have it and how much I must fear for my life in this war zone.
Some people need the air conditioned sense of suburban safety that bores me to fucking tears. Other people like a little bit of ruggedness and adventure and maybe even adversity in life. Or something in between. To each their own.
It's so funny when people say this, especially with snark. I mean, you thought you had a real mic drop moment just then. As if there aren't a bunch of Americans who get Sparkletts delivered to their door just like Mexicans.
How would they know? Your local "guy" is just some guy. And even if he weren't, what are you going to do, ask? "Excuse me, are you part of a cartel that murders people?" "Uh...no?"
I think the situation is bad enough now that you should boycott your local "guy" even though it's possible that all his drugs come from humane, sustainable sources.
I agree. I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but it’s bizarre how fashionable it is to advocate vaguely for “social justice” while directly financing gang and cartel violence. Sure, you can blame the government for making it inconvenient to get affordable, conflict-free drugs, but what does that say about your commitment to social justice if you’re willing to bankroll violence because it’s a more convenient way to indulge your leisure activity?
Why are you voting for politicians to save the environment if you arent vegan, keep driving your car and buy stuff packed in plastics? Do you know where the clothes come from you wear?
Its not realistic to get enough people voluntarily stop to destroy the planet, it is however feasible to get a government changing its policies to alter the structures that incentivize pollution.
You're conflating suboptimal decisions about essentials (people need food, clothes, and transport and optimizing for good is a complex problem) with paying for something that you don't need and directly harms the cause you purport to care about.
People don't need leather goods or slave labor or fashion brands.
> transport
People don't need SUVs or Corvettes.
> optimizing for good is a complex problem
This is not a complex calculation: in all cases they're more expensive, worse for you, and worse for the world than readily available alternatives. And yet here we are, because, just like drugs, they're fun.
This whole thread is the worst kind of whataboutism. Trying to justify or normalize the consequences of drug use by equating drug users with consumers who don't know how to optimize for their values (and trivializing the work and special knowledge involved in that optimization process). It's shameful.
- Balancing your family's diet without meat requires specialist knowledge and effort that "not buying drugs" does not.
- Balancing your family's transportation needs with environmental friendliness requires specialist knowledge (chiefly the carbon impact associated with different candidate vehicles) and additional cost (an environmentally friendly vehicle with equivalent capacity is almost always going to cost more) which is also not true for "not buying drugs".
- Assessing every candidate clothing item's working conditions requires lots of specialist knowledge and effort that isn't true for "not buying drugs".
And this is without comparing the marginal impact of an individual's environmentally inefficient consumer choices to a drug user's significant and direct impact on drug violence. You'd have to place a pretty low price on human life (especially the minority communities that are most impacted by drug violence) to make this equivalency.
There are a lot of recreational cocaine users, and they are doing it right under our (or their) noses. They range from billionaires to your local college grad.
See The Social Network Movie, Wolf of Wall Street, etc. The drug use was not as dramatized as you might think.
The set people who care deeply enough about this issue to change their drug consumption habits is probably pretty small. And of the ones that are so motivated by this issue, I assume they're infrequent users that account for a small fraction of the cartels' profit.
If you are purchasing illegal drugs (except something someone could grow in their basement i.e. marijuana) - then you are funding some sort of organised crime
I hate to agree with Trump at all, but the drug trade is largely due to ineffective border controls. An impervious border may well restore relative peace to war torn northern Mexico.
The vast majority of smuggled drugs come in through border checkpoints, hidden in shipments of ordinary goods that are part of the legitimate US/Mexico trade.
There are millions of tons of goods entering the United States every year. How exactly would you intend to enforce this perfectly?
That's like saying that websites shouldn't have copyright violations on them, since every single piece of content uploaded to them can be manually reviewed and approved to prevent violations. Good luck with that.
The drug trade is due to consumer demand for drugs. The violence is due to government prohibition driving it underground. Underground markets tend to elevate the worst, most ruthless and violent actors. Legalizing and regulating recreational drugs will likely put violent drug cartels out of business or force them into legal, nonviolent traditional roles.
That's like saying theft is increasing because of consumer demand for free goods. And that all goods should be free to reduce demand.
The reasonble choice is to make the trade more difficult and raise prices. Cigarette prices have shown demand for some very addictive substances are far more elastic than some would believe.
I think there's better solutions than increasing exposure to addictive drugs. Non-addictive stuff I really don't care about. But they don't drive the drug trade either. I'm also for decriminalizing addiction to encourage people to seek help. Your suggestion is a bit too much anarchy for me
Prices will increase, lowering demand. It will always get in as long as someone is willing to pay the price. But if the price is steep enough, it will be greatly curtailed.
The drug market operates on supply and demand like other commodities
This is the exact same "War on Drugs" logic that's been failing us for decades now. Time to try out solutions based on a better theory, like legalization.
The problem there is "impervious border". It's impossible.
And even with a perfect wall in place, we still let people through it and over it and around it via other channels. The problem isn't really just people physically walking across the border away from checkpoints.
I insist that my local trap car only vend organic, ethically- and locally-sourced fair trade heroine. And an extra dollar from every purchase goes to the Ronald McDonald House.
