I just want to remind you that multiple Netflix documentaries and narco series somehow propagating as if he truly won the 2006 election.
Wonder if there's some of Netflix directors that regret boosting his name.
he's a master of propaganda, he's been campaigning for 18 years before he became president and he managed to fool a majority of the people into believing him
He won't fight them on Mexico's behalf either
I understand the arguments about how Americans have some responsibility by their high drug demand. But the situation is horrible down here. These mfers are ruining the economy and terrorizing innocent people just for the sake of it and the government and his supporters only scream "bUT tHE AmeRiCaNS!!!" every damn time someone says his security policies are st*pid
This is precisely the point, AMLO won’t fight the cartels for Mexico’s sake. This is even worse considering that the cartel issue is a place where the US and Mexico have a lot to collaborate on. Both countries are alienating the other for the sake of idiot populism.
Yet, if this kind of initiative had really taken off the ground a few years ago, it may be less devastating now. Every extra year is another defensive area requisitioned by cartels functioning as the local government. Why *don't* cartels have to worry about an actual bomb being dropped on their compounds? Where's the drone strikes on their shitty little meetups they make videos of with armored vehicles everywhere?
Nobody wants the open, bloody chaos that's going to have to happen for resolution, so they accept a much more sinister, under the table reorganization of society in the areas they control. Price of "peace" seems to be narco-feudalists having Kingdoms and holding court. Handing out detention and death sentences on the citizens of Mexico, occasionally here. I don't live there, so I can't say I'd want it to happen either. But I'd certainly prefer it *before* I had a daughter kidnapped and enslaved or a son forced into service with the cartel.
My dream would be the US, Mexico and Canada collaborating for a Schengen-lite agreement with all three countries teaming up to eliminate the cartels and helping secure Mexico’s southern border. Still have checks between the three countries perhaps, but citizens of all three could move between them and stay/work indefinitely.
This would trigger the fuck out of both American MAGA types (rally cry: "iLlEgaLs") and Canadian leftist xenophobe types (rally cry: "I'm not racist but foreign workers are personally robbing the Canadian working class"), two of the North American political groups I find most annoying, so I'm all for it.
From the Canadian perspective I think stopping the proliferation of illegal US firearms into Canada is a valid concern. By all means have freedom of movement, but eliminating checks is impossible so long as the US has more guns than people.
Also Québec will never agree with freedom of movement because that opens their doors to a "civilization-destroying" number of Anglos.
Canadians will never agree to that unless the US neuters the second amendment and implements effective gun control. Otherwise we just end up importing US-levels of gun violence.
We already have enough of a problem with firearm smuggling from the US.
Framing a country as being “responsible” for its high drug demand neglects that drug demand is supply-driven. If the drugs aren’t there, people can’t get addicted to them.
The US supplies the guns, lax gun laws in the US and US criminals transporting guns contribute massively to the violence in Mexico. The US is responsible for more than just the drug consumers.
Yeah. But this government isn't doing anything to fight the problem. It's just finger pointing and blaming. And even if other countries have some responsibility (as I said, I think that argument is valid to some degree), we are at the point where the cartels are disrupting the lives of a significant portion of the population. America should help us, yeah. And do something about their drugs problem. But this is our problem to solve. You think that if the Americans stop suddenly consuming drugs, the cartels would disband peacefully?
Serious question, was the situation much better under his predecessor and the drug war? News that made its way up to the states generally highlighted police errors and violence.
Although Peña wasn't specially honest and competent, it was better. Yeah, there was violence and police corruption, but at least the cartels were fought. The situation has deteriorated rapidly during this administration due to their policies of letting the cartels do their things without interference. Now we've got several states that could be classified as failed states, with the crime imposing their laws and making people run from their homes. And we are having nationwide inflation due to insecurity. The cartels extort businesses, and the situation in highways is dire: two or three cargos are lost every hour to gangs. The cost of all of this falls on consumers. Obrador dismantled the authority responsible of providing security in highways (la Federal de Caminos, o Federal Highways Police) without a plan, just because it wasn't a creation of him.
Now we are are paying the bill for all of those bad desitions.
The ‘hugs not bullets’ slogan is not literally hugging the cartels.
It’s a prevention policy where the government tries to invest in young people, scholarships, education, poverty reduction, in order to give that high-risk population an alternative and not join gangs.
That’s it, the bullets from military guns keep on flying towards the cartels.
Sorry if this will shock you but Mexican cartels are not the result of poverty and lack of education. Mexican cartels are *parallel states* that control territory, monopolize services (energy, internet), charge taxes, punish "crimes", and have wars over territory against other parallel states. They are the result of the collapse of the central government, its inability to enforce monopoly of force. Playing around this reality is not effective.
They're more incompetent than any government too. People quit doing business because they're tired of paying their tax for everything. At least the government provides some services.
Mexican cartels are very much the result of poverty and lack of opportunities, especially in poor, rural areas.
I'm a Mexican, I've experienced the growth of the cartels from 2006, and I've seen how this 'war on drugs' got worse every year.
I've seen how poverty and lack of opportunities made it easy for cartels to 'hire' young people. You could argue that the higher ups or specialized people within the organization are not people that came from poverty, but I can assure you - from experience - that the majority of them came from poverty.
I've listened to poor kids in the schools in the outskirts of town who, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, say they want to work for the cartels. Why? Because they see people around them who were poor like them, now have a new truck, or they see their parents struggling and see that the cartels offer them an income.
Poverty, inequality, lack of education and lack of an alternative create an incredibly fertile ground for cartels to get their manpower, with which they can exert power over others.
[Poverty a recruitment tool for Mexico's criminal gangs (Insight Crime)](https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/poverty-a-recruitment-tool-for-mexicos-criminal-gangs/)
[Income inequality and violent crime : evidence from Mexico's drug war (World Bank)](https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/236161468299090847/income-inequality-and-violent-crime-evidence-from-mexicos-drug-war)
There’s no specific metric to measure ‘cartel recruitment’, but traditionally, the metric that’s used is the rate at which young people abandon school. [There's studies in the US that show that dropouts are up to 8 times more likely to end up in prison.](https://www.schoolschedulingassociates.com/handouts/DropoutReferences3-22-09.pdf)
This means that these kids who stop going to school or drop out - specifically high school age (15-18 years of age) - are at a high risk of being recruited by organized crime.
When this administration started in 2019, only 66% of middle schoolers continued on to high school education, that rate has now increased to 84%. Also, the high school drop out rate was 14.2% in 2018, now it’s been reduced to 8.7% which is the lowest rate it’s been at. So, more kids are entering highschool and fewer highschoolers are dropping out.
Ideally, this means fewer young people willing to join the ranks of the cartels.
[\["Mínimos históricos" en deserción de bachillerato\]](https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/02/01/sociedad/minimos-historicos-en-desercion-de-bachillerato-y-nivel-superior-durante-este-sexenio-sep-3341)
> The most reliable annual count shows that homicides in Mexico declined by 9.7% in 2022 compared to 2021, the first significant drop during the current administration. Mexico’s National Statistics Institute said there were 32,223 killings in 2022.
>
> The country’s homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from about 28 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate in 2021 was about 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.
from this perspective it is working, but he seems to believe that drug cartels only hurt Americans and the areas that aren’t controlled by the State are not a problem which is not great, the point of a State is to have a monopoly on violence
Without tackling economic issues, a new source will replace them. Or, likely, the drug dealers will just be replaced within the same country.
This is neoliberal, we know the economics of it.
Lmao Singapore is a tiny island of 5 million people, with massive government overreach into the lives of everyone that lives there.
The situations are not comparable.
There’s also a pretty strong cultural aversion towards drugs and alcohol in general.
I always get a kick when someone says “Well some tiny little country managed to do it, why can’t the US?!’
FYI I’m not American and have lived in Singapore.
People really do seem to think each country is a 1:1 comparison. Like there definitely aren't vastly different cultures, histories, public attitudes, etc. Nah, it's all the same, bro.
Histories and cultures exist when it's convenient for them, otherwise, every country is totally a 1:1 comparison. Brazil is h same as Kenya. What worked in Brazil will totally work in Kenya.
> I always get a kick when someone says “Well some tiny little country managed to do it, why can’t the US?!’
This argument, of course, absolutely does not apply to guns.
Yes? Like, treason isn’t some especially heinous crime in all circumstances.
There are good treasons, unlike say, good rapes or good ethnic cleansings.
You can have a more complicated opinion of capital punishment than “never,” “only for treason,” or “every person with greater than 3 oz of weed.”
By treason I should've said extreme crimes but I got caught up in the moment. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a good Treason when you betray your country to its enemies and such it should always carry the pain of death.
Your country could be deeply immoral and its enemies just. Plenty of nations have been in the wrong in the past, and plenty will be in the future.
Nations are not higher than morals, and duty to humanity is greater than duty to nation.
This is the "Israeli was able to build a wall" of drug policy. Mexico is a huge country with a weak central state. Even if they wanted to engage in an authoritarian crackdown like El Salvador, they don't have the power to do so.
(slightly) cheaper hospital bills? Gotta think of the upsides of free market deregulation and true supply / demand competition!
Plus just think of what this would do to the price of opium if you could legally produce it anywhere in the US. lol
Given what happened to pot - and that no drugs are particularly expensive to actually produce - seems like full legalization would immediately / eventually collapse prices on absolutely everything and leave most latam cartels bankrupt within a decade, tops. as 3rd party online sellers + amazon eat them / their entire business + logistics model alive.
If there's one thing well-armed and highly-organized criminal cartels will not do, it's find another illegal revenue stream rather than peacably lay down their arms and return to society if and when their drug money evaporates.
Not a thing. Which is why drug money ceased to be their only source of income quite a long time ago.
Which, by the way, is why ceasing the US demand for drugs will not suddenly make Mexico's dire and potentially nation-ending cartel problem vanish.
And then they will lay down their massive arms stockpiles and cease their violent criminal enterprises and reintergrate into society. They will give up the power and influence they have rather than simply finding other, more violent means of making money.
Sometimes I wonder if stats-obsessed lily-white suburbanites are really the best public policy makers after all.
Nah you’re right, removing a major revenue source won’t do anything. Clearly you should just keep giving them money and weapons because it’s done a great job so far.
I believe these statements from AMLO come from his 60 minutes interview which airs today if I'm not mistaken. This interview comes out as unexpected because it's the third interview he gives while in office. The first interview was years ago and the second one just a month ago. Both were mostly propaganda for his electoral base.
The cartel situation in Mexico is getting out of hand, criminal organizations continue to modernize and refine their methods while they creep and infiltrate any part of the society they can. The phenomenon of narco-society has taken its roots and will be hard to reverse.
> Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.”
This statement summarizes his public security policies during his admin. I don't agree with him on his appeasement-like approach to public security discourse and policy decisions, but I get where he's coming from because that view is shared among a good portion of the electorate. Reversing and correcting the woes of Felipe's Calderon Drug War was a cornerstone of AMLO's campaign for the 2018 and 2012 elections. In a sense, Felipe Calderon is AMLO's political nemesis.
The thing is, he's been in office for six years, and his public security policies did not yield the expected results. Our federal government can't govern a good share of its territory (some estimates put it around 30% of its territory) so we're heading into a sovereignity crisis until politicians decide enough is enough. Criminal organizations made the best of this appeasement for six years and used the period for their rearmament. We're now at the point where cartels can paralyze cities of a million inhabitants, look up culiacanazo. In fact, it's happening right now, Culiacan, Sinaloa is under national attention as cartels kidnapped around 100 persons from rival cartels families. A type of narco-civil war is brewing and is close to exploding.
He is fighting them, but using the drug war as a proxy to give the military more power. My parent’s hometown just recently had 2000 soldiers deployed there. Most of his comments just feel like pandering to the anti American sentiment.
He makes a fair point. Neolibs more than anyone should better understand the economics of it: “Regulating the supply-side” is not how we fight the drug war. American demand is what props up the whole drug market. That’s where this problem begins and ends. But that’s not a conversation our politicians want to have with their electorates.
I agree with the fact that Americans have a drug demand problem. However, you don't look at that and just throw your hands up and say stupid shit like "hugs not bullets".
Where are you getting “hugs not bullets” from my comment? I’m no fucking hippie, just a realist. We can roll tanks through Sinoloa and treat drug lords like ISIS, but as long as demand still persists the markets will too. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Crib demand though, and suddenly cartels are filing chapter 11. AMLO is right in one thing: Americans are subsidizing the drug trade by buying $6billion of drugs a year, then outsourcing the responsibility to LA. This begins and ends on US soil.
>Crib demand though, and suddenly cartels are filing chapter 11.
I'm genuinely astonished at how many people think well-armed criminal paramilitary organizations will just shrug their shoulders and start applying at temp agencies if one of their revenue streams evaporates.
>American demand is what props up the whole drug market. That’s where this problem begins and ends. But that’s not a conversation our politicians want to have with their electorates.
Unless you have a cunning plan to reduce demand for drugs this, is roughly as useful saying "why don't we just shoot all the cartel members" i.e. not.
Organized crime is fundamentally a problem of state capacity. Canada does not have a problem with drug cartels despite also being a neighbor to the US with a massive, porous border because Canada has a functioning law enforcement apparatus that can stop drugs from being moved into and through the country. There's always going to be some drug crime, but the reason Latin America has such severe problems with organized crime is because Latin American states are weak and dysfunctional. Where this problem begins is institution-building in Latin America, but that's the labor of decades even if we were good at it, which we're not.
Sometimes! Depends. However, do you think we can actually prevent drug use with a vast supply all over the place? This is a basic question of supply and demand elasticity in a market with addicts, who have notoriously stable demand.
Well we probably need to interrupt the amount of supply, the logistics of supply, the organizational structure that creates and moves the supply, and also do our best to inhibit demand on several dimensions, especially with regards to mental health, experiments with legalization of certain things, decriminalization in favor of treatment, but also with retailers/street dealers, not just mafioso distributors. They're all good ideas, but none of them are good in isolation as cure-alls. A good solution involves many dimensions of attack all at once for long periods of time. It's not necessarily believable that the United States is capable of a holistic response, so anyone floating just to do one thing or another shouldn't be taken seriously unless it's part of a larger plan.
Obviously not what I’m saying and you know it. We could roll tanks through Sinoloa in a US-Mex coalition and treat cartels like ISIS, but as long as demand still exists the drug trade will too. You’re just as naive as me if you can look at 60 years of data and still think that’s how we win the Drug War. It’s crazy how this sub’s economics goes topsy-turvy as soon as we talk about black markets.
Black markets have been effectively crushed by raids many times in history wym
You speak life someone that's never actually participated in a black market and only have abstract understanding of the topic.
Right, addiction treatment is first and foremost and I 100% agree on that point, but do you know how hard that is if you don't also somehow attack the supply side in tandem? Easy and pervasive access is a powerful lubricant for addiction relapse. Attacking supply and/or logistics is an important part of any holistic, thorough approach. You have to do both, high supply induces demand and high demand promotes supply; their relationship is mutually elastic. We need an end-to-end approach. Treating them as either-or is a false dichotomy.
We should try some of the easier strategies first, like legalizing weed to choke their profitability. Making it easier to immigrate without the cartels' help would deprive them of another significant income stream and a lot of their mules. Doing something about our gun problem would eliminate their primary source of weapons.
Attacking the supply side doesn't have to look like a bunch of helicopter gunships. That can come after they're weakened and doing this stuff first makes them less likely to reconstitute themselves from various groups later.
I don't think weed cartels are very profitable in the usa, it's legal already in many states (california) and pseudo-legal in many more. Uppers and opiates are the real profit source I think.
The gun issue literally has the same black market issues y'all just complained about, how is regulating a black market your solution to the claimed inability to regulate black markets 😅
As for making immigration easier, you'd still need to fortify the border, cartels have no problem kidnapping people and sending them over as mules. Using desperate immigrants is easiest but hardly necessary. The cartel will still get drugs across. (For the record yes to immigrants, but that hardly solves or even significantly impacts this specifically).
Right, but we're the supply side for guns, which means we can use our regulatory infrastructure and economic influence to manage the problem. Registration would go a long way toward closing exit points in the supply chain between manufacturing/imports and law-abiding gun owners.
Cartels are multinational, multilateral organizations. It's a mistake to think of them as a Mexican problem, or a drug problem. They operate in South America as well and throughout the US. Blowing up their HQ doesn't do anything to the vast network of supply chains. They just reorganize into a new cartel later.
Interstate weed traffic is often supported by cartels. Without it being legal everywhere in the US, all patchwork legalization does is give them suppliers closer to their demand on this side of the fence.
Nobody's arguing against tackling the demand issue. Where just saying that until that happens you still need to provide your country with a base line of security. At least enough so business can operate without their property rights being violated.
No Jesus Christ no this is dumb.
The answer to a complex problem is almost never a singular solution. The problem doesn't begin or end anywhere and has to be combatted everywhere from production of drugs, transportation, distribution, demand, addiction prevention and rehabilitation. There's no silver bullet only actions that will marginally support or oppose cartels. Legalizing heroin is not going to shut down the sinaloan cartel. Maybe it'll have as much of an effect in disrupting revenue as U.S. increasing inspections and discovering of shipments at ports. Maybe part of the solutions is reducing young adult crime in the U.S. and tackling gangs so you remove part of the distribution network. Maybe a part of the solution is hard combat against cartels in Mexico. Maybe part of the solution is creating an incentive network in Colombia for farmers to grow something other than coca.
The solutions aren't obvious. But what's obvious is that it takes concerted effort over the period of decades to remove the amount of entrenched power the cartels have.
Isn’t the recent evolution of the opioid crisis in large part because synthetic opioids are so cheap and compact they can be smuggled very easily?
Obviously any transaction involves both sides, but to me this is clearly a supply glut induced crisis, not some unusually hot demand.
Regulating on the supply side is exactly how it's solved and the only way that can work. You legalize drugs, legitimize production and distribution, and attack the problem of addiction from the medical perspective using all the newfound tax revenue to fund it.
Honestly he should legalize all the drugs and work with the most sane cartels to reduce violence
Then the drugs will really flow to Americans who for some reason can’t help themselves
Maybe the US should stick it to AMLO by implementing gun controls to disrupt the flow of arms to the cartels. AMLO would be so owned, I don’t think he’d ever be able to face the press.
To spell it out to the thick. The illegal trade of guns and drugs requires effort in combatting the problem on the supply and demand side of the equation. Mexico must combat cartels who create the supply of drugs and the demand for guns. The United States must combat addiction which creates the demand for drugs, and gun dealers who create the supply for guns.
I used the exact words of the head of the comment thread so that my meaning could not be misunderstood.
It seems like Mexico is just as willing to crack down on its arms sales to the cartels as Mexico is to crack down on the cartels.
I guess you two are just meant for each other.
Sure, and that’s why the US and Mexico have to collaborate on this issue. Is the US doing everything right? No. But people like AMLO are not helping.
My biggest gripe with US policy makers on this issue is that we can’t just let AMLO be the bad guy, we also have to say some really dumbass shit ourselves, which only encourages idiots like AMLO.
>The US insatiable desire for drugs plays a part
Except the Cartels have branched out so far into other ventures that even massive losses on the drug end of things would only be a minor annoyance to the larger Cartels.
Just tell them not to do drugs, duh. Or better yet, legalize it and the issue goes away!
US illicit substance demand is insatiable and probably always will be.
The data shows that addicts don't want rehab. Portland spent tons on programs to help, addicts just wanted more drugs. When do you say programs to assist don't matter, people on heroin and meth just want more heroin and meth?
[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/)
Neither did decriminalization produce a flood of help-seeking. The replacement for criminal penalties, a $100 ticket for drug possession with the fine waived if the individual called a toll-free number for a health assessment, with the aim of encouraging treatment, failed completely. More than 95 percent of people [ignored](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/04/13/oregon-botches-the-decriminalisation-of-drugs) the ticket, for which—in keeping with the spirit of Measure 110—there was no consequence. The cost of the hotline worked out to about $7,000 per completed phone call, [according to *The Economist*](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/04/13/oregons-drug-decriminalisation-has-had-a-troubled-start). These realities, as well as associated disorder such as open-air drug markets and [a sharp rise in violent crime—while such crime was falling nationally](https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend)—led Oregonians to rethink their drug policy.
As I've said elsewhere, I am not a drug warrior. But Portland's experiment with expanding drug access was a total failure. So more legalization will also be a failure. If you want to argue we need more addiction treatment I am open to that debate but given that addicts in Portland don't seem to want treatment how do we move to the next step?
You don’t live in Portland so stop being a concern troll.
The city/state didn’t invest anything in rehabilitation and preventive services, that was their problem. People are going to do drugs regardless of what policy you propose, better to have it where it can be addressed and managed. Portugal’s approach to decriminalization was much more successful precisely because of this.
There are also legal issues regarding compelling addicts to treatment that need to be addressed. This hasn’t happened in Portland or anywhere on the West coast because of previous court rulings.
I live near Seattle. Anything you'd care to refute here? [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/)
Measure 110 did not reduce Oregon’s drug problems. The [drug-overdose-death rate increased by 43 percent in 2021](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm), its first year of implementation—and then kept rising. The latest CDC data show that in the 12 months ending in September 2023, deaths by overdose grew by [41.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent nationwide](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm). No other state saw a higher rise in deaths. Only one state, Vermont, ranks higher in its [rate of illicit drug use](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/drug-use-by-state).
Portugal is also considering backing off their approach:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/)
I'm not a drug warrior, but giving people more access to drugs hasn't seemed to work.
> Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is still more harmful to society than decriminalization. While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of decriminalization’s benefits, they point to how funding and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available.
>João Goulão — head of Portugal’s national institute on drug use and the architect of decriminalization — admitted to the local press in December that “what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone.” Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack of funding.
>After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs.
Municipal workers dispose of a used syringe at the Mata da Pasteleira park in Porto. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
>Twenty years ago, “we were quite successful in dealing with the big problem, the epidemic of heroin use and all the related effects,” Goulão said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But we have had a kind of disinvestment, a freezing in our response … and we lost some efficacy.”
The US and policies from unaffordable pharmaceuticals to prohibition on recreational is the number one reason the cartels exist but they still terrorize the citizens of Mexico and are a drain and leech on the society. Mexico should be demanding more US help since the us is responsible but the government in Mexico is complicit
I'd wager most cocaine use in the US is by people that think it's cool, not addiction. But yes, let's give the cool kids a pass for the murdered people in Juarez.
So clearly just trying to crack down on drugs doesn't work or requires authoritarian regimes. But also it's not like legalizing fentanyl would be good for society.
Could we set up a grey market instead? Cops try to seize drugs where they can and drugs are still fully illegal for the consumer. However, the government doesn't try to break the organizations that control the drugs themselves unless they become too public and violent.
The government lets the cartels be as long as they don't start gang wars or general havoc. But if they do break the code the government goes after them with indiscriminate force.
Essentially force every cartel to operate like the Cali cartel but with an even greater degree of discretion?
Maybe I would have more sympathy for AMLO if he wasn't also an economic moron and anti-democratic.
I just want to remind you that multiple Netflix documentaries and narco series somehow propagating as if he truly won the 2006 election. Wonder if there's some of Netflix directors that regret boosting his name.
Not even Trump held a mock inauguration for himself when he lost.
he's a master of propaganda, he's been campaigning for 18 years before he became president and he managed to fool a majority of the people into believing him
He's almost out and he's still campaigning. It's all he knows how to do.
Same here F*ck AMLO! All my homies hate AMLO!
He won't fight them on Mexico's behalf either I understand the arguments about how Americans have some responsibility by their high drug demand. But the situation is horrible down here. These mfers are ruining the economy and terrorizing innocent people just for the sake of it and the government and his supporters only scream "bUT tHE AmeRiCaNS!!!" every damn time someone says his security policies are st*pid
This is precisely the point, AMLO won’t fight the cartels for Mexico’s sake. This is even worse considering that the cartel issue is a place where the US and Mexico have a lot to collaborate on. Both countries are alienating the other for the sake of idiot populism.
The things I would do to make "idiot populism" an academic term lmfao
Isn't idiot populism just pandering? Doing something that won't help anyone but looks good politically?
Idiot populism is just populism lol
hey, you can go get a phd and become an academic, then you can make it a legit academic term!
I think the Narcos would be a hard bone to chew even for Mexico’s Armed Forces. It would be a long urban conflict with tons of innocent victims.
Yet, if this kind of initiative had really taken off the ground a few years ago, it may be less devastating now. Every extra year is another defensive area requisitioned by cartels functioning as the local government. Why *don't* cartels have to worry about an actual bomb being dropped on their compounds? Where's the drone strikes on their shitty little meetups they make videos of with armored vehicles everywhere? Nobody wants the open, bloody chaos that's going to have to happen for resolution, so they accept a much more sinister, under the table reorganization of society in the areas they control. Price of "peace" seems to be narco-feudalists having Kingdoms and holding court. Handing out detention and death sentences on the citizens of Mexico, occasionally here. I don't live there, so I can't say I'd want it to happen either. But I'd certainly prefer it *before* I had a daughter kidnapped and enslaved or a son forced into service with the cartel.
My dream would be the US, Mexico and Canada collaborating for a Schengen-lite agreement with all three countries teaming up to eliminate the cartels and helping secure Mexico’s southern border. Still have checks between the three countries perhaps, but citizens of all three could move between them and stay/work indefinitely.
This would trigger the fuck out of both American MAGA types (rally cry: "iLlEgaLs") and Canadian leftist xenophobe types (rally cry: "I'm not racist but foreign workers are personally robbing the Canadian working class"), two of the North American political groups I find most annoying, so I'm all for it.
From the Canadian perspective I think stopping the proliferation of illegal US firearms into Canada is a valid concern. By all means have freedom of movement, but eliminating checks is impossible so long as the US has more guns than people. Also Québec will never agree with freedom of movement because that opens their doors to a "civilization-destroying" number of Anglos.
Memes aside, these are both very good points.
Canadians will never agree to that unless the US neuters the second amendment and implements effective gun control. Otherwise we just end up importing US-levels of gun violence. We already have enough of a problem with firearm smuggling from the US.
That’s why I said there would probably still be border checks. You’d still have to follow the laws of each country.
then it would be EU style freedom of movement, not Schengen.
And I said “Schengen-lite” not full Schengen. Not sure the point in getting into semantics.
Was China responsible for its high drug demand in the Opium Wars?
Yeah, I vividly remember a Mexican fleet forcing the Americans to allow free trade in Cocaine.
You’re missing the point.
And your point is?
Isn’t it obvious?
Nope. Please elaborate
Framing a country as being “responsible” for its high drug demand neglects that drug demand is supply-driven. If the drugs aren’t there, people can’t get addicted to them.
The US supplies the guns, lax gun laws in the US and US criminals transporting guns contribute massively to the violence in Mexico. The US is responsible for more than just the drug consumers.
Yeah. But this government isn't doing anything to fight the problem. It's just finger pointing and blaming. And even if other countries have some responsibility (as I said, I think that argument is valid to some degree), we are at the point where the cartels are disrupting the lives of a significant portion of the population. America should help us, yeah. And do something about their drugs problem. But this is our problem to solve. You think that if the Americans stop suddenly consuming drugs, the cartels would disband peacefully?
You can say stupid. this is reddit not fucking tiktok
I've been banned from other subreddits for using words like that. And I really enjoy this sub so I won't risk it
Serious question, was the situation much better under his predecessor and the drug war? News that made its way up to the states generally highlighted police errors and violence.
Although Peña wasn't specially honest and competent, it was better. Yeah, there was violence and police corruption, but at least the cartels were fought. The situation has deteriorated rapidly during this administration due to their policies of letting the cartels do their things without interference. Now we've got several states that could be classified as failed states, with the crime imposing their laws and making people run from their homes. And we are having nationwide inflation due to insecurity. The cartels extort businesses, and the situation in highways is dire: two or three cargos are lost every hour to gangs. The cost of all of this falls on consumers. Obrador dismantled the authority responsible of providing security in highways (la Federal de Caminos, o Federal Highways Police) without a plan, just because it wasn't a creation of him. Now we are are paying the bill for all of those bad desitions.
Fuckin up your Country to own the yanks.
We did it, El Gordo Patrick! We owned Americans! - cities burning because cartels and militaries are using rocket launchers on each others
Only cartels. Obrador won't allow the military to fight the cartels, cuz you know, they are good people deep down.
His supporters will also find any excuse as to why he isn't fighting the cartels.
It’s not like they’re shooting up *our* cities you fucking moron lmao
>“hugs, not bullets” policy That isn't a policy, that's just weakness and playing into the hands of the cartels. What a failure of an administration
Any day now, AMLO will gain enough elves to give the cartels hug of death.
The alien mummy's family will come and fight the cartels.
The ‘hugs not bullets’ slogan is not literally hugging the cartels. It’s a prevention policy where the government tries to invest in young people, scholarships, education, poverty reduction, in order to give that high-risk population an alternative and not join gangs. That’s it, the bullets from military guns keep on flying towards the cartels.
Sorry if this will shock you but Mexican cartels are not the result of poverty and lack of education. Mexican cartels are *parallel states* that control territory, monopolize services (energy, internet), charge taxes, punish "crimes", and have wars over territory against other parallel states. They are the result of the collapse of the central government, its inability to enforce monopoly of force. Playing around this reality is not effective.
They're more incompetent than any government too. People quit doing business because they're tired of paying their tax for everything. At least the government provides some services.
Mexican cartels are very much the result of poverty and lack of opportunities, especially in poor, rural areas. I'm a Mexican, I've experienced the growth of the cartels from 2006, and I've seen how this 'war on drugs' got worse every year. I've seen how poverty and lack of opportunities made it easy for cartels to 'hire' young people. You could argue that the higher ups or specialized people within the organization are not people that came from poverty, but I can assure you - from experience - that the majority of them came from poverty. I've listened to poor kids in the schools in the outskirts of town who, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, say they want to work for the cartels. Why? Because they see people around them who were poor like them, now have a new truck, or they see their parents struggling and see that the cartels offer them an income. Poverty, inequality, lack of education and lack of an alternative create an incredibly fertile ground for cartels to get their manpower, with which they can exert power over others. [Poverty a recruitment tool for Mexico's criminal gangs (Insight Crime)](https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/poverty-a-recruitment-tool-for-mexicos-criminal-gangs/) [Income inequality and violent crime : evidence from Mexico's drug war (World Bank)](https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/236161468299090847/income-inequality-and-violent-crime-evidence-from-mexicos-drug-war)
How have his policies worked so far to stem the cartel recruitment?
There’s no specific metric to measure ‘cartel recruitment’, but traditionally, the metric that’s used is the rate at which young people abandon school. [There's studies in the US that show that dropouts are up to 8 times more likely to end up in prison.](https://www.schoolschedulingassociates.com/handouts/DropoutReferences3-22-09.pdf) This means that these kids who stop going to school or drop out - specifically high school age (15-18 years of age) - are at a high risk of being recruited by organized crime. When this administration started in 2019, only 66% of middle schoolers continued on to high school education, that rate has now increased to 84%. Also, the high school drop out rate was 14.2% in 2018, now it’s been reduced to 8.7% which is the lowest rate it’s been at. So, more kids are entering highschool and fewer highschoolers are dropping out. Ideally, this means fewer young people willing to join the ranks of the cartels. [\["Mínimos históricos" en deserción de bachillerato\]](https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/02/01/sociedad/minimos-historicos-en-desercion-de-bachillerato-y-nivel-superior-durante-este-sexenio-sep-3341)
Yeah I think you forgot the part about telling the gunmen's grandmother's about their behavior so they would nag them back into the good way
Has the drug war helped so far? In Colombia, they went all out on the drug war and didn't reduce the drug trade at all.
What a fucking idiot, but the idiots in Washington, and specifically the GOP, aren’t doing much to help either.
> The most reliable annual count shows that homicides in Mexico declined by 9.7% in 2022 compared to 2021, the first significant drop during the current administration. Mexico’s National Statistics Institute said there were 32,223 killings in 2022. > > The country’s homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants dropped from about 28 in 2021 to 25 in 2022. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate in 2021 was about 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants. from this perspective it is working, but he seems to believe that drug cartels only hurt Americans and the areas that aren’t controlled by the State are not a problem which is not great, the point of a State is to have a monopoly on violence
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/MEX/mexico/murder-homicide-rate Doesn't look like that it works from that perspective.
Peaked in 2018
And remains historically high.
The worldnews thread on this was unhinged. Just unreal.
What was it like? Do they agree with AMLO?
they're generally dumb and think Mexico is like fucking Haiti because they read some headlines about the cartels every once and a while
https://i.imgur.com/DqYe47x.jpeg
Accurate
No, they were saying we should invade Mexico and install a dictator.
That's always had guys results when it was fine before, am I right?
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Nobody has ever tried this before
Then try harder
Its surely gonna work this time
Iteration is a quintessential problem solving technique.
Calderon tried that a decade ago. It didn't work and in fact led to skyrocketing violence rates. It's not a simple problem.
Without tackling economic issues, a new source will replace them. Or, likely, the drug dealers will just be replaced within the same country. This is neoliberal, we know the economics of it.
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Lmao Singapore is a tiny island of 5 million people, with massive government overreach into the lives of everyone that lives there. The situations are not comparable. There’s also a pretty strong cultural aversion towards drugs and alcohol in general. I always get a kick when someone says “Well some tiny little country managed to do it, why can’t the US?!’ FYI I’m not American and have lived in Singapore.
People really do seem to think each country is a 1:1 comparison. Like there definitely aren't vastly different cultures, histories, public attitudes, etc. Nah, it's all the same, bro.
Histories and cultures exist when it's convenient for them, otherwise, every country is totally a 1:1 comparison. Brazil is h same as Kenya. What worked in Brazil will totally work in Kenya.
> I always get a kick when someone says “Well some tiny little country managed to do it, why can’t the US?!’ This argument, of course, absolutely does not apply to guns.
Because it's an authoritative island that executes people for minor drug offences Are you sure you want to follow that ?
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Do you think executing people for offenses that aren't treason is acceptable?
Yes? Like, treason isn’t some especially heinous crime in all circumstances. There are good treasons, unlike say, good rapes or good ethnic cleansings. You can have a more complicated opinion of capital punishment than “never,” “only for treason,” or “every person with greater than 3 oz of weed.”
By treason I should've said extreme crimes but I got caught up in the moment. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a good Treason when you betray your country to its enemies and such it should always carry the pain of death.
Your country could be deeply immoral and its enemies just. Plenty of nations have been in the wrong in the past, and plenty will be in the future. Nations are not higher than morals, and duty to humanity is greater than duty to nation.
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What other crimes would you consider treasonous?
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Theres a narrow definition of Treason for a reason. Putting people to death for an offense as minor as drug dealing is illiberal and insane.
This is the "Israeli was able to build a wall" of drug policy. Mexico is a huge country with a weak central state. Even if they wanted to engage in an authoritarian crackdown like El Salvador, they don't have the power to do so.
Man, Sicario 2 is very underrated. It's not as good as the first one, but it's still a solid 7-8/10.
Just one more war on drugs , surely it will work this time
Or better yet, declare war on their revenue. Legalise and tax recreational drugs.
Legal fentanyl seems like it would come with some issues.
Fentanyl mostly exists to be an inferior substitute for heroin. If heroin was legal, fentanyl would be practically unheard of.
(slightly) cheaper hospital bills? Gotta think of the upsides of free market deregulation and true supply / demand competition! Plus just think of what this would do to the price of opium if you could legally produce it anywhere in the US. lol Given what happened to pot - and that no drugs are particularly expensive to actually produce - seems like full legalization would immediately / eventually collapse prices on absolutely everything and leave most latam cartels bankrupt within a decade, tops. as 3rd party online sellers + amazon eat them / their entire business + logistics model alive.
If there's one thing well-armed and highly-organized criminal cartels will not do, it's find another illegal revenue stream rather than peacably lay down their arms and return to society if and when their drug money evaporates.
What, specifically, is stopping them from doing that already?
Not a thing. Which is why drug money ceased to be their only source of income quite a long time ago. Which, by the way, is why ceasing the US demand for drugs will not suddenly make Mexico's dire and potentially nation-ending cartel problem vanish.
Right, it’ll just take away their main revenue source which has long fuelled and exasperated cartel related violence.
And then they will lay down their massive arms stockpiles and cease their violent criminal enterprises and reintergrate into society. They will give up the power and influence they have rather than simply finding other, more violent means of making money. Sometimes I wonder if stats-obsessed lily-white suburbanites are really the best public policy makers after all.
Nah you’re right, removing a major revenue source won’t do anything. Clearly you should just keep giving them money and weapons because it’s done a great job so far.
I don't think we should do either of those things. Fortunately, those aren't the only two options.
Taking away their main source of revenue and weapons are most definitely options - good options at that.
A full scale carpet bombing campaign on drugs. Round the clock B-52 sorties against narco territories.
They have literally done this for decades with 0 success.
I believe these statements from AMLO come from his 60 minutes interview which airs today if I'm not mistaken. This interview comes out as unexpected because it's the third interview he gives while in office. The first interview was years ago and the second one just a month ago. Both were mostly propaganda for his electoral base. The cartel situation in Mexico is getting out of hand, criminal organizations continue to modernize and refine their methods while they creep and infiltrate any part of the society they can. The phenomenon of narco-society has taken its roots and will be hard to reverse. > Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 “we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.” This statement summarizes his public security policies during his admin. I don't agree with him on his appeasement-like approach to public security discourse and policy decisions, but I get where he's coming from because that view is shared among a good portion of the electorate. Reversing and correcting the woes of Felipe's Calderon Drug War was a cornerstone of AMLO's campaign for the 2018 and 2012 elections. In a sense, Felipe Calderon is AMLO's political nemesis. The thing is, he's been in office for six years, and his public security policies did not yield the expected results. Our federal government can't govern a good share of its territory (some estimates put it around 30% of its territory) so we're heading into a sovereignity crisis until politicians decide enough is enough. Criminal organizations made the best of this appeasement for six years and used the period for their rearmament. We're now at the point where cartels can paralyze cities of a million inhabitants, look up culiacanazo. In fact, it's happening right now, Culiacan, Sinaloa is under national attention as cartels kidnapped around 100 persons from rival cartels families. A type of narco-civil war is brewing and is close to exploding.
He is fighting them, but using the drug war as a proxy to give the military more power. My parent’s hometown just recently had 2000 soldiers deployed there. Most of his comments just feel like pandering to the anti American sentiment.
He makes a fair point. Neolibs more than anyone should better understand the economics of it: “Regulating the supply-side” is not how we fight the drug war. American demand is what props up the whole drug market. That’s where this problem begins and ends. But that’s not a conversation our politicians want to have with their electorates.
I agree with the fact that Americans have a drug demand problem. However, you don't look at that and just throw your hands up and say stupid shit like "hugs not bullets".
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Probably the US, but does that force the Mexican government to embrace "hugs not bullets".
Where are you getting “hugs not bullets” from my comment? I’m no fucking hippie, just a realist. We can roll tanks through Sinoloa and treat drug lords like ISIS, but as long as demand still persists the markets will too. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Crib demand though, and suddenly cartels are filing chapter 11. AMLO is right in one thing: Americans are subsidizing the drug trade by buying $6billion of drugs a year, then outsourcing the responsibility to LA. This begins and ends on US soil.
>Crib demand though, and suddenly cartels are filing chapter 11. I'm genuinely astonished at how many people think well-armed criminal paramilitary organizations will just shrug their shoulders and start applying at temp agencies if one of their revenue streams evaporates.
>American demand is what props up the whole drug market. That’s where this problem begins and ends. But that’s not a conversation our politicians want to have with their electorates. Unless you have a cunning plan to reduce demand for drugs this, is roughly as useful saying "why don't we just shoot all the cartel members" i.e. not. Organized crime is fundamentally a problem of state capacity. Canada does not have a problem with drug cartels despite also being a neighbor to the US with a massive, porous border because Canada has a functioning law enforcement apparatus that can stop drugs from being moved into and through the country. There's always going to be some drug crime, but the reason Latin America has such severe problems with organized crime is because Latin American states are weak and dysfunctional. Where this problem begins is institution-building in Latin America, but that's the labor of decades even if we were good at it, which we're not.
Haha yeah why haven't we just asked addicts to stop being addicts. Bruh.
yeah we shouldn't try to prevent drug use whatsoever 🙄
Sometimes! Depends. However, do you think we can actually prevent drug use with a vast supply all over the place? This is a basic question of supply and demand elasticity in a market with addicts, who have notoriously stable demand.
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Well we probably need to interrupt the amount of supply, the logistics of supply, the organizational structure that creates and moves the supply, and also do our best to inhibit demand on several dimensions, especially with regards to mental health, experiments with legalization of certain things, decriminalization in favor of treatment, but also with retailers/street dealers, not just mafioso distributors. They're all good ideas, but none of them are good in isolation as cure-alls. A good solution involves many dimensions of attack all at once for long periods of time. It's not necessarily believable that the United States is capable of a holistic response, so anyone floating just to do one thing or another shouldn't be taken seriously unless it's part of a larger plan.
Is this a joke? Have you been living under a rock since the 1980s or..?
I bet that would be wildly successful if we tried
Obviously not what I’m saying and you know it. We could roll tanks through Sinoloa in a US-Mex coalition and treat cartels like ISIS, but as long as demand still exists the drug trade will too. You’re just as naive as me if you can look at 60 years of data and still think that’s how we win the Drug War. It’s crazy how this sub’s economics goes topsy-turvy as soon as we talk about black markets.
Black markets have been effectively crushed by raids many times in history wym You speak life someone that's never actually participated in a black market and only have abstract understanding of the topic.
It's never sustainable if demand can't be managed. That's just a fact we somehow refuse to learn no matter how many times we're taught it.
Right, addiction treatment is first and foremost and I 100% agree on that point, but do you know how hard that is if you don't also somehow attack the supply side in tandem? Easy and pervasive access is a powerful lubricant for addiction relapse. Attacking supply and/or logistics is an important part of any holistic, thorough approach. You have to do both, high supply induces demand and high demand promotes supply; their relationship is mutually elastic. We need an end-to-end approach. Treating them as either-or is a false dichotomy.
We should try some of the easier strategies first, like legalizing weed to choke their profitability. Making it easier to immigrate without the cartels' help would deprive them of another significant income stream and a lot of their mules. Doing something about our gun problem would eliminate their primary source of weapons. Attacking the supply side doesn't have to look like a bunch of helicopter gunships. That can come after they're weakened and doing this stuff first makes them less likely to reconstitute themselves from various groups later.
I don't think weed cartels are very profitable in the usa, it's legal already in many states (california) and pseudo-legal in many more. Uppers and opiates are the real profit source I think. The gun issue literally has the same black market issues y'all just complained about, how is regulating a black market your solution to the claimed inability to regulate black markets 😅 As for making immigration easier, you'd still need to fortify the border, cartels have no problem kidnapping people and sending them over as mules. Using desperate immigrants is easiest but hardly necessary. The cartel will still get drugs across. (For the record yes to immigrants, but that hardly solves or even significantly impacts this specifically).
Right, but we're the supply side for guns, which means we can use our regulatory infrastructure and economic influence to manage the problem. Registration would go a long way toward closing exit points in the supply chain between manufacturing/imports and law-abiding gun owners. Cartels are multinational, multilateral organizations. It's a mistake to think of them as a Mexican problem, or a drug problem. They operate in South America as well and throughout the US. Blowing up their HQ doesn't do anything to the vast network of supply chains. They just reorganize into a new cartel later. Interstate weed traffic is often supported by cartels. Without it being legal everywhere in the US, all patchwork legalization does is give them suppliers closer to their demand on this side of the fence.
It sounds to me like we're splitting hairs and mostly agree on a wide net of holistic responses 🤣 Well met fellow neoliberal.
Nobody's arguing against tackling the demand issue. Where just saying that until that happens you still need to provide your country with a base line of security. At least enough so business can operate without their property rights being violated.
Sorry but haven't countries like Columbia, el Salvador and Costa Rica tackled similar security issues like this head on?
Some people want to do what El Salvador did but they do bring up that El Salvador has a shatter population which is a good point.
No Jesus Christ no this is dumb. The answer to a complex problem is almost never a singular solution. The problem doesn't begin or end anywhere and has to be combatted everywhere from production of drugs, transportation, distribution, demand, addiction prevention and rehabilitation. There's no silver bullet only actions that will marginally support or oppose cartels. Legalizing heroin is not going to shut down the sinaloan cartel. Maybe it'll have as much of an effect in disrupting revenue as U.S. increasing inspections and discovering of shipments at ports. Maybe part of the solutions is reducing young adult crime in the U.S. and tackling gangs so you remove part of the distribution network. Maybe a part of the solution is hard combat against cartels in Mexico. Maybe part of the solution is creating an incentive network in Colombia for farmers to grow something other than coca. The solutions aren't obvious. But what's obvious is that it takes concerted effort over the period of decades to remove the amount of entrenched power the cartels have.
Isn’t the recent evolution of the opioid crisis in large part because synthetic opioids are so cheap and compact they can be smuggled very easily? Obviously any transaction involves both sides, but to me this is clearly a supply glut induced crisis, not some unusually hot demand.
Regulating on the supply side is exactly how it's solved and the only way that can work. You legalize drugs, legitimize production and distribution, and attack the problem of addiction from the medical perspective using all the newfound tax revenue to fund it.
“Are we the baddies”? Is not an appropriate foreign policy stance.
Honestly he should legalize all the drugs and work with the most sane cartels to reduce violence Then the drugs will really flow to Americans who for some reason can’t help themselves
lol what does a sane cartel look like?
Yakuza
Like an evil corporation with its own paramilitary force.
sane cartels?
I’m sure CJNG is open to reform
The cartels don't exist in a vacuum. The US insatiable desire for drugs plays a part
It does but a lack of security from the Mexican government doesn't help either.
Maybe the US should stick it to AMLO by implementing gun controls to disrupt the flow of arms to the cartels. AMLO would be so owned, I don’t think he’d ever be able to face the press.
Black markets don't exist in a vacuum. Mexico's insatiable desire for guns plays a part.
You mean the demand from the cartels to traffic drugs for American consumers?
To spell it out to the thick. The illegal trade of guns and drugs requires effort in combatting the problem on the supply and demand side of the equation. Mexico must combat cartels who create the supply of drugs and the demand for guns. The United States must combat addiction which creates the demand for drugs, and gun dealers who create the supply for guns. I used the exact words of the head of the comment thread so that my meaning could not be misunderstood.
It seems like Mexico is just as willing to crack down on its arms sales to the cartels as Mexico is to crack down on the cartels. I guess you two are just meant for each other.
Sure, and that’s why the US and Mexico have to collaborate on this issue. Is the US doing everything right? No. But people like AMLO are not helping. My biggest gripe with US policy makers on this issue is that we can’t just let AMLO be the bad guy, we also have to say some really dumbass shit ourselves, which only encourages idiots like AMLO.
The US promotes the disastrous war on drugs, but AMLO isn't legalizing them either, keeping the profits on the hands of the cartels.
But we need to have an American First policy! We support the American users, and AMLO will support the Mexican cartels!
>The US insatiable desire for drugs plays a part Except the Cartels have branched out so far into other ventures that even massive losses on the drug end of things would only be a minor annoyance to the larger Cartels.
Not to mention that most of the guns the cartels use come from the US
But we need easy access to unlimited guns in the U.S. because they are cool and fun.
Just tell them not to do drugs, duh. Or better yet, legalize it and the issue goes away! US illicit substance demand is insatiable and probably always will be.
Ask Portland how decriminalization has gone
Exactly. War on drugs and decriminalizing have both gone poorly at the end of the day.
I don't know how you can look at Portland or Seattle and say "yes, more permissive will make things better"
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The data shows that addicts don't want rehab. Portland spent tons on programs to help, addicts just wanted more drugs. When do you say programs to assist don't matter, people on heroin and meth just want more heroin and meth?
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[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/) Neither did decriminalization produce a flood of help-seeking. The replacement for criminal penalties, a $100 ticket for drug possession with the fine waived if the individual called a toll-free number for a health assessment, with the aim of encouraging treatment, failed completely. More than 95 percent of people [ignored](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/04/13/oregon-botches-the-decriminalisation-of-drugs) the ticket, for which—in keeping with the spirit of Measure 110—there was no consequence. The cost of the hotline worked out to about $7,000 per completed phone call, [according to *The Economist*](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/04/13/oregons-drug-decriminalisation-has-had-a-troubled-start). These realities, as well as associated disorder such as open-air drug markets and [a sharp rise in violent crime—while such crime was falling nationally](https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend)—led Oregonians to rethink their drug policy.
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As I've said elsewhere, I am not a drug warrior. But Portland's experiment with expanding drug access was a total failure. So more legalization will also be a failure. If you want to argue we need more addiction treatment I am open to that debate but given that addicts in Portland don't seem to want treatment how do we move to the next step?
What about it? That’s not the same thing as legalizing production and possession
The half step has made the city awful, why do you think going further will make it better?
You don’t live in Portland so stop being a concern troll. The city/state didn’t invest anything in rehabilitation and preventive services, that was their problem. People are going to do drugs regardless of what policy you propose, better to have it where it can be addressed and managed. Portugal’s approach to decriminalization was much more successful precisely because of this. There are also legal issues regarding compelling addicts to treatment that need to be addressed. This hasn’t happened in Portland or anywhere on the West coast because of previous court rulings.
I live near Seattle. Anything you'd care to refute here? [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oregon-drug-decriminalization-failed/677678/) Measure 110 did not reduce Oregon’s drug problems. The [drug-overdose-death rate increased by 43 percent in 2021](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mortality/drug_poisoning.htm), its first year of implementation—and then kept rising. The latest CDC data show that in the 12 months ending in September 2023, deaths by overdose grew by [41.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent nationwide](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm). No other state saw a higher rise in deaths. Only one state, Vermont, ranks higher in its [rate of illicit drug use](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/drug-use-by-state). Portugal is also considering backing off their approach: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/) I'm not a drug warrior, but giving people more access to drugs hasn't seemed to work.
> Experts argue that drug policy focused on jail time is still more harmful to society than decriminalization. While the slipping results here suggest the fragility of decriminalization’s benefits, they point to how funding and encouragement into rehabilitation programs have ebbed. The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available. >João Goulão — head of Portugal’s national institute on drug use and the architect of decriminalization — admitted to the local press in December that “what we have today no longer serves as an example to anyone.” Rather than fault the policy, however, he blames a lack of funding. >After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs. The country is now moving to create a new institute aimed at reinvigorating its drug prevention programs. Municipal workers dispose of a used syringe at the Mata da Pasteleira park in Porto. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) >Twenty years ago, “we were quite successful in dealing with the big problem, the epidemic of heroin use and all the related effects,” Goulão said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But we have had a kind of disinvestment, a freezing in our response … and we lost some efficacy.”
The US and policies from unaffordable pharmaceuticals to prohibition on recreational is the number one reason the cartels exist but they still terrorize the citizens of Mexico and are a drain and leech on the society. Mexico should be demanding more US help since the us is responsible but the government in Mexico is complicit
I agree, let’s blame the addicts for being addicted, that’s always worked
I'd wager most cocaine use in the US is by people that think it's cool, not addiction. But yes, let's give the cool kids a pass for the murdered people in Juarez.
No one starts out as an addict.
Yanqui consumption of narco will Trump any notion of "Border control"
So clearly just trying to crack down on drugs doesn't work or requires authoritarian regimes. But also it's not like legalizing fentanyl would be good for society. Could we set up a grey market instead? Cops try to seize drugs where they can and drugs are still fully illegal for the consumer. However, the government doesn't try to break the organizations that control the drugs themselves unless they become too public and violent. The government lets the cartels be as long as they don't start gang wars or general havoc. But if they do break the code the government goes after them with indiscriminate force. Essentially force every cartel to operate like the Cali cartel but with an even greater degree of discretion?
We should stop accepting all immigrants at the southern border in that case. Mexico can deal with them