Our Lost War On Drugs, October, 2013 Update: Already In Your Town Today, A Mexican Drug Cartel Presence

Although the nation has recently been focused on the continuing insanity and ineptness coming out of Washington over the past month or so regarding the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care, the narrowly avoided stupid and un-Constitutional attack  on Syria, and the so-called Federal government shutdown, that does not mean our losing “war on drugs” has stopped or wound down. On the contrary, this disaster continues to encourage the rise of violent drug cartels, does not stem the flow or usage of illegal drugs, and still wastes billions of dollars of taxpayer wealth every year in a futile attempt to win a four decade old losing war.

Today we will do a quick update on the continuing futility of our war on drugs:

1) CBS News reported on August 13, 2013 that three more guns from the Federal government’s botched Fast and Furious operation had turned up at violent crime scenes in Mexico. This is just the latest drug cartel violence that was supported by Fast and Furious weapons including:

• Last November when a Fast and Furious weapon was found at a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen was killed. 
• Two Fast and Furious weapons were used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011. 
• Two Fast and Furious AK-47 type rifles were recovered from the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010; he'd been shot by illegal immigrants who were smuggling drugs.

As usual, innocent people die as a result of the Federal government’s vain attempts at winning this losing war on drugs.

2) It used to be that the foreign drug cartels supplied the drugs and local gangs and criminals sold the drugs in the U.S. However, a recent report from the Justice Department reported on how the drug cartels were not only deeply involved in transporting the drugs into this country but also have established their own presence in cities across America:

• Based on a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Post was able to identify the trafficking routes and bases of various Mexican drug cartels throughout the United States. 
• Drug cartels presence has reached into cities like Portland, Denver, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, Seattle, Louisville, Memphis, Boston, Minneapolis, Dallas and others.
• The cartels transport heroin, marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines to feed America’s unending drug habit, making billions of dollars in profits every year.
• Almost all pf the major drug cartels were mentioned in the Justice Department report as having a U.S. presence including  the Tijuana Cartel, Juarez Cartel, Gulf Cartel, Federation Cartel and numerous gangs with “unknown affiliation.”
• The Gulf Cartel appears to control much of east Texas while the Juarez Cartel divides up the west. 
• “Cocaine is the most lucrative of illegal drugs. The United Nations estimates that sales of the drug net $88 billion a year on the street. While the largest federations were once Columbian, now it appears they are Mexican. The UN estimates two-thirds of cocaine that left the Andean region of South America for the United States in 2008 passed through the hands of Mexican cartels,” the National Post reports.

This graphic from the National Post breaks down the routes visually and shows where the drug cartels are operating. It also shows the number of drug related deaths in various categories, which now totals more than 50,000 since 2006:

So after forty years of a futile Federal war on drugs, all we have done is create a violent drug cartel/gang presence in most American cities without reducing the usage and desire for drugs.

3) An Associated Press (AP) investigation from this past July confirms  this Justice Department information. The AP reviewed Federal court cases, government drug-enforcement data, and conducted interviews with many top law enforcement officials. 

It concluded that cartel groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles in Mexico to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.

Two quotes from the article are particularly concerning: 

1. "It's probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime," said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office.
2. "We know that hundreds of cities across America have been infected by Mexican cartels" according to former Immigration and Naturalization Service Agent Michael Culter.

4) As with most issues facing this country, ordinary citizens again seem to have a better grasp of reality relative to the violent Mexican drug cartels than those in the Washington political class:

• According to a recent Rasmussen poll, Americans remain more concerned about Mexican drug violence coming to this country than they are about illegal immigration.
• Only 34% of those polled are more concerned about illegal immigration. Fifty-seven percent (57%) worry more about drug violence.
• Sixty-nine percent (69%) believe the U.S. military should be used along the border to protect American citizens if the drug violence continues to escalate along the Mexican border. Only 16% disagree, another 15% are not sure.
• Seventy-three percent (73%)  think it is at least somewhat likely that this drug violence will spill over into the United States. Twenty percent (20%) feel that’s unlikely. 
• This includes 36% who think the violence is Very Likely to come here and just two percent (2%) who say it’s Not At All Likely.

So why politicians endlessly debate about immigration and the 11 million illegal aliens already in this country, they seem to not understand or do not want to acknowledge that a major issue within the immigration problem is the ease of which drug cartel agents can slip across the border and set up shop just about anywhere in the U.S. 

5) And just as a reminder, let us refer to two recent articles regarding the toll that our lost war on drugs takes on ordinary American citizens, articles we recently cited in our monthly political class insanity series. A recent article from The Week magazine reported that America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world. 

A lot of those in our prisons are small time, non-violent, not dealing drug users. The overall cost of this high imprisonment rate is a staggering $80 billion a year, a large percentage of which is wastefully spent to jail personal drug users who are hurting only themselves.

Another article from The Week tried to document how wasteful our war on drugs is, claiming that the prisons in this country hold about 100,000 small time, non-violent drug users. This costs American taxpayers about $15 billion a year. The sadder part beyond the record level of imprisonments and wasted money spent is that the thousands and thousands of drug users in these prisons are highly unlikely to get the help they need to kick their drug usage addiction. 

Like we said, Washington politicians have been unwilling or unable to understand that our lost war on drugs is just that, a loser. We waste billions of dollars futilely trying to stop the flow of drugs, we lock up people who use drugs that the government declares illegal, but who are a danger only to themselves, and we have created a dangerous marketplace for drugs, which drives up prices and creates powerful, rich, and violent drug cartels, which have now embedded themselves into this country. 

Others around the world have seen the error of their ways. Some countries in Europe have moved to decriminalize or legalize the use of drugs with the surprising results. The levels of drug usage and addiction actually decline when these steps are taken. This has resulted in more citizens seeking up for their drug addictions once the stigma of being a criminal has been removed.

Uruguay has taken the common sense economic approach of creating the world’s first government-run market for non-medical marijuana. Their strategy is that if the government can flood the market with quality, inexpensive marijuana, the price for the drug will drop significantly and reduce the wealth, reach, and disruption from now much poorer drug cartels  A simple application of the immutable economic law of supply and demand. 

In addition, the government will stand behind its marijuana products as fresher and purer than the cartels’ products, using marketplace tactics to reduce the cartels’ cash flow. Simple, elegant and likely to be effective.

Simple, elegant, and effective are three words that are never used to describe anything our political class does. As a result, we end up fighting a useless war on drugs that solves no problems and creates violent new ones. Step 26 from our book, ‘Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” provided a process for resolving the drug problem in this country. 

However, it is doubtful that our political class will ever get around to implementing this process, they are too worried about their own personal political futures and personal greed. Thus, they need to be replaced with other people that would be willing to admit that a forty year failing policy needs to be replaced. The way to start the process is to implement term limits, something you can help do by visiting the following website:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because really, forty years of failure, the rise of violent drug gangs, the unnecessary imprisonment of nonviolent drug users, and the corruption of government officials all over the world, how much worse could it be if we started over with new people in Washington?

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
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