Our Continuing Lost War On Drugs - Never Underestimate The Creativity Of Drug Criminals

With all of the election hoopla, we have not revisited our continuing lost war on drugs for a little while. This hopeless cause has been going on since the Nixon administration and has probably wasted hundreds of billions of dollars without making a serious dent on the addiction some of our fellow citizens have with drugs. The only accomplishment of our lost war on drugs has been to enrich and expand the violent criminal activities of the Mexican drug cartels.

Our latest edition was covered in the following post:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-deaths-carnage-and-stupidity-of.html

What has come to the forefront since this post? Consider the following developments:

1) Along part of our southern border, the Federal government has constructed a 14 foot high fence to keep out drug traffickers and illegal aliens. We have previously reported on how expensive, late, and ineffective this fence effort has been. Part of the reason for the ineffectiveness of the fence is that the Mexican drug cartels are so creative.

An October 31, 2012 Associated Press article was one of the best illustrations of this creativity. Suspected drug cartel smugglers apparently tried to use ramps to drive an SUV over a 14-foot-tall border fence. They had to abandon the plan when the Jeep became stuck on top of the barrier:

Law enforcement personnel could not capture two people on site who retreated back into Mexico. They assumed that the stalled vehicle was initially filled with marijuana bales that were unloaded when the vehicle got stuck on the top of the fence. You cannot make this stuff up, it illustrates how dedicated the drug cartels are to filling the consumer demand that is aggravated by our losing war on drugs strategy.

2) An October 11, 2012 Associated Press article reported on how Mexican drug cartels filling the void in the U.S. drug market, created by the long effort to crack down on American-made methamphetamine. As a result of the Federal government cracking down on the chemicals that were used in the domestic meth production labs, Mexican drug cartels are now flooding U.S. cities with very cheap, very potent meth from Mexican "superlabs."

These super labs now account for as much as 80% of the meth sold in the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And this super lab meth is close to 90% pure, a level that offers users a faster, more intense and longer-lasting high. According to a DEA spokesperson: "These are sophisticated, high-tech operations in Mexico that are operating with extreme precision. They're moving it out the door as fast as they can manufacture it."

This is a classic example of how wrong headed our war on drugs is. The Federal government never attacked the root causes of our problem, i.e. some Americans, for whatever reason, like to get high. The “war” strategy attacked the supply side of the equation, not the demand side. So while we spent billions of dollars and untold resources shutting down small domestic producers of meth, the demand was unaffected and was then fulfilled by the drug cartels. We are not better off then prior to the crackdown on domestic manufacturers.

This is illustrated by the fact that DEA seizures and interceptions of Mexican meth has quadrupled over just the past few years, indicating that total drug cartel meth production has probably increased about the same amount. Combine these findings with the additional finding that the Mexican meth is much purer than domestically produced meth and the impact of cracking down is much more pronounced. The “war” strategy has actually made a bad situation far worse.

According to the DEA:

• Increasingly large quantities of Mexican meth are turning up in dozens of American cities, including Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, St. Louis and Salt Lake City, indicating a large distribution network.
• The cartel marketing strategy follows a well-established pattern. By simultaneously increasing the purity and cutting the price, the cartels get customers hooked on meth and create a new customer base.
• "They're marketing geniuses," according to a DEA spokesman.

How does this qualify as a winning war on drug strategy?

3) An Associated Press article from October 2, 2012 reported U.S. Federal government sources suspect that Mexican federal police, who fired on a U.S. Embassy vehicle, wounding two CIA officers, were working for organized crime in a targeted assassination attempt. A Mexican government official with knowledge of the incident confirmed that Mexican prosecutors are investigating whether the Beltran Leyva Cartel was behind the Aug. 24 ambush.

Just another victim of our ill-fated “war,” the corruption of Mexican authorities. This strategy has enriched the cartels so much that they can afford to corrupt and pervert the government sources in Mexico responsible for apprehending the very criminals that blackmail the authorities with their U.S. drug profits.

4) But the best reason for stopping the insanity of our failed war on drugs is in Portugal. According to an article from July 5, 2011 from the Forbes website, and other sources, ten years after decriminalizing all forms of illegal drugs and treating drug addiction as a medical problem and not a criminal act:

• Drug usage and abuse has not skyrocketing as many had predicted.
• The number of addicts considered “problematic,” people who had repeatedly use hard drugs along with intravenous users, had fallen by 50% since the early 1990s, from about 100,000 citizens to about 40,000 today.
• Treating 40,000 drug abusers is far cheaper than imprisoning and holding 100,000 abusers, according to the article.
• Drug abusers are more likely to seek treatment now than before since the risk of being branded a criminal and locked up in prison is far less under the decriminalization laws, providing the users and abusers a much better shot of getting off the drugs.

Gee, certainly sounds like a much saner approach to the problem than the approach we have used over the past four decades or so.

So what have learned today:

• Our lost war on drugs has largely not affected the demand side of the problem.
• As long as there is demand for illegal drugs, there will be criminal elements willing to fill that demand and will use whatever creative means necessary to profitably do so, even if it means dring SUVs over 14 foot walls.
• By driving up the cost of illegal drug running, we also drive up the amount of profits that the cartels earn, allowing them to corrupt much of the law enforcement and judicial components of the Mexican government.
• Pivoting from a war strategy to a treatment strategy has proven successful elsewhere and is less expensive, less oppressive to personal freedom, and more humane.

Simple lessons that even simple politicians should be able to understand…but do not.

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:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Checking In With Mexico: Still Violent, Still Lawless, Still Cartel Infested

Some of the most popular posts from this blog over the past few years have had to do with the Mexican drug cartels and the dangers  and potential violence they hold for America. I have no concrete data or information that would tell me why these types of posts draw a significantly higher readership than other topics. It could be that American citizens realize how dangerous this Mexican drug cartel situation is becoming much more accurately than the political class in Washington, whose members more often than not seem to be oblivious to the world around them.

Nixon declared "war on drugs" in the late 1960s, taking the rather simpleton approach that the Federal government could stamp out the desires of millions of citizens to get high using a militarized, criminalized, and bureaucratic approach. Forty years later, that war has been lost, so much so that we are seeing that not only Mexico but many Central and South American governments are beginning to be threatened and overrun with drug cartel and drug gang money, weapons, violence, and threats.

We have not reviewed what is going on in this area for a little while so I thought it might be a good idea to check in, given the topic's popularity. Unfortunately, the latest news is not much better than the past news:

- The Week magazine reported in its July 1, 2011 issue that drug cartel gunmen executed a well know Mexican journalist, along with his wife and son, in Veracruz, Mexico. The gunmen brazenly broke into the journalist's home and gunned down his family on the spot. The journalist, Angel Lopez Velasco, wrote a regularly occurring newspaper column on drug trafficking and security issues. His son was a photographer at the same newspaper.

In the past month, a newspaper editor was kidnapped and believed to have been killed in Acapulco, a reporter was shot to death in Sonora, and another Veracruz reporter was kidnapped in March and his bullet riddled body was recently recovered.

- A July 13, 2011 Associated Press article reported that Mexican authorities had captured the top hitman for the Mexican drug cartel that goes by the name of the Knights Templar. The police believe that the captive oversaw murders for one of the top meth-trafficking gangs in Mexico.

However, the more distressing news in the article is the report that police recently seized 44 metric tons of chemicals that are used to produce illegal methamphetamine at a Mexican seaport. The 44 tons had been shipped to the seaport from Shanghai, China. I know nothing about making methamphetamine but I have to assume that 44 metric tons of chemicals would make a heck of a lot of illegal meth. 44 tons of anything would make a lot of something.

From the same article, police in the northern border town of Ciudad Juarez, which sits right on the border with the U.S., updated the kill totals from a gun fight last Tuesday. Apparently 21 people died from that one gun fight, not the 18 that had previously been reported. That made it the bloodiest drug cartel murder day in all of 2011, exceeding the 20 dead headcount from February 18, 2011.

Metric tons of illegal, drug related chemicals, and dozens of murders on a regular basis. Mexico and the American political class, we have a problem.

- An Associated Press article from July 15, 2011, summarized some of the latest drug cartel violence from Monterrey, Mexico, one of Mexico's most developed cities:

• The city's drug related murder rate is on a pace to double last year's murder pace.
• In recent weeks a teenager was hung until death over a bridge and two of the local governor's bodyguards were killed, dismembered, and dumped with messages that threatened their ex-boss, the governor.
• Last week, gunmen killed 20 people in a local bar.
• 22 more local people were killed in the two days leading up to the article's release.
• Local security officials admit that they do not know how much worse it will get but are openly not optimistic about the situation turning better anytime soon.
• The increase in violence and fear has resulted in fewer students coming to the Technology Institute of Monterrey, one of the nation's top universities.
• Local businesses secretly explained how some have to pay extortion money to the drug gangs.

Looks like the situation is not getting any better. That should not be unexpected since the American political class has done nothing to change the tide of violence and lawlessness that is sweeping across some countries that are obviously very close to the United States. This is the standard mode of operation for our politicians if you look at their history:

• Despite numerous threats and terror attacks in the 1990s on American interests, the political class did nothing until after the devastating 9-11 attacks.
• Despite the impending fiscal/debt ceiling crisis that has been brewing for well over a year, the political class has done nothing as the deadline for default draws nearer and nearer.
• Despite the oil embargo shocks of the 1970s, the political class has done nothing to give us a national, coherent energy strategy and plan.
• Despite over ten million illegal aliens in the country, the political class has done nothing to establish a sane, compassionate, and economically advantageous immigration strategy.

As you can see, we probably can expect no pre-emptive political class action on the drug cartel violence issue until it becomes either fatal or an emergency in some dramatic way. One of my new favorite sayings, from Andrew Glasow, goes as follows: "One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a  problem before it becomes an emergency." Under this definition, it has been a long time since we have had any leaders in this country.

Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," would be a good start in addressing this up and coming emergency. Step 26 provides a process to take a ground up look at the root causes of the drug cartel violence, namely the drug abuse and usage situation within the United States, and provide options of what should be done to attack those root causes.

However, until we implement the many steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" that clean up our political processes to a point that these processes start generating real political leaders,  the drug abuse and other major issues of our times will continue to be addressed only after they become emergencies.




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 http://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:
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/