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Mexican Drug Cartels in your town?

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JMapleton said:
Misleading statement. Hard drugs have not been ever been legal in our modern society so sales of hard drugs and even pot has been confined to shady fellows selling out of their car and other shady places, so you cannot possibly know or say how many MORE people would be using drugs if they were legal and could be bought at a gas station.
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You might want to check out http://facultypages.morris.umn.edu/~ratliffj/psy1081/drug_laws.htm

Cocaine, marijuana and heroin were both legal for quite a while in what I would consider modern society. Morphine is a semi-synthetic derivative of heroin which is still widely used. LSD/Acid were legal into the 60's, I believe. MDMA was sold legally for quite a while before it was made illegal. I'm sure with a little more research you could find more specific details and a longer list of drugs that have been sold legally in 'modern society'...
 
TechBoyJK said:
http://www.businessinsider.com/this...an-cartels-and-drugs-come-to-your-town-2012-7

drug-cartel-infographic.jpg
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What's saddening to realize is that all those arrows on that map were probably developed by someone paid 6 figures to do so. On top of that, law enforcement agencies will be saying "hmmm, this arrow goes right over the Interstate! This particular Interstate highway is a drug corridor!"
 
mmntech said:
The problem is the users, because they're creating the market for them. Kill the market and kill the trade. Even if that means harsh jail time. Drug use is not a victimless crime. People are dying so they can get their fix. They're no better than the killers.
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That's circular logic. It's illegal because it's bad. It's bad because it's illegal.

User's aren't creating the black market for the drugs. The government took what could be a regulated market for drugs (in which use would be victimless) and pushed it underground.

To say 'kill the market' immediately throws your argument out of the window. It's never going to happen. It's not worth the effort to try, and it causes more harm than good when we do try. /endstory

Rather than ignorantly worrying about reducing the market we can intelligently work to reduce the harm that drug use 'can' do. Educate users. Regulate the market (and therefore the drugs) so that the drugs are safer. (it's not so much that cocaine is 'bad' it's that it's acquired on the black market where doses aren't reliable and neither is the substance). Provide safe access to rehab and healthcare treatments for addicts. And lastly, quit harassing and demonizing those who use drugs safely. Assuming I got the weed from a local harmless pot grower and not a ruthless cartel, there's no harm in me sitting in my house after work smoking a joint. Well some harm, but about on the scale of eating a bowl of ice cream or eating a cheeseburger.
 
Murloc said:
I think legalizing pot would take away a nice slice of profits from them.
You could adopt a system like the nordics do for alcohol, or just make it legal in coffee shops only.
Sure weed can cause psychological and physical problems, but so does alcohol. It's not dangerous enough to justify a complete ban imho.

Cocaine heroine and other shit can't be legalized though. It clearly generates health costs and is addicting.
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Most dealers are against legalization of marijuana because it would lead to regulations and open the market up to a lot more people and hurt them because of added competition and drive prices down. Most people that talk about legalization really just want it to be decriminalized which would just get rid of the possibility of being arrested/ticketed but would leave the government out of the marijuana market.

What makes heroin worse than other opiates that are regularly given to basically any one with a headache by any ER? It's probably not as hard on the users liver or kidneys. What about morphine which is pretty similar?
 
Prohibition has created a hugely profitable market for drugs.

Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in the 1920's either, but did successfully create the market for illegal alcohol distribution.
 
BladeVenom said:
What a great job Obama is doing in the war against drugs, and protecting our border.
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He's doing his best, strutting along down on the border, slowly twirling his matched pair of war hatchets, whistling "The Farmer in the Dell," and killing anything that moves. But he's only one man. Granted, he's one man with an insatiable lust for the blood of the wicked, but even he can only kill, tops, TOPS, like 500 drug dealing illegals a day. How is he supposed to stop an influx of literally 300 million illegal immigrants per hour with their trucks loaded with heroin and the finest quality dirt weed money can buy? Madness!
 
BladeVenom said:
What a great job Obama is doing in the war against drugs, and protecting our border.
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The border is more secure than at any previous time in our history. That ain't saying a whole lot but it is more secure now. It wasn't until the war on drugs created the incentive to violence that anyone particularly cared that the border was wide open.
 
i present to you, the results of the 'war on drugs'

so much loss of money and life resulting from the anti-drug laws, its tragic. meanwhile people are still doing drugs all the time. not a single redeeming factor to this 'war'.
 
Cartels have a bigger impact on communities and local economics than officials are willing to admit to the public. While graphs like this come out with wide stretching details of cartel activity, local and federal law enforcement agencies aren't likely to give out many specific details on local crimes committed as a result of cartel activity. I would also guess most states have atleast a group assigned to monitoring it's state's cartel activity, if not a complete division to track and counter it whenever possible.
 
How sad that we have to outsource marijuana production when the USA grows the finest herb on the planet.

Pantlegz said:
Most dealers are against legalization of marijuana because it would lead to regulations and open the market up to a lot more people and hurt them because of added competition and drive prices down.
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ch33zw1z said:
Prohibition has created a hugely profitable market for drugs.

Prohibition didn't work for alcohol in the 1920's either, but did successfully create the market for illegal alcohol distribution.
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+100
 
jjsole said:
Cartels have a bigger impact on communities and local economics than officials are willing to admit to the public. While graphs like this come out with wide stretching details of cartel activity, local and federal law enforcement agencies aren't likely to give out many specific details on local crimes committed as a result of cartel activity. I would also guess most states have atleast a group assigned to monitoring it's state's cartel activity, if not a complete division to track and counter it whenever possible.
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WTF are you talking about? Stop pulling shit out of your ass. Cartels hook up with local groups and simply wholesale to them. Retail drug sales are very risky and lead to tons of arrests. This would increase their vulnerability to larger investigations. So, the cartels' 'presence' in most of these cities is simply to have someone in the general area live in an unassuming house, maintain contact with whatever local groups do the retail sales, and simply accept and distribute the drugs from the couriers. That 'presence' is usually an illegal who doesn't know much at all about the cartel hierarchy and who probably has family back home in mexico who'll be killed if they snitch.

Mexico is so violent because only about 95% of murders are even investigated. Actual, honest to god cartel violence is very rare in the US. Fuck, I live on the border and it's safer here than back in Florida.
 
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After actually looking at the map, it's pretty clear that it's total bullshit. It's at least 2 years out of date and probably wasn't really accurate in the first place. The Zetas aren't even on it, and the Gulf are WAY overrepresented. The Zetas have basically been steadily destroying and replacing the Gulf. The Tijuana and Juarez cartel have been greatly reduced by Sinaloa (or, the "federation").
 
waggy said:
Nope.

not in this town.
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How big is the town? Whoever is selling mexican brick weed and the harder stuff there probably just gets it from the closest metro area. Of course, if you're out in the boonies, there's probably a lot of locally grown MJ.
 
Atomic Playboy said:
Whoever made that chart needs a broader color chart on their wall.

"OK, so I've got red, and orange, and kind of an orangeish red, and we'll throw in some yellow..."
"Umm, these colors are really close together. You don't want to put some green or purple or blue in there?"
"Nah, those colors are too friendly. Print it, it's good."

Consequently, I have no idea if my home is being invaded by the Juarez cartel or the Federation cartel. I'll wear the wrong colors and end up being shot and it's entirely the fault of this chart. I hope you're happy National Post!
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I noticed the map looks kind of distorted as well. A lot of states are stretched vertically, looking too tall and narrow.
 
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