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"It's a War": Mexico Under Siege

marduc said:
What they do outside of their work is their business; however employers can and do reserve the right to demanding that people are not intoxicated at their workplaces.

Your child teacher might be drunk, if that teacher gets caught she gets fired.. quite simple. If that teacher goes home after school, and has a cocktail, no big deal.

red herring
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And teachers have go through a beckground check.
 
Redress said:
And again, this country is not even close to legalizing any drugs soon. It is possible that weed might be legalized in my lifetime, but I doubt it, and it won't be for at least 10 to 20 years from now.
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Yeah we are tied due to the single convention and the two follow up intl. drug treaties on a national level. treaties that WE forced down everyone's throat (especially marijuana's ridiculous scheduling which we insisted upon).

There is a demand from some countries to revisit these treaties; however it falls on deaf ears here in the states.

We can decriminalize; however we cannot legalize; and there is still one major problem with decriminalization, control of the supply still remains in the wrong hands.

There is one loophole which would bypass these treaties.. constitutional amendment. If we start getting states legalizing it and it works out favorably, then public opinion will continue to sway, and this is not such an unrealistic occurrence.
 
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Erod said:
The problem with this is that it will no longer be legal to screen job applicants for crack cocaine. Your child's teacher might be on heroin, and there'll be nothing you can do about it. The president of the U.S. might be a former narcotics distributor.

No thank you.
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Hogwash. Employers always have the right to establish policies for the work place. Teachers can't smoke in classrooms and tobacco is perfectly legal. Teachers can't be drunk in classrooms (or have alcohol on premise) and alcohol is perfectly legal.
 
celticlord said:
There is no historical precedent to sustain that argument. Criminalization of vice historically does essentially nothing to reduce the appetite for vice.
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I agree. My point was merely that if the richest country in the world turned a massive amount of resources toward a single problem we could solve it. Including the drug war. There is no historical precedent for anything until it's done! After all no one ever went to the moon until we landed on it. I'm sure if we spent 100% of the federal budget on the drug war we could win it (as long as we kept doing that). Because for that amount of money the appetite for drugs would be trumped by the fact there is hardly any supply and the Gestapo is watching your every move. Given that we cannot do that we cannot win the drug war. It's pointless.
 
stekim said:
I'm sure if we spent 100% of the federal budget on the drug war we could win it (as long as we kept doing that).
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Neverending war is a poor definition of victory, and an apt definition of defeat.
 
Erod said:
The problem with this is that it will no longer be legal to screen job applicants for crack cocaine. Your child's teacher might be on heroin, and there'll be nothing you can do about it. The president of the U.S. might be a former narcotics distributor.

No thank you.
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You made an illogical leap. Employers could test for any drug they chose. So could the government. And guess what? Your child's teacher might be on heroin now. Unless you think the fact it's illegal means one cannot get it. But we all know that's not true.
 
celticlord said:
Neverending war is a poor definition of victory, and an apt definition of defeat.
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I don't disagree. But folks would not be on drugs. And to some that's the goal. And it's the only way they are going to get there. The country may crumble under Big Brother's boot, but no one will be high when it happens. My example was merely to illustrate the futility of the anti-legalization argument. Yes, you CAN win. Are you willing to pay the price for "winning"?
 
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Redress said:
That is a good reason why I hate the term "war on drugs". It then leads to a logical question: how do you win the war? That is a problem since it is unwinable, and that is not a realistic goal. The goal should be(and I believe actually is) to reduce drug use and drug trafficking as much as possible.
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And exactly how well has that worked over the last 30 years?

How well did the 18th amendment work out, how much did it cost, how long before it was repealed, and how much in revenue does the US government get from taxes on alcohol each year?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself, not how do you change the unchangeable.
 
Erod said:
The problem with this is that it will no longer be legal to screen job applicants for crack cocaine. Your child's teacher might be on heroin, and there'll be nothing you can do about it. The president of the U.S. might be a former narcotics distributor.

No thank you.
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Entirely untrue... No one could force employers to hire a person that tested positive for drugs if the employer didn't want to hire them. this is still almost a free country.
 
Crunch said:
And exactly how well has that worked over the last 30 years?

How well did the 18th amendment work out, how much did it cost, how long before it was repealed, and how much in revenue does the US government get from taxes on alcohol each year?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself, not how do you change the unchangeable.
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For your first question, it is unknown as there is no control to measure against.

For your second, it did not work out, but the both the world, and the situation, are somewhat different so you can draw no sure conclusions based on it.

Now I have a question for you. What do you figure the odds are that you could get drugs legalized in this country?
 
Redress said:
For your first question, it is unknown as there is no control to measure against.

For your second, it did not work out, but the both the world, and the situation, are somewhat different so you can draw no sure conclusions based on it.

Now I have a question for you. What do you figure the odds are that you could get drugs legalized in this country?
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Right at this moment?.... somewhere between 0% and none.

If the war in Mexico crosses the border?.... somewhere between 0% and 50%.

If alot of people get killed in border states?.... somewhere around 100%.
 
Crunch said:
Right at this moment?.... somewhere between 0% and none.

If the war in Mexico crosses the border?.... somewhere between 0% and 50%.

If alot of people get killed in border states?.... somewhere around 100%.
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There are a fair number of deaths to this drug war in the border states. By the way, the whole point I have been making is that legalizing drugs is not likely to happen, so it's best to look at other solutions.
 
We could legalize all the drugs you want, but as along as drugs are illegal in Mexico, it wouldn't have any effect on the cartels. What are the cartels going to do? Start paying taxes? I seriously doubt that. The cartelistas aren't afrid to kill, torture, die, or go to prison in the interest of their drug business, why should they suddenly be skeered of dodging a few taxes?
 
apdst said:
We could legalize all the drugs you want, but as along as drugs are illegal in Mexico, it wouldn't have any effect on the cartels. What are the cartels going to do? Start paying taxes? I seriously doubt that. The cartelistas aren't afrid to kill, torture, die, or go to prison in the interest of their drug business, why should they suddenly be skeered of dodging a few taxes?
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huh? The cartels have amassed their power because they are feeding U.S. demand, not Mexican demand; which is minuscule in comparison.

edit: also if WE legalized drugs abandoning the single convention, mexico would quickly follow suit, as would many other nations, especially latin american nations.
 
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Redress said:
There are a fair number of deaths to this drug war in the border states. By the way, the whole point I have been making is that legalizing drugs is not likely to happen, so it's best to look at other solutions.
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Such as? Care to suggest a few? Interdiction and incarceration have not had any effect.
 
Redress said:
Read my first post in this thread.
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Redress said:
Provide all material aid that we can to Mexico, allocate more intelligence assets to the region, and pass along any useful information found.

I don't think we can fight the war for Mexico, but we can at least provide that much.
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All you're proposing is more of the same: more interdiction. Take out Medellin and we got Cali. Take out Kali and we got Sinaloa, Guadalajara, and so on, and now we have La Familia.

Interdiction has not been a successful strategy. How does more interdiction make any sense?
 
marduc said:
huh? The cartels have amassed their power because they are feeding U.S. demand, not Mexican demand; which is minuscule in comparison.
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The demand is going to go down because drugs are legal? I'm doubting that.

edit: also if WE legalized drugs abandoning the single convention, mexico would quickly follow suit, as would many other nations, especially latin american nations.
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When you factor in how much the cartels have penetrated the Mexican government, I'm betting that Mexico wouldn't exactly follow suit.
 
celticlord said:
All you're proposing is more of the same: more interdiction. Take out Medellin and we got Cali. Take out Kali and we got Sinaloa, Guadalajara, and so on, and now we have La Familia.

Interdiction has not been a successful strategy. How does more interdiction make any sense?
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Because there hasn't been enough interdiction. We need to take the gloves off and start scoring some kills.
 
apdst said:
Because there hasn't been enough interdiction. We need to take the gloves off and start scoring some kills.
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Scoring some kills? Do you have any idea how many narcotrafficantes have already been killed? And how new ones always manage to take their place?

You want to chop the heads off a hydra, and every one you lop off grows two more. Your solution is that is to chop off even more heads.

Insanity squared and cubed.
 
celticlord said:
All you're proposing is more of the same: more interdiction. Take out Medellin and we got Cali. Take out Kali and we got Sinaloa, Guadalajara, and so on, and now we have La Familia.

Interdiction has not been a successful strategy. How does more interdiction make any sense?
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Depends on the goal. You are not going to destroy the whole of Mexican drug cartels, so you make it as painful and expensive as possible. You cannot stop any crime entirely, but that does not mean you should legalize everything.
 
celticlord said:
Scoring some kills? Do you have any idea how many narcotrafficantes have already been killed? And how new ones always manage to take their place?

You want to chop the heads off a hydra, and every one you lop off grows two more. Your solution is that is to chop off even more heads.

Insanity squared and cubed.
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Obviously, there haven't been enough killed. We need to kill more. Sooner, ot later, people won't want to be drug runners because it's too dangerous. It's called, "deterrence".
 
Redress said:
There are a fair number of deaths to this drug war in the border states. By the way, the whole point I have been making is that legalizing drugs is not likely to happen, so it's best to look at other solutions.
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What are these other solutions we need to be looking at?

The status quo has not worked, and the populace is awakening to this, are we ready on a federal level for legalization and is it going to happen in the near future? no.

However the acceptance of the status quo is weakening with growing awareness of the problems of prohibition. What was once thought of as political suicide is becoming a mainstream view very quickly, you will be seeing much more of this debate looking forward, it is not going away.

Individual states will be legalizing marijuana in the not so distant future, likely with Ca leading the way (especially if it becomes a voter initiative). Let them and a few other states be the guinea pig, and people will realize the portrayed demons are mythological beasts, and opinion will sway even faster.

A few public supreme court battles over states rights versus ferderal power later and there will likely be a move to amend the constitution (this is long term 10-20 years off I would say)

The forces that will force the legalization hand are both internal within our own populace, and external with international views; which are also slowly souring, and more and more nations are looking to revisit the treaties that keep drugs illegal on a global scope.

For now our hands are tied, and it will not be an easy road to lift prohibition, but it is conceivable. The Mexican drug wars are certainly helping to accelerate us down that road though.
 
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