A report by an Inter-American body and a commentary on a US news website: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...he_drug_w.html
davidbfpo
National Drug Threat Assessment
http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs31/31379/31379p.pdf
Unfortunately no good news in this report, but it is excellent study on international criminal networks (with many parallels to international terrorist organizations). One reader criticized the report due to its sole focus on illegal drugs, while failing to show the ties between the illegal drug trade and terrorists.DTOs rapidly adapt to law enforcement and policy initiatives that disrupt their drug trafficking operations. Law enforcement and intelligence reporting revealed several strategic shifts by DTOs in drug production and trafficking in 2007 and early 2008, attributed in part to the success of counterdrug agencies in disrupting the operations of DTOs. Many of these shifts represent immediate new challenges for policymakers and resource planners. The National Drug Threat Assessment 2009 outlines the progress and emerging counterdrug challenges
in detailed strategic findings, including the following:
• Mexican DTOs represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States. The influence
of Mexican DTOs over domestic drug trafficking is unrivaled. In fact, intelligence estimates indicate a vast majority of the cocaine available in U.S. drug markets is smuggled by Mexican DTOs across the U.S.–Mexico border. Mexican DTOs control drug distribution in most U.S. cities, and they are gaining strength in markets that they do not yet control.
• Violent urban gangs control most retail-level drug distribution nationally, and some have relocated from inner cities to suburban and rural areas. Moreover, gangs are increasing their involvement in wholesale-level drug distribution, aided by their connections with Mexican and Asian DTOs.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-23-2009 at 07:37 PM.
The war on drugs is a failure: report says
A report by an Inter-American body and a commentary on a US news website: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...he_drug_w.html
davidbfpo
Interesting but late.
Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971. By 1975, most of us dumb Anglos here in El norte figured out that it was not going to work.
Been downhill ever since...
UN crime chief says drug money flowed into banks, Reuters, Jan 25, 2009.
I am glad someone is speaking about this unpleasant reality, even if she is just scratching the tip of the iceberg."In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."
Agree, nice post bourbon.Originally Posted by bourbon
How to stop the drug wars: Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution. The Economist, Mar 5th 2009.
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.I'm not sure about that. I'd bet the power structures in producer and transport countries, speaking candidly and off the record would acknowledge they don't want legalization in consumer countries. Even if they are clean and not related to the trade itself, they know the huge amount of money involved, and how a significant part of their economy will be removed if drugs are legalized in consumer countries. The criminal and terrorist problems that accompany the drug trade are but a cost in a cynical trade-off. Imagine if cocaine were legalized; its production cost would be cheaper than coffee, which the Colombian's subsidize already.Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy.
In the consumer countries, the US at least, the amount of money made off the war on drugs is considerable, and allot of influence and money would be thrown up against legalization legislation. Not to mention powerful financial and economic interests who would not want to see the huge international cash flows disappear.
corrupted institutions....
Blowing the Whistle -- and Paying the Price: For one compliance officer, blowing the whistle opened a can of worms, By Bill Alpert. Barron's, March 9, 2009.
They always shoot the messenger.WHEN WACHOVIA BANK COMPLIANCE OFFICER Martin Woods started seeing traveler's checks arrive at his London branch from Mexican currency exchanges in 2006 -- sequentially numbered, improperly endorsed, large denomination -- he became suspicious.
The linked article above is just the Leader in that issue, more of an intro piece on the subject. The substantive bit is a Briefing consisting of four articles:
Dealing with drugs: On the trail of the traffickers
The cocaine business: Sniffy customers
Levels of prohibition: A toker's guide
Drug education: In America, lessons learned
Haven't gotten to The Economist piece yet, maybe they cover this. One potential upside to legalization would be moving billions of dollars from the shadow economy into the mainstream financial system. Agreed that the folks currently holding that money wouldn't go without a fight, but the end result would probably be an uptick in cash flow and GDP. And a lot fewer CTRs and SARs to investigate.In the consumer countries, the US at least, the amount of money made off the war on drugs is considerable, and allot of influence and money would be thrown up against legalization legislation. Not to mention powerful financial and economic interests who would not want to see the huge international cash flows disappear.
I think the shadow economy is interconnected to the global financial system. It's already in the mainstream financial system in a significant ways, the system loves the liquidity that illicit trade brings.
I don't think legalization would bring an increase in cash flow and GDP. The production costs of narcotics is very low, if they were legal in producer and consumer countries the price paid for them would be low. Naturally the government(s) would want to tax them; say even if the taxes make for a 100% of the price tax, drugs would still be significantly cheaper then they are today.
I'm no fan of the drug war and would support legalization. But I think public opinion is moving more in that direction, and will be less of a challenge then the financial and economic interests who do not want legalization.
Boy is that ever true...money has no concious...but it does leave a trail
ICG, 26 Mar 09: Ending Colombia's FARC Conflict: Dealing the Right Card
Complete 38-page paper at the link......Despite the FARC’s historic resilience and proven capacity to overcome military and political setbacks, President Uribe’s strategy aimed at military victory and ending the conflict without political negotiations began to yield visible results in 2007. The government is confident that further attacks on the insurgents’ command-and-control structure, sustained operations in its strongholds and the increasing rate of defections will slowly break the FARC’s backbone. In time, units will crumble or splinter into factions that may become interested in negotiating their disarmament, demobilisation and reinsertion (DDR). The remaining FARC Secretariat members and hardline factions would then be more isolated, militarily and politically, and thus easier to defeat.
Uribe’s broad popularity is based largely on the tough stance he has taken against the FARC. His political priorities in advance of the 2010 presidential elections and his conviction that the insurgents would again use any political pause to regain strength rather than negotiate seriously give him little motive to assign the same weight to a vigorous political strategy as to his security policy.
But the FARC has been adapting to more difficult circumstances with some success, and several of its fronts are capable of resisting offensives in key areas, especially in high mountain ranges and tropical jungles along the Pacific coast and the borders with Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. In these locations the government’s security consolidation strategy is incipient at best, and drug trafficking revenue continues to fuel the conflict. Even if some units eventually split away, partly as a result of the new, more decentralised system that gives them greater autonomy, the leadership under Alfonso Cano appears unlikely to give up as a result of the ongoing military pressure. And should the government’s strategy of fracturing the FARC into easier-to-demobilise pieces succeed, it entails the serious risk of driving the resulting splinter groups not into a DDR program but into closer forms of cooperationwith powerful organised criminal groups or NIAGs.....
S.S. Tony Montana
Drug-Sub Culture, By DAVID KUSHNER. The New York Times Magazine, April 23, 2009.
This kind of vessel — a self-propelled, semisubmersible made by hand in the jungles of Colombia — is no longer quite so mythic: four were intercepted in January alone. But because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect; only an estimated 14 percent of them are stopped. And perhaps as many as 70 of them will be made this year, up from 45 or so in 2007, according to a task-force spokesman. Made for as little as $500,000 each and assembled in fewer than 90 days, they are now thought to carry nearly 30 percent of Colombia’s total cocaine exports.
Legalizing drugs (of any kind) won't stop crime, if stopping crime is the intent. If taxed, people will find ways around those taxes. Even cigarette smuggling brings in billions of dollars a year. And even those smuggling operations have suspected ties to terrorist organizations. See 2004 GAO Report on cigarette smuggling And if expensive (because of taxation), people who cannot afford them will still resort to illicit behaviors to purchase them for their addictions (and those addiction rates are much higher than alcohol). Legalization will not push traffickers into the open -- some will change clothes (like the corportization of Las Vegas) and others will find business in smuggling. Meanwhile, the public will still be exposed to the genuine public health risks caused by drugs. Anyone consider the effects of drug legalization on the extortion scheme we call health insurance and the healthcare system? How many addicts will there be, and how many will find private insurance policies? Will taxation make up for the (extremely) high expenses in healthcare that will result? If the war on drugs is a 'failure' now, how can we expect to have effective enforcement measures (rehab, counter-smuggling, prevention of sale to minors, etc) when drugs are legalized and the public (particularly the consuming portion of the population) perceives drug use to be legitimized?
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
Not a new idea ....
as we can see from the attached, Bourbon's Boat had its grandpappy in the booze-running subs of Lake Superior, which plied the Thunder Bay to Keweenaw route during Prohibition - as commorated by this WPA project on US 41 near Kearsarge, MI.
And if you believe this story, you will also believe that there is a "solution" to the drug problem(s) which does not involve some minuses.
AmericanPride asks some good questions - similar questions were involved in Prohibition and Repeal. I don't have the answers.
Nor do I.
Have the answers. If the three of us do not have them, there may not be any...
Thats the problem with so many of our problems today
They tend to result and be amplified by so many of the so called "socially neutral" habits and requirements we have become inundated with in efforts to ensure complete and total "equality" without any regard to common understanding that in life there are such things as good and bad.
And more importantly the fact that if the adults don't define them the kids will cease to even recognize them.
The only thing that would truly effect the drug business is a recognition that if your young are raised with the awareness of how good life can be when you live it right they will be a lot less inclined to partake in those things which take that ability away. It's not a supply and demand issue, it's a culture and environment one.
This biggest hurdle to that is the likelihood that as in the past there will be efforts to have the state deal with it instead of finding ways to empower families to. (Catch 22)
Any man can destroy that which is around him, The rare man is he who can find beauty even in the darkest hours
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
Yes...
That specifically but agree with the whole post. Good comment.
I've wondered about legalizing small time marijuana use simply to free up more time for LE - the Gov. at all levels is so screwed up they probably couldn't even sell pot without costing the tax payers billions of dollars - the thought was limited sales, X number of joints per mo. per adult, with real control and tracking measure in place, would generate some additional revenue. However, if pirates sporting AKs can tie up portions of the US Navy, the Gov. can do little to impact the drug trade in any respect.
I like the cultural comments too and I remember LBJs war on poverty and certainly the war on drugs - both are still in full force.
Setting aside the moral question, criminalizing usage does have the effect of driving prices up--evidence of declining demand in absence of declining supply. The baseline fluctuating between 50 and 300 percent, if I remember, but it does clearly set the price higher here than it does in say Amsterdam.
Buying up the crop wouldn't necessarily drive down prices, in fact it shouldn't unless the government--as either a result of playing the futures game poorly or as a matter of deliberate policy--consistently undercuts its own position on the eventual harvest price or imposes a price that promotes illegal crop selling. The model here is farm subsidies.As has been brought up before buying the entire crop of poppies would have a lot of benefits, but the biggest opponent would be drug companies because such a large legal supply would put pressure on the price of legal pain medications which are unbelievable expensive. Never new how bad it was until I started being around hospitals. Helathcare is rationed largely on price despite what people may think.
PH Cannady
Correlate Systems
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks