Drugs, Murder and Mexico

it's funny because while cocaine itself is dud imo, if it were legal i'd be mostly okay with it. of course i'd still think it was kind of annoying and it would lead to a lot more "casually mentioning your illicit activities" stories than one already hears in one's life, but i wouldn't have many moral objections. and i tend to think the health concerns are a lesser issue than the ones we're discussing here.

i feel bad because i've never done it and would like to try it the once, and thus would carry on the regular joe trade and so now i'm not so sure.

of course -- i don't care about the substance itself the same way i don't care about, say, mcdonald's chicken mcnuggets. i wouldn't eat them, but other people are welcome to. it's just that they're not getting little kids shot and killed, making shitty violent people rich, or ruining local economies (quite as badly).

it's the business, not the product that bothers me.

to rephrase, i hate the game, not the player

i think the scolding "it's all bad for you!" nature of the anti-drug campaigns have not had any effect whatsoever, really. i think anyone who knows people who have done drugs and have not become addicts (which is to say, most people) would have evidence to suggest that the "you take drugs and you will DIE ON THE SPOT" nature of the campaigns were overstated. i'm not sure the moral argument would work, either, because moral concerns don't usually fly well with "people who just like to have a good time" or w/e.

anti-drug campaigns have historically (ie for the past 100 years or so) been so full of the most egregious lies and misinformation that it's a bit "boy who cried wolf" at this point. nobody believes any of the bullshit and they aren't about to start.

by which I mean even if the US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.) no one would bat an eye - the source is totally suspect and not credible

I'm a tiny bit ambivialent about this since I'm not a big fan of cocaine, especially now that I'm in my dotage, but feel that what with my penchant for liquor and weed, I shouldn't be too censorious about other people's favorite mind-altering substances. Liquor is arguably far more destructive globally than coke and that one time, when we tried to ban it here in the US, surprise, we engendered a blood-thirsty milieu that shot each other full of holes with tommy guns and diversified into lots of other illegal ventures and gave birth to whole generation who cast a jaded eye on the law, generally. Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

US gov't anti-drug ads were all of a sudden all about the actual human costs of the drug trade (mass murder, etc.)

Tbf, they have noted that the illegal drug trade funds violence and terrorism, much like the counterfeit goods trade does.

regime change starts at home so to speak iirc so maybe we could set an example.

legalization is one answer. but its only one part of the puzzle. for profit prison industry - a growth industry that wants to KEEP growing - is another part of it. and law enforcement in some ways depends on drug money to fund themselves! and yeah there is plenty of blood sugar and blood coffee and blood sneakers, etc, etc, out there.

Yes, coco leaves need to be processed to become cocaine or crack but with out the basic interdiction, the essential value of the product would be far, far lower. Yes, in our modern semi-dystopic world, it's nice to get your weed from up the street and your liquor from a local winery or distillery but to belabor the point to much is also to either force most people to forego tea or coffee or sugar but to engage in some kind of romantic notion that global trade can be bypassed when, in reality, it may need to be adjusted or tweaked or regulated and the taste for stimulants like coke is hardly limited to just North America so even a thoroughly 'virtuous' US wouldn't entirely prevent gangs from killing to make their profits, especially if they had to send it even farther and at greater risk.

Also, this kind of run-on sentence reminds me exactly of how some people sound on coke.

um, i guess i was trying to say that the drug war is a BIG business. in a capitalist country that thrives on businesses getting bigger. and the profits keep coming in as long as the bloody mess continues. or am i just a raving loon.

the only argument that is often made is yes, yes there are other things in the world which cause pain and suffering. it is quite bad here in l.a. w/r/t drug violence in places as well, such as "legal" (there is a question about how legal they are since they get raided by the feds) weed dispensaries are knocked off by gangs and clerks working there get killed, maybe b/c the gangs view them as competition?

one of the arguments, i should say

i'm not saying anything that anyone doesn't know. it has hurt my heart for many years. so many dead and locked up and gone and so much suffering and basically it just gets worse every decade.

i don't think, btw, that the answer is to say "well there are other bad things in the world, too!" because this is a particularly nasty thing, so violent, so reprehensible, and i would love to see worldwide legalization of every illegal drug. people who want them are going to get them anyway.

Not sure if I exactly followed Michael White's post but I don't think the suffering in the coffee, sugar, tea trades are quite on the level of drug gang violence, not to mention that there is, e.g., fair trade, shade grown coffee available. I mean I'm often heard espousing the same sort of "Shit is complicated, everything is global, everything results in suffering" kind of talk, but I think I can draw a line at a product that directly results in so much killing.

i'm not sure i follow the logic of this conversation.

i am curious whether the de facto legalization of weed in california is going to lead to a drop in arrests for meth, coke, heroin, etc. we'll see after the data shakes out (maybe in 5 or 10 years?) i guess ...

what i'm not sure about is whether people agree that legalizing cocaine will reduce violence or disagree

we don't know for sure but chances are quite likely "yes"

yeah does coffee or nikes end up with 72 ppl graves on the regular?

wiki article isn't v. in depth and i cannot be bothered right now to look further but portugal legalised everything in 2001 and:

A study by Glenn Greenwald (commissioned by the libertarian Cato Institute) found that in the five years after the start of decriminalization, illegal drug use by teenagers had declined, the rate of HIV infections among drug users had dropped, deaths related to heroin and similar drugs had been cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction had doubled, while usage in the EU continued to increase, including in states with "hard-line drug policies."[3]

Since Portugal's policy reform in 2001, the rates of overdoses and HIV cases have been reduced significantly.[9][10][11]

Not sure if I exactly followed Michael White's post but I don't think the suffering in the coffee, sugar, tea trades are quite on the level of drug gang violence, not to mention that there is, e.g., fair trade, shade grown coffee available. I mean I'm often heard espousing the same sort of "Shit is complicated, everything is global, everything results in suffering" kind of talk, but I think I can draw a line at a product that directly results in so much killing.

― Ground Zero Mostel (Hurting 2), Friday, August 27, 2010 11:08 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

to buy "good" products to assuage your bourgeois guilt is not a correct method of addressing an unjust system. the correct way to address an unjust system is to tear it down by force and replace it with a better one. democracy does not work, has not worked, and will not ever work. decmocracy is a farce in the face of true collectivist might.

Doesn't mention drug related violence, gang related etc. but you have to assume that unless they decide to shoot every doctor in Portugal, they automatically lose the war for terrority and thus less deaths would have occured over it.

banaka glitches

OT on the drug thing but re juarez, this http://www.mizzworthy.com/2010/07/mac-for-rodarte-words-fail-me.html caused quite a lot of outrage on beauty blogs a few weeks ago. i wanted to post something abt it at the time so here it is i guess. i read 2666 earlier this year and have been following related things.

ugh

yeh. MAC (eventually) said they were renaming the collection and donating profits to related causes so that's a good outcome.

another thing that i recoiled from was finding that the idea hinted at in the novel abt some of these murders being the product of elite parties where these women are basically used & killed for sport, is an actual theory put forward by an investigative journalist who did early work on the killings.

all off-topic tho pretty much, the topic of the ethics of drug use is a good one.

essentially it is suggested that juarez is such a fucked-up place that those who want to rape and murder can get away with it pretty easily. and considering how the police force is overwhelmed, it almost makes sense (unfortunately) that murders not solved within a couple of days are shelved and forgotten. it's thought to be a combination of serial killer types and evil drug cartel mfers (and really, they're all serial killers, they just have different m.o.'s than "normal" serial killers...)

hee hee hee "democracy never worked"

can we change the title of this thread?

+1

good thread

the mind just totally reels when confronted with this kind of stuff...the stuff in 2666 was intense but I kind of coped with it alright bcz I already kinda knew what to expect and therefore viewed the whole thing in a sort of detachment. Confronted with the actuality of this stuff, though, and I just want to shut down. I am infected with the same complete hopelessness which must be a fact of daily life for those in Ciudad Juarez whenever I open this thread. I just think "This must stop", I can't think anything else, and yet...

re: buying local weed: i hear there is a trend where one of the criminal orgs like the hells go to every cities and villages on the territory to meet every local dealers to impose their org as the sole provider. the dealers can't buy locally produced weed : the hells buy it, send it 2 the urban center where it is redistributed through the territory. it's like the criminal version of the kind of problem the local food movement got vs the global corporate model.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67T06L20100830?

Lady Gaga says using drugs like cocaine helped her find her musical identity.

The pop diva made several candid statements about her history of drug use in a recent interview with Q Magazine reprinted by MTV.com Friday.

"Using drugs, I really figured out the art I wanted to make and was inspired," said Gaga. "Some people find inspiration in dark places. I guess I'm one of them. What always made me different is that if I was doing drugs I was also making music. I wasn't just doing drugs."

Lady Gaga says she now uses cocaine "maybe a couple of times a year".

meanwhile Leal's 4-year-old daughter was slightly wounded in the attack, a spokesman said.

tonights mad men sucked

Does anyone know what the drug war death stats were like before Calderon was president? Because I wonder if the stats directly track the increased drug war by the government.

i think the increase coincided with his sending of the military to try to put an end to the cartel violence.

Charles Bowden has another book called Shadow in the City that would appeal to those of you interested in the law enforcement side of the drug trade. It's about one detective and a huge bust, reads like fiction (as does much of his writing).

another mayor was killed yesterday

since the mexican drug war started up in earnest in Dec '06, 28,000 have been killed. in that same time period, based on what i roughly estimate from a site devoted to keeping track of casualties in iraq, around 35,000 iraqis have been killed (civilians and military.)

can the joek thread title be changed plz

thx

np

now the gaga thing i quoted last night is kind of the attitude north of the border towards the problems south of it in microcosm, meaning people don't seem to care nor do they really even think about it.

not everyone mind you, obviously not.

good thread. 2666 was an incredible book & i definitely recommend it to anyone thinking through this

curious where financial resources towards alleviating this could even be directed