Drugs, Murder and Mexico

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

some problems u cant throw money at?

to answer harbl's q, i imagine casual, semi-regular, or recreational cocaine use makes up most of the use in this country, more than the use by addicts?

i imagine its similar to the liquor industry where a small % of habitual users account for a large % of sales. (iirc its something like ~5/40% w/booze)

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this. theres a good bbc documentary on the cartels & shorty guzman/sinaloa in particular that details how in certain parts of the country the cartels essentially are the state. w/o a change in u.s. drug policy you're still funding both sides in a civil war - since criminalization is what makes drugs so profitable to traffic - & the larger/systematic rationale for conflict between the cartels & the state still exists. demand reduction would weaken the cartels but drugs aren't their only source of income & they're deeply entrenched in mexican life.

their are plenty of non-drug related things that directly contribute to the violence as well. the arms industry/the nra have spent how much money derailing any attempts to control the flow of u.s. weapons into mexico? & the maquiladoras would still exist w/o the drug trade, as would human trafficking. u.s. trade & immigration policy is just as complicit in creating the current situation imo

oh btw thread title change sucks

also that charles bowden book is really good

yeah we really should have more shitty joke threads about situations involving widespread mass murder

people will ~never~ stop doing drugs, so it will continue until the governments of the world collectively decide to legalize (lol), which will also never happen in our lifetimes.

ftr I think the only "joke" in either thread title was Tom making fun of vahid and me claiming naming rights for the conversation and neither one of us was actually making light of what is happening in Mexico so try not taking out understandable anger at the situation on ppl who aren't mocking it or contributing to it

"people just need to stop doing drugs" seems like a p retarded way to approach this.

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

suggest banned, danny dyer

Strawman. No one is saying this is a solution, let alone a solution unto itself.

current u.s. policy does?????

Well, current US policy is not just that people should stop doing drugs, it's that massive quasi-military operations should be undertaken and/or supported against drug cartels. Obviously a failure, but more than just-say-no.

there are some halfhearted efforts at eradication and interdiction, but not much

also that certification bs -- what a load of horseshit that is. do we still certify/decertify countries based on their cooperation with our "war on drugs"?