It's weird - it's very hard to find 'Mexican dirt weed' these days, since all the medical dispensaries opened up.
The medical stuff costs a little bit more, but it is way better. But you can't even find the old crap if you look.
Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
61–70 of 183 posts
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#62The "Drug Trafficking Organizations" are the cartels. It is important to remember they don't exist to traffic drugs, they exist for the top leader(s) to obtain and maintain power, like a state-in-waiting. As other activities become more profitable, they switch over to those. Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise. This is what unfettered…
You can't just substitute things and expect them to keep the same market. This is because DEMAND is part of a market force. The demand for pot is substantially higher than the demand for other drugs (like cocaine, heroine, etc), guns, coyotes, etc.
If a commodity can no longer be (near) monopolized into their share of the market, then demand does not magically grow for other commodities. Sure, they can pivot strategies (which costs significant amounts of money) and adapt new commodities and services to match market demands, but this does not mean that they have the same profits.
If they truly are already profit maximizing (to the best of their abilities), then they are already are servicing the markets with the highest demands. Which then if you remove their ability to service their market with the highest demand, you also remove the profit of that market. To generate their current revenue (with loss of the pot market) they would need to generate more demand in their other markets (advertising), find a new market with large enough demand (innovation), or service a lot of niche markets.
tldr:
- Demand exists for commodities.
- Different commodities have different demands.
- Shifting suppliers of a market does not generate new demand in different markets for the original supplier.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise. Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot. If coca cola were made illegal, something that is bad for you by many metrics but hardly life destroying, people are not going to switc…
Just to debate, but why do you believe: "Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot." Funny drug dealer quotes "I don't sell drugs, drug's sell themselves" In all reality though Pot is by far harder to conceal in small/large quantities so per pound profitability on Pot has to be lower than other dru…
I think the poster was getting at the fact that pot users dwarf meth users in quantity, for example.
I think the OP got it right -- even if there was no heroin crisis in the US, the cartels would turn to some other money-making proposition.
The only way to quash them is to strengthen the Mexican state, whether it be this one or a new structure.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comical, your source is "my friend told me"?
On the internet, that flies. It might not seem completely trustable but then again nothing on the internet should be taken alone. Further, it’s not like there are many safe ways to make such a claim.
Agreed. Obviously the mafia doesn't participate in surveys so, barring criminal charges or conviction, anecdotal evidence is the best one can hope for.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really sorry for being pedantic, I'm uusally not like this, but I have seen this frequently on HN. It's making do, not making due.
I wouldn't be so sure. "To make due" seems correct to me, as a foreign speaker, because the grammar suggests a noun phrase as object, because it works en lieu "to settle debt". It's easy to see how french-illiterate anglophones would mishear due as do. So I guess you make do now. And I have to ask how are you making do today?
As a speaker of English where "do" and "due" are not pronounced the same I assure you it's "do".
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#66The "Drug Trafficking Organizations" are the cartels. It is important to remember they don't exist to traffic drugs, they exist for the top leader(s) to obtain and maintain power, like a state-in-waiting. As other activities become more profitable, they switch over to those. Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise. This is what unfettered…
Oh fuck off. What are you even on about? You think drug cartels are diversified investment portfolios? Ones that can just sub one illegal commodity for another? You're out of your fucking mind. And if you can't tell how out you are from the first line, you can tell when you assign a moral aspect to the things you don't like. Jesus, you're a piece of work.
Your post feels way out of character both for HN and for how you’ve interacted with others here on HN in the past - it seems like there must be more going on behind that post than your readers are able to intuit from your anger. Can you elaborate a bit more?
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#67Northwest Cannabis Solutions, one of the largest cannabis growers in Washington State, is run by the Russian Mafia. I'm not sure about Mexican cartels, but legalization certainly hasn't stop organized crime involvement.
I don’t know where retail will get it, but I’d wager almost all the street weed in Mass. (which is now high quality) comes from an informally organized and politically active network of small local growers.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no. the cartels are what you get when you actively block organizations that are serving huge needs (recreational drugs), from access to peaceful means of conflict resolution and contract enforcement. That’s how cartels get power in the first place, but once they’re there, they’re in the business of preserving revenue streams and territory and thus power. Once they’re large enough, their raison d’être is no longer s…
> That’s how cartels get power in the first place, but once they’re there, they’re in the business of preserving revenue streams and territory and thus power. An anarchocapitalist would note that this is straight out of the statist playbook. What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary? It's hard to lay the blame for this on capitalism per se.
>What distinguishes cartels from roving bandits that pivot to stationary?
You're asking the wrong question, I think. The 64 trillion dollar question, IMO: "what allows market incumbents to remain stationary"
The 'blame', as ever, lies in human frailty. Avarice and greed. Alternatively, you could look at avarice and greed as malformed extensions of self-preservation instinct.
Bad actors are omnipresent and relying on market forces to expel them from markets is like trying to pray cancer away.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise. Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot. If coca cola were made illegal, something that is bad for you by many metrics but hardly life destroying, people are not going to switc…
> it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot. Only the first time. Then the opposite is true.
OP clearly meant in aggregate.
Re: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Marijuana loses its profitability, they can switch to other drugs, guns, smuggling, "coyotes", or legitimate enterprise. Not disagreeing with your larger point, but the fact of the matter is that it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot. If coca cola were made illegal, something that is bad for you by many metrics but hardly life destroying, people are not going to switc…
> it's a lot harder to sell people meth, coke, heroin, etc. than it is to sell people pot. Only the first time. Then the opposite is true.
On what basis are you making such a statement?
Afaik many people use meth for performance enhancement and as a cheaper alternative to coke, heroin mostly comes in with people who've built up an opiate addiction through prescription opiates and a cheap escapist solution.
Add in a generally very crappy living situation, where these substances are used as means of escapism from reality, and most of the habit boils down to all kinds of circumstances, but very rarely to this urban myth of "it's just so addictive that you can't stop after the first time", as most of it has to do with building habits on top of an already destructive lifestyle.
Case in point: I've done meth and coke more than once, and never did I feel the need to "keep on doing it due to withdrawal". If anything, the side-effects of something like meth make it very unpleasant to regularly use due to being physically and mentally very taxing.
That's why I don't think there's some kind of "large untapped market" for substances like these. Most people are still rational actors and if otherwise content and happy with their life won't start with destructive behavior on the sole basis of a substance being "super addictive".