21–30 of 233 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US government can't secure its own prisons where it has full control, what make you believe it would do better in a Mexican city?
The US does do better, empirically. I am certainly not endorsing GP’s position, but your false equivalence is a distraction.
I have doubts Legalization will help to reduce crimes and violence. Let's start by saying that marihuana is just one of the products that cartels sold and represents a miniscule part of the earnings since the 80s. Cartels not only sell marihuana, cocaine and pills, they control human trafficking, prostitution, oil robberies, kidnapping, etc. Removal of local police won't help nor legalization. (Remember marihuana is…
As of a 2007 report, it was estimated that marijuana contributed up to 60% of cartel revenues [0].
> According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, drug proceeds in Mexico in 2005 ranged from... $3.9 billion to $14.3 billion for marijuana... Mexican drug traffickers also grow marijuana in the United States; therefore, the amount of proceeds returned to Mexico is likely greater than the reported estimates.
> Adding up the midpoints for each range, the total would be roughly $15.5 billion, though we note there’s a wide disparity in the marijuana estimates.
This portion has likely decreased substantially with increasing legalization of marijuana in the US, but it was not minuscule by any standard. The drop in revenue has pushed cartels to other income stream (e.g. avocado protection rackets) [1].
> Cartels not only sell marihuana, cocaine and pills, they control human trafficking, prostitution, oil robberies, kidnapping, etc.
I think of cartels as companies whose product is criminal activity. Drug prohibitions make it possible to overcome the initial hurdle needed to build such an organization, but once established it will seek to diversify revenues and adapt to changing markets by offering new services. While legalization of drugs would likely cut cartel revenues, it would not entirely eliminate them.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexica...
[1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-20/mexico...
Couldn’t read the article but did she kill them off one by one?
Eventually some of them broke out of prison and executed her in the street.
What can I do as an individual to see less of this stuff happen?