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Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

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Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#61

Post by ct0 »

robocat wrote: post #55
ct0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped buying avocados for this reason. Its the only way to win.

Why? You are punishing the avocado growers more than the cartels. Corruption is rife. Every single transaction you make in an economy contains a percentage of evil (example: surely you disagree with some of what your government does): how did you decide that avocados are beyond your limit and carrots are not?

Its simply easier to track back the effects of the cartel in avacado's than anything else in my purchase radar. But mostly because of this story. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/08/monarch-...

With the price of avocados pushing higher and higher, I think there is too much money in avocado the avocado trade. Farming is basically limited to specific areas. Lowering demand (how ever small) is making a measurable change that I fell like I am contributing to. Voting with my dollars is the only true ways to make a change. As much as this might "hurt" the farmers, it is also hurting the cartel.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#62

Post by mminer237 »

voisin wrote: post #45
mminer237 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think legalizing fentanyl is a good idea at all. Look at how many people were killed by easy access to Oxycodone. It's said that one use of heroin will turn someone into an addict, and something like 2% of opioid addicts die per year. Legalizing drugs may make things safer per person, but it will also increase the number of users. Legalizing fentanyl would just flood the streets with something even more poten…

When will we learn that not legalizing things is not the same as preventing them from occurring? Usage happens today, but with impurities and a supply chain that causes its own death beyond the end users. If there were a legal fentanyl clinic down the street from you, would you use it just because it was legal? Doubtful. But someone intent on using it would get it anyways so why not get a pure form in a safe place wh…

You can say no rational person would willingly go start a drug addiction, but people aren't always rational. People already jump through hoops to do drugs. Why do you think nobody extra would try them if was easier? People said the same thing about marijuana and inanely that legalizing it would help fewer people be addicted to smoking. Unsurprisingly though, legalization increased usage by 20%: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/962353

Look at the history of the opioid crisis. It really started becoming a crisis when oxycodone became easy to get a prescription for. Pill mill doctors would give out hundreds of prescriptions a night to be spread through the streets, causing millions more to be addicted. If legalizing opiates helped, Purdue Pharma should have been one of the greatest benefits to public health, no?

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#63

Post by ifsothen »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #23
ifsothen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of that violence spills over the border into the US. Bloody cartel murders, extortion, and such are common in the southwest US and beyond. The Mexican government and politicians are all somewhere in between being controlled by the cartels and too scared to do anything about them. That is casus belli , legal grounds for war, by any reasonable understanding of international law.

> That is casus belli, legal grounds for war, by any reasonable understanding of international law. Perhaps. But anything the US Military could do about it would only make the problem even worse. It being a legal reason for war is irrelevant because it isn't a rational reason for war.

I don't know. Commando raids on cartel leadership sound good to me. Assassin drones too. Just start taking these people out. Put the fear of God in them.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#64

Post by ifsothen »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #28
teddyh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US actually started using its military to hit these guys, what would stop them from sending a thousand guys into a large chemical or nuclear plant and creating a disaster that wiped out a city, or more? I mean, yes, they could , but would they? What would be the realistic result of such an action? Would the US then stop and go “Well, I guess we’ll have to stop antagonizing the cartels.”. I would guess that s…

> I would guess that such a thing would instead be a Pearl Harbor moment, and I think the cartels know this, too. What else might that war teach us? There are 10 million Mexican-Americans by birth in America, and 37 million by ancestry. If America went to war with Mexico, I fear there would be efforts to intern Mexican-Americans as Japanese-Americans once were. Such a war is a horrible idea for everybody. It would cr…

Are you saying that Mexican immigrants and descendants in the US would be loyal to the Mexican government?

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#65

Post by ifsothen »

chasd00 wrote: post #22
ifsothen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "jingo rhetoric." Many of the government leaders south of the border are literally in cahoots with the cartels to commit thousands of murders a year, either directly or through peddling fentanyl, in the US. The rest of them have decided to go along with it out of fear. That is an act of war. The US should respond wisely and carefully, but people should remember these are literally ongoing acts of war committ…

a war with Mexico (or any significant military intervention) means 1000x more people stream over the Southern border compared to now.

It's would actually be really easy to completely close the border if there was the political will for it. The US spends way more money on frivolous things every year than it would take to fully militarily fortify the entire border.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#66

Post by MockObject »

erdos4d wrote: post #57
dang wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Dang, the guy said "You cannot have dominant players in a supply chin if there is no demand". What would you take that to mean? I honestly think he's talking about removing the demand (users). I asked him for clarification, but it sounds pretty macabre to me.

Killing people is really the only way you can imagine of reducing demand? I find that hard to believe.

Drug addiction is a complex phenomenon. Why do people start, why do they get addicted, why do they choose one drug over another, why do they choose to quit, how hard is it to quit, are there resources that can help them?

Obviously there are dozens of possible interventions, short of murder.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#67

Post by MichaelCollins »

ifsothen wrote: post #64
MichaelCollins wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would guess that such a thing would instead be a Pearl Harbor moment, and I think the cartels know this, too. What else might that war teach us? There are 10 million Mexican-Americans by birth in America, and 37 million by ancestry. If America went to war with Mexico, I fear there would be efforts to intern Mexican-Americans as Japanese-Americans once were. Such a war is a horrible idea for everybody. It would cr…

Are you saying that Mexican immigrants and descendants in the US would be loyal to the Mexican government?

No. I am describing what would happen: the American government wrongfully persecuting Mexican-Americans, as it once wrongfully persecuted Japanese-Americans.

This is not a description of what I think should happen, which is this: American and Mexico should not go to war, because it would inevitably lead to a human rights disaster.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#68

Post by MichaelCollins »

ifsothen wrote: post #63
MichaelCollins wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is casus belli, legal grounds for war, by any reasonable understanding of international law. Perhaps. But anything the US Military could do about it would only make the problem even worse. It being a legal reason for war is irrelevant because it isn't a rational reason for war.

I don't know. Commando raids on cartel leadership sound good to me. Assassin drones too. Just start taking these people out. Put the fear of God in them.

> Just start taking these people out. Put the fear of God in them.

Cartels have been doing this to cartels the entire time. They inflict violence on each other far more brutal than the American military would dare. They've flayed family members of their rivals alive to "put the fear of God in them". More of the same isn't going to solve anything.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#69

Post by helloworld11 »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #35
mminer237 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think legalizing fentanyl is a good idea at all. Look at how many people were killed by easy access to Oxycodone. It's said that one use of heroin will turn someone into an addict, and something like 2% of opioid addicts die per year. Legalizing drugs may make things safer per person, but it will also increase the number of users. Legalizing fentanyl would just flood the streets with something even more poten…

There are steps that can be taken to provide addicts with legal access to their fix in a way that removes cartels from the supply chain and does not equate to "legalizing fentanyl".

Or just you know, legalize fentanyl, because drug laws don't fucking work and have caused vastly more harm than the drugs they "stop"... People's bodies should be their own to use as they please so long as they don't harm others with violence. A simple notion that idiotic puritans just haven't been able to get through their heads for centuries by now and to absolutely no good effect.

Re: Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply

#70

Post by helloworld11 »

nimbius wrote: post #15
irthomasthomas wrote: post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

as someone who vacations regularly throughout mexico (tijuana, rosarito, mexico city, chihuahua and baja amongst the destinations) i find these sorts of comments silly at best. there is no "mexican civil war" there was the Cristero, the reform, and the revolutionary war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Civil_War while organized criminal homicides are rising, it is nowhere near sixty-thousand. it has never been…

As someone who lives in Mexico since over a decade ago, and well outside the tourist bubbles, I'd say that your personal view of the situation is ridiculously rose-tinted. The violence isn't plainly visible as it's been in Syria, for example, but it's very real and vastly destructive. Not to mention the amount of homicide that goes unreported and the disappearances that likewise don't get reported. Furthermore, your own sources actually do more to back up the argument you're rejecting than to prove your own claim.
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