https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-hDoKncAk

You can walk from El Paso, TX to Juarez Mexico (the murder capital of the world) with a backpack and not get searched.

Apparently even a woman got through with a shopping cart full of ammunition and was only caught when she had trouble getting it onto a bus.

It's estimated 90% of the weapons used by cartels were purchased in USA. ~2,000 a day.
It is also estimated that 90% of the drugs that come into the US come from mexico.

In 2010 Wachovia paid over 110 million dollars in fees for allowing one cartel to keep ~378 billion dollars in their bank, which they revoked in protest just one month before the economic downturn and the banks needed to be bailed out.

"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system´s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor." - United Nation´s Office on Drugs and Crime Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

Innocent people are being jailed because the cartels put GPS on cars that move from us to mexico and they put hundreds of pounds of drugs in their trunk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6hAlBrG_K4

Mexico demands investigation into DEA laundering cartel money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUfECSuhwSo
ATF agent speaks out about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntp4iv_s0dY

The deaths from this war in Mexico have been about doubling every single year, and it is only getting worse. The economy there is so bad that young men commonly feel indifferent towards murder and will do it for less than 1/6 of the amount of money I use to pay my rent each month!

The people who own gun shops along the borders apparently don't even care that this is happening.
They aren't all coming from there, though.
Wikileaks cables show that a lot of the guns come from legal gun sales from us government and other countries to mexican government that corrupt officials sell to cartels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN1RYGjCKlI

I think this is unbelievably insane. The drugs are flowing north and the guns are flowing south and there is no end in sight. With America's Drug policy, and Gun policy, it is as if they want this to happen- but that is pure speculation.

Could this huge and ever-increasing problem be tackled by reforming these laws? eg. Decriminalizing drugs?

Hadda be playing on the jukebox.

Decriminalize very addictive drugs like Meth and Cocaine/crack I think is not the solution.
Governments could easily cut off supplies if they wanted to. Look at Afganistan. The US along with their allies were there for over 10 years. They could have easily bomb all those poppy fields to waste land and stop the heroin supply. They invade countries like it's nothing with special ops. They could easily take out all those cartels in a few months if they really wanted to do that. Sad thing is that all those weapons supplies feed the economy big time. Also a lot of people in power benefit from drug sale politically and financially.
It's a big facade, a lot of money involved. A couple of hundred deaths a year is just collateral damage to them and not too big of a problem.

What do you mean a couple hundred deaths? People are dying by the thousands.

I would be curious to hear Nexians opinions on this, in regards to what theoretically could be done.

Is this just going to keep going further until...? I can't even believe this world.

Wow i just looked it up. 15000 deaths only in 2011 in Mexico alone. Still that's nothing to them.

I think decriminalizing weed would be a big step in the right direction. In the meantime, I think more home-grown stuff in the US would help... not sure what to do about the coke etc, though... it's a tricky issue, but I think the US should be stepping up and becoming more involved in tackling it.

Now you KNOW that Purdue Pharmaceutical and the rest of the pill manufacturers are buying that opium at a reduced price now that we have "secured" those fields. And I would be willing to bet that they have lobbied (a metric shit-ton) in support of staying in Afghanistan so they have easy access to this huge supply of poppy production. Deaths don't mean anything to pharma companies. And deaths don't mean anything to governments. It's all about that dolla dolla bill, ya'll. War = Profit.

Well said gory war does equal profit soon as troops entered Afghanistan the heroin started flowing in the UK there was a dry up when the Taliban were in control now there's loads of heroin and loads of afghani sticky black hash floating around. I read a report of a soldier saying when they got into Afghanistan his job was to guard poppy fields, they are also building an oil pipeline from the caspian sea to the Arabian sea, another profit making exercise. I'm sorry I don't beleive they invaded to get some guy in a cave for his terrorist ways they invaded for profit and will continue to do so, as long as there's profits to be made!

In regards to Mexico it's another war and people are making a lot of money, it probably suits a lot of people for it to be the way it is!

This madness will continue until the US government can't afford to keep on the way they are going. I don't think that will happen any time soon though, too many government agencies are involved both in terms of catching the criminals and also redistributing any contraband they manage to intercept. If anything the US gov is one of, if not the biggest cartel in the world, and since they make the rules, they are damn near unstoppable. Remember that this endless loop keeps thousands of people in 'legutimate' work. Something needs to be done for sure, but it aint gonna come from the legislators.

What can be done? Only ONE thing can be done that will WORK: COMPLETELY end the drug war, and allow people to make personal use of plants on the earth as they please.

There is not a BIT of difference between prohibition against plants now and prohibition against alcohol in the US in the 1920's. Prohibition has directly GENERATED vicious criminal gangs who will do anything to get the profits made possible by legal prohibition. Take away that profit potential and those people would go back to shoplifting...

I live about an hour from Juarez, on the U.S. side of the border. Its a really sad state down there. Only a few years ago, me and friends would go down there at least once a month, now you couldnt pay me to set foot in Juarez. Its really like a warzone or the wild west. There are shootouts in the streets and kidnappings all the time. The death toll since Pres Calderon declared his war on drugs is estimated to be almost 50,000, and some think it is even higher. Its difficult to know for sure since many bodies are dumped into mass graves hidden in the desert, and nobody wants to report on it. Reporters who do report on it are regularly killed, and not just killed-they are dismembered, and their bodies or heads are placed in public places-even on signs over major highways, the same treatment is given to those who go to the police. About a year ago, there was an assault on a young teenagers birthday party. One of the adults attending had some small thing to do with someone in a cartel, so another group showed up and "shot up" the party. I say it like that because these killings arent the drive by type shootings we think of in the U.S. They showed up in three SUVs, one in front of the house, and the two a little ways down on either side, so they could attack from all angles and prevent anyone from escaping. It is highly organized, brutal, scary stuff, and one of the worst parts is that most Americans dont even know its going on, or dont really realize how bad it is.

You posted about American guns getting over there, and recently it has come out that American agencies were actually giving cartel members guns. A few years ago, there was a bust of some cartel members that had weapons with serial numbers from Ft.Bliss, an American military base in El Paso Tx. It was swept under the rug, and little was reported about it.


Ive got a lot more to say about all this, but need to get to work so will have to come finish this post later.

This is the party assault I was referring to.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/juarez/ci_16424766

AFAIK, opium grown legitimately for pharmaceutical purposes comes mainly from Turkey, India and Tasmania.ISAF is having a hard time in Afghanistan as it is;bombing the hell out of non-combatant farmers trying to earn a wage in a climate where the Afghani culture (which the West hasn't appeared to grasp) is as it is will simply increase the number of footsoldiers for the Taliban.Another post in this thread mentions the pipeline from Central Asia to the Arabian sea;this is where the dollars could be.More important still is Central Asia as a vital 'strategic interest' for whoever secures it; the Russians dont want US influence on their doorstep which is not unreasonable, and its proximity to Russia/Iran/China is obviously appealing to America.

In a more stable Afghanistan, I dont find it hard to imagine that opium from there could 'compete on the open market' with the other legitimate producers for a share in the pharma-supplying business.

pretty much all the main drugs were made legal by the mexican government the other year, to help tackle this a bit.
obviously it didnt change a thing.

When you have a weakened police and justice aparatus that is corrupt or corruptable, criminals won´t loose their reign of terror because the cartels will still have the power to control the market. True terror gives people a seeming infinite power.

Legalisation isn´t the answer to everything.
As far as i know, some mexican states are bordelining what we call 'failed states' and legalisation of drugs won´t solve thát problem.

I know that most of you don´t want to hear this, but only very tough measures, sustained for a long time, a strengthened government and higher wages for government employees can solve this thing.

The government needs to be stronger than the cartels. They need to have more men, with more arms than the cartels, etc. They need to 'outgun' them. They need to be able to do everything needed to win this war, even things most of us would call unethical or totalitarian, like the total freedom to tap phones, etc.

Only THEN, will the bravest citizens be willing to talk to the police and tell what they know, and only then, the tide will turn.

Getting a failed state back on track is not gonna be easy or without any pains.
I know these aren´t very liberal views, but we´re not talking about a very normal situation either. And being a liberal, saying things like:'people who choose safety over freedom deserve neither of them' is much easier when you don´t live in a warzone.

Being in a warzone is being on another planet...it´s totally the opposite of the world you and i know. You have to realise that, before you start acusing me of being a right-wing guy, because i say these things.

Only very painfull measures can help getting a failed state back on track. That´s just the way it is.

No need to be apprehensive with your opinions, polytrip, I value the perspective immensely. This whole situation makes me pretty emotional and it's good to hear some kind of rational approach toward resolving this insanity.

One of the long-term effects of prohibition is giving the criminal organizations a degree of strength, organization, and -most specially- entwinement with the social order that cannot and won't change in a short period of time after decriminalizing drugs.

That's one of the big hurdles in decriminalization. The fact that people will expect immediate results as a validation of the measure, even in places and circumstances where the mechanisms of prohibition have become so inflitrated in society that any short-term positive effects will be lost in the fog of war.

I think polytrip is right, but that fact doesn't account as an argument against decriminalization. Ceasing prohibition will revert a tendency that has been digging in this world for generations, deeply changing people's mindset.

Long term measures along with short term emergency actions is the only thing that makes sense to me. Think of it like a disease. If you get a strong lung infection because you work in an unhealthy environment, antibiotics are required to save your life - but as long as you keep working there, the problem will return.

Yes. The criminalisation of drugs makes everything worse. It undermines the legitimacy of the state and the laws and drains the justice system.

I know, from very personal experience (my mother had to witness a civil war, when she was a child), what anarchy and lawlessness does to people. Most people underestimate the impact this kind of violence has. Especially on young childeren who grow-up in such an environment.

I consider myself very lucky to be spared from these kind of things myself. We´re all very lucky.

There is a personal story behind every corpse that´s found on the streets. Behind every corpse, there´s a story of dozens of ruined lifes..family´s, close friends.

We tend to forget that, everytime we watch the news, because there´s just too much of that shit going on in this world. But whether it´s in syria, mexico, somalia, iraq or afghanistan....it´s the lifes of ordinary people like you and me, that are being destroyed.
People like you, me, your father and mother, brother or sister, who´s lifes are being turned upside-down everyday, blown away like grains of sand.

Very tragic.

I have several friends that are from Mexico and I have discussed this situation and what they think could be done to stop it at length with them. For anyone that doesnt know, most of the violence is the result of different cartels trying to control smuggling routes. When Calderon started his war on drugs beefed up security along many smuggling routes made them impossible to use, so other ones had to be used. The cartels went to war with each other for control of these routes, and control over the people along them. (Having locals tell smugglers when and where police were going to be ect) Each of the cartels have (and had before the war on drugs started) large areas that they completely control. Most of the fighting is over the small areas where two controlled pieces of land meet. Before the crackdown started these areas were kind of 'no mans land' and werent really fought over because there were plenty of other routes to take. Now, every route and piece of controlled land is important, so the cartels are fighting to get control over them.


I have asked my friends why they Mexican government cant just find out where the top guys are living and bomb/kill them. Now, I dont know if this is true or not, but it certainly makes sense-They have all told me that it is common knowledge in Mexico that the government knows exactly where all the top guys are. They dont kill them because right now it is a few very large cartels fighting over small areas of land. If they were to take out the top guys, it would go from bad to worse. The cartels would break up into smaller cartels, and fighting would erupt for control over all routes and all areas, essentially turning almost all of Mexico into a war zone.

I have no idea what best approach is to solving this problem. Polytrip, I am a peace loving believer in non violent methods of solving problems, but I will admit sometimes while reading about this I too have thought why doesnt the US government just send our military down there and kill all these guys. Its frustrating, because as you said, there are a lot of innocent people suffering, and this is sad, sad stuff. The Mexican government wont take help from other countries, so that strategy is out. As for the Mexican government cracking down even harder, that actually might make things worse. The cartels will of course respond with more violence of their own.

One strategy idea for right now might actually be for the government to take a step back and regroup. They basically got themselves into a fight they weren't ready for, now its like they are trying to build a drug fighting army while theyre at war. That doesnt work. You need your army ready before you go to war! So, they could stop the crackdowns on drug smuggling, and put more effort into internal work eliminating corruption at all levels of the government. As you said, this will involve paying government employees more, and providing better security for them. Then in a few years when they have cleaned up the corruption, and have better paid and better trained police forces, with a better battle plan, they could try again. The problem is the President doesnt want to do that, because it will look like he is giving up. Whether or not that would work anyways, who knows.

Either way, its a sad situation, and I really feel for the people down there.

since the US has been in afghanistan heroin and opium production has skyrocketed.
never before has such huge production been seen. around 600%+ more than before the invasion.

hmmm... and the rabbit hole goes deeper...

Another thing I learned from watching a show about border patrol:

There are huge areas of land along the borders that the government designates as a certain type of environmental zone (Forgive me, I forget exactly what this was called) but the agents say this has completely disallowed them to access huge areas of the border that the cartels are using to their advantage, and the gov. is doing nothing about this.

Gee, I wonder why.