Rising GOP support for the U.S. taking unilateral military action in Mexico against drug cartels is increasingly rattling people on both sides of the border who worry talk of an attack is getting normalized.
Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate featured high-stakes policy disagreements on a range of issues from abortion to the environment — but found near-unanimous consensus on the idea of using American military force to fight drug smuggling and migration.
Mobs? What mobs? Cartels are not dynamic groups of temporary people. Cartels are organized institutions adept at dealing illegal goods. It would be trivial to harm their business by undercutting prices and making drug use safe in sanctioned areas. Reducing their cash flow is paramount to reducing their power. That can be easily done by legalizing and regulating drugs. It doesn’t matter if the substances are dangerous. Would you do crack or heroine just because it is legal? I wouldn’t. I know its unpopular, but legalizing drugs is the best way to harm the cartels. People are already doing theme at epidemic levels with them being illegal, I do not see legalization exacerbating that situation. Especially if sanctioned spaces are provided to keep them off the streets.
Then they will gladly offer drugs to anybody who is disqualified to get it legally. And anywhere, not only in sanctioned area. And / or will offer “more potent”, but illegal forms of drugs.
As you mentioned, it’s organised institutions. They won’t go away peacefully.
I won’t too. But it’s just anecdotes. People are always looking for new pleasures. Where do you think new opiate users comes from?
New (street) opiate users usually come from people who have had mismanaged chronic pain conditions because of the absolutely horrific campaign by the pharmaceutical companies to push opioids. If we had better, non-pharmaceutical pain management programs involving stuff like physical therapy and mental healthcare, then there would be more viable options than opioids. Also, modifying the medical system to be more accessible so people can get care before something becomes a chronic pain problem would be helpful.
The other necessary modification is to change the system so that doctors can spend more than ten minutes with each patient, but that would require an overhaul of the medical education system from undergrad through residency to create more physicians.