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Reply With QuotePerhaps demand will never cease, but it's certainly elastic. I'd think that a smaller supply getting across our borders would mean a small number of people being exposed to drugs in the first place.Originally Posted by Herodotus
I am a American currently living in La Mision Mexico. Which is on the Baja between Rosarito and Ensenada. Currently I feel pretty safe where I am. The only crime we see here are the occasional car thefts and house break ins. no different then in say San Diego. Go just 20 min's north to Rosarito though and murder is fairly common. Usually it is the Narco's going after police or competitors. In Tijuana it has gotten really bad in the last year. there are more deaths there now in a month then in Baghdad. The biggest road block I see to reform is the amount of corruption throughout out the entire Society.
People's attitudes need to change in order to bring change. Right now as a society they lack the morals needed. To them it is acceptable to take bribes. 2/3 of the kids have been molested by the time they reach 18. Human trafficking of children is a huge problem in Mexico. I have a friend that rescues children that have been kidnapped and trafficked. Many times the Federal police are involved in it to some degree. In southern Mexico many of the ransom kidnappings are done by Police and Military.
So my question is how do you bring about the change needed? How do you change peoples hearts and minds?
Last edited by Thomas1016; 17 Jan 09, at 22:28.
Perhaps demand will never cease, but it's certainly elastic. I'd think that a smaller supply getting across our borders would mean a small number of people being exposed to drugs in the first place.
Agreed, if they cannot get across the border then by default the demand will go down.
I also believe that we as a society in the US need to stop glorifying crime and criminals especially gangsters, drug lords and organized crime figures. I fail to see the pride in wanting to be like Tony Soprano or Tony Montana ... I go to school with kids who walk around with Tony Montana t-shirts and who talk about their life goal to be "like him".
Good post.
A UK friend on the weapons forum posed a question regarding the level of gun violence in the US...Was it so bad we all felt compelled to carry firearms? In retrospect I should have answered that all the gun violence anyone can wish for in the Western Hemisphere is anywhere south of the Rio Grande.
I don't know how elastic demand is:http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~economic/econ104/drugs/Drug demand is inelastic, meaning that a one percent change in price leads to a less than one percent change in quantity demanded. For marijuana the elasticity is estimated at 0.4. This means that a 10% decrease (increase) in the price of marijuana increases (reduces) quantity demanded by 4 percent. Since price falls by more than quantity rises, total expenditures on drugs go down. Since expenditures fall, crimes commited to pay for drugs decline. In the chart, when we move down the demand curve, the green area represents the amount that price falls. The pink area represents the amount by which quantity rises. The green area is larger than the pink area so total expenditures fall.
Anyway I revist this thread given this piece of news:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090209/...lover_violence
Perhaps I was incorrect in thinking that drug violence from Mexico will not spill over. Still it seems more isolated, drug dealers running down drug debts, and problem nothing more than the US has gone through before with the Crips and Bloods, the Jamaican Posse, and the Columbians before them.
Looks like I spoke to soon. the recent high level arrest of Santiago Meza López was only 2 miles from my house. He was a top cartel hitman who also disposed of the bodies of at least 300 people. He was also one of the FBI's most wanted top 20. 2days after the arrest a couple car loads of gunman opened up on the local police station. Pumping about 200 rounds into it. 2 days after that further south in Ensenada they hit another police station.
Supply and demand computations for marijuana are going to differ significantly from the same computations for highly addictive substances, like cocaine and heroin.
As Chris has pointed out, it's a mistake to downplay the problems in Mexico. MS13 and MS18 have memberships in the tens of thousands on both sides of the border. As of Jan 2008, MS13 was estimated to have 10,000 members within the US...many more in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatamala.
The drug and human trafficking business in Mexico is netting more than $50-billion US dollars a year. Any government would be hard pressed to deal with that vast of a problem, militarily or economically. And it would be impossible for the US, the primary market and terminus, if you will, of this enormous enterprise to escape significant internal damage.
Last edited by Red Seven; 10 Feb 09, at 14:16.
Of course, there is a simple way to solve this problem, legalize it. That would in effect, pull the rug out from under the cartels. They either become legit, or wither away.
I think the consensus among most governments who've spent much time, effort and money researching the options is that legalization--and we are not talking about marijuana--is more of a nightmare fantasy than a solution.
It would require governments or government regulated private industry--the cartels legalized?--to enter the cultivation, manufacture and distribution of powerfully addictive narcotics. The narcotics would have to be sold at bargain prices and the world market flooded with enough government regulated narcotics to make illegal production and distribution unprofitable. The economic chaos alone of attempting this is something I wouldn't want to contemplate.
And who gets what? And how? Over 21 you can buy heroin over the counter? Get a doctor to write you a prescription for crack? Or do you just give it to people who can prove they are addicts? And what if they decide to share it with people who are not? The legal ramifications, the ethical and medical questions, the societal impact of governments allowing the distribution of a dangerous and powerfully addictive substance would create chaos.
Last edited by Red Seven; 10 Feb 09, at 19:10.
At least legalize marijuana. It's less addictive than cigarette (according to anti-smoking zealots) and less dangerous than alcohol (when's the last time you ever saw a guy high on pot and angry at the same time?)
We can conserve resources and concentrate more on the truly dangerous narcotics. Alcohol is legal. We're not all drunks. We can make marijuana legal and somehow I don't think we'll all turn into potheads.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
In other words, it would be a lot like alcohol.
It just seems a lot easier to control access to it if its legal. When I was a teenager, it was far easier to get pot than beer. For some reason, it seems that dealers don't check for ID.
If only it could be.
The difference with booze is that the structure of regulation and taxation has been in place for centuries in many parts of the world. Sure, there's abuse. I was regularly served cans of Shaeffer beer when I was 15 in coastal Carolina. And most of us who have imbibed since we were teenagers and who have abused alcohol on occasion, i.e., gotten drunk, are not addicts. The sheer potency of heroin and cocaine makes the comparison kind of untenable.
Last edited by Red Seven; 11 Feb 09, at 13:48.
Heroin perhaps, but I am not so sure that Cocaine is any more potent than Tequila. More addictive perhaps, but not necessarily more potent.If only it could be.
The difference with booze is that the structure of regulation and taxation has been in place for centuries in many parts of the world. Sure, there's abuse. I was regularly served cans of Shaeffer beer when I was 15 in coastal Carolina
Last edited by Johnny W; 11 Feb 09, at 18:38.
Johnny, we're starting to stray pretty far from the topic of this thread, but as a man who's tossed back mezcal on numerous occasions with some pretty hard core Latin American tequila drinkers, I agree that tequila will hurt you pretty bad temporarily. But I've seen people kill for cocaine.
Last edited by Red Seven; 12 Feb 09, at 16:32.
Sorry, didn't mean to stray. Its just that the current drug related violence reminds me of prohibition era violence, which only subsided after legalization. I realize its probably not as simple as I am making it out to be, but imo the only way to truly win the drug war is to legalize and regulate it.
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