I suppose I should post here again.
So, drugs. Cocaine is still the headliner, but it's actually run into problems. Since the late 80s, cocaine has somewhat fallen out of fashion in the U.S. Demand is still there and even growing, but not as fast as entrepreneurial farmers and shippers in Colombia had hoped. Rather than letting a market surplus drive the price down, drug trafficers in Mexico have expanded the distribution lines they already had, and have developed a bigger market there. So now Mexico has a cocaine addiction problem too.
The other big-name drug these days is methamphetamine, the new replacement for oxy-contin addicts. The business difference between cocaine and meth is that meth doesn't need to be grown or have any really special conditions to it's production. Meth labs are a thriving cottage industry in the Mid-West now (it's about the only industry in the Mid-West that is thriving). Nonetheless, there's plenty of traffic across the border in meth, being an attractive market and all.
Those are both nasty and crippling drugs in themselves. But beyond cocaine and meth lurks the biggest, baddest drug of them all. The seed of Satan himself, the lure of all children, and destroyer of all that is true and pure - good old fashioned pot. The recent figures I've heard from estimates is that marijuana constitutes 75% of the drug trade from Mexico into the U.S. I don't know if that's 75% aggregate value or volume, but either way it's the backbone of the drug trade. And even with all that inward traffic, it's the biggest domestic cash crop in four or five states now, including California where it competes against oranges and wine.
From a purely practical standpoint, there is every reason to therefor legalize marijuana. It's a massive industry generating loads of money waiting to be taxed and regulated, the same way as tobacco or alcohol. Putting it in the hands of legitimate business would knock the legs out from under the cartels, take a titanic burden off of honest law enforcement, and huge chunk out the overdcrowded prison system. Whatever ill effect legal pot might have (and realistically speaking, it's barely illegal now) surely can't be worse than the privatized warzone and nation of convicts it's created by being taboo. Discussion of the legality of harder drugs would be rendered moot, because without pot, drug suppliers wouldn't have the resources to oust a then-unencumbered law enforcement anyway.
And my word on guns. I'm certainly cynical enough to know that criminalizing heavy firearms doesn't keep them away from anybody who's willing to break other laws in the first place. That doesn't mean they should be legal.
The 2nd Amendment was written in a fledgling nation that had just fought a war of independence, which saw itself as much an alliance of separate countries than a unified America. It was a concession to militiamen that they could stay militiamen, since they also comprised virtually all the force that had fought that war. And it was written in a time when everyone had access to the same weaponry, when the pinnacle of handheld firearms was a massive, clumsy rifle that took a trained soldier most of a minute to reload.
I'm just going to say it - this notion that Americans have an inalienable right to firepower is idiocy. It's a dangerously quaint notion of reliance on personal responsibility completely out of proportion to either modern weapons or modern crime, and has absolutely no place in the 21st century.
My solution? Semi-auto pistols, pump shotguns, single-shot and carbine rifles, those are all fine. Easy tools for criminals, but we have to be realistic. Anything more than that though? Automatic handhelds, rifles with clips, and other such stuff - make it illegal to make such weapons without a direct purchase order from a government entity. And put the F back in ATF making sure nothing falls off the truck.
I'm well aware that people who wanted such weapons could find them elsewhere. For all my criticism of the same attitude in regards to drugs, this is one area where I think principle can be allowed to trump logic. America should stop contributing to it's own problems, and if criminalizing even the production of heavier weapons accomplishes absolutely nothing, at least the nation's law enforcement can have the dignity of not being killed with weapons made by the people they exist to protect.
More than anything, I think the whole issue is in need of massively more peace keeping and law enforcement resources, starting with changing the philosophy of policing, from top to bottom. Every time I see a cop stopping someone for an out headlight or an unleashed dog, I was to yell "Don't you have real crime to fight?" But I could rant for hours about that, so I'll just stop now.
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Topic: Impromptu Rambling About Robocop and Mexico (hueg) (Read 4105 times)