Without the drug economy, it's not clear how the CIA and DEA would remain profitable enterprises, which is what fundamentally matters to them - so until it becomes illegal for the CIA to produce and import drugs, don't expect anything to change. The incentives to maintain the status quo are just too big. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traf...

This, so much this.

During conversations in everyday life, I can not believe how many (well-educated) people I meet that are completely ignorant of the humongous elephant in the room even when they've been caught multiple times with their hand in the suitcases full of money that the CIA likes to throw around their potential "customers" like they're candy.

Even if black budgets that are kept off the books are a small slice of the pie, all the other colossal bureaucracies (DEA, prison-industrial complex) more than make up for it.

we may be fellow travelers

i have noticed you have perceived things others have not,

even though they have seen them with their eyes, they have not seen them with their mind

how would you like to connect?

Past experiences with widespread drug availability and addiction suggest social cohesion is lost as people become dependent on the next fix.

Look up the history of opium war in China or for more recent experiences, drug problems in Punjab India or the drug dependency in the Middle East .

In the Opium Wars, opium was illegal. It wasn't much of a risk to smokers, but it drove the cost up and drove the trade underground. Social cohesion is lost when addicts can't go through socially acceptable avennues to get the next fix they're dependent on.

If you can just pick up your fix from the corner store like alcoholics can, then you won't expect social cohesion to be affected any more than it is by alcoholics, especially since many of the people who might become addicts after legalization were likely to become alcoholics anyway.

This is far from an objective point of view and extremely misleading.

Opium war in china had nothing to do with social cohesion, but trade and geopolitics. Same for the war in Afghanistan.

You don't need to go that far in order to come up with dubious examples (that few are familiar with) however.

The early 1900s in the good old USA, where morphine and later heroin were sold over the counter should provide plenty of evidence that you're spewing garbage.

I recommend people read The Politics of Heroin and A Legacy of Ashes. Both great books.

Basically, The US makes drugs illegal and then enforces embargoes against other countries so they comply. Drugs have a very inelastic demand so this doesn't actually stop people from using them, but it DOES make drugs an extremely profitable enterprise.

Keeping drugs illegal has at least one massive 'benefit' -- if law enforcement grants anyone immunity and gives them permission to deal in drugs, they are essentially immediately granted billions of dollars. It's really not hard to grow poppies or cook meth or truck packages between cities. Nothing about that is intellectually difficult.

Consider the following: If the head of the CIA told you that you had total immunity and could deal in drugs all you wanted, how much money could you make? The answer, for any idiot in the world, is literally billions of dollars per year within just a few years.

This becomes enormously useful when we want to implement regime change around the world or otherwise provide funding to certain elements without directly giving them money.

Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to overthrow the government of Nicaragua but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. [Contras]

Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to help fight against the soviets in Afghanistan but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. [Osama bin Laden, Hekmatyar, various other Afghan groups, and Pakistan's ISI]

Someone comes to the CIA and says they want to fight against communist-backed forces in Laos but don't have enough money? Just let them deal drugs. They run out of adult soldiers and have to start using children? That's fine, give them the go-ahead. [Vang Pao]

The illegality of drugs is integral to our foreign policy strategy.

To my understanding, until about a hundred years ago, we didn't mess with other countries. Remember our policy of "isolationism"? It's hard to, these days, but that was once a core part of our national identity.

But since the end of WWII, the US has overthrown a sovereign foreign government, attempted to overthrow them, or attempted to overthrow them through support to a third-party, almost once per year. Literally about 50 times since then. Our intervention with some countries is absolutely brutal. We installed the Iraqi governments both immediately before and after Saddam's. You think Iran hates us because of our freedom? I think they hate us because we refuse to respect theirs.

Understand that the OSS/CIA was created because we had no idea what was going on during WWII. Prior to WII, we did not have a foreign intelligence agency. During WWII, we did, but it was an Intelligence agency, not a paramilitary or interventionist organization. Then everything went to crap and now we are the most hated country in the entire world.

Drugs let us weaken and overthrow regimes without doing anything. Suddenly, _inaction_ is sufficient. Just don't arrest that guy or any of his friends, and don't investigate their activities.

I subscribe to a similar conspiracy theory on the war on drugs. I think the government keeps it around so that uneducated violent sociopaths have a way to earn big bucks without impacting regular citizens.

Think about it -- if drugs were legalized, what would unskilled thugs do for cash? They're not going to get jobs... they're going to commit real crimes like robbery, extortion, sex trafficking. Illegal drugs are a way to keep them occupied without really hurting anyone.

Who are you talking about?

The people who currently earn their living selling drugs.

I'm not sure why, but your comment is completely incomprehensible to me. I have met a decent number of drug dealers and I just can't place the personality type you're referring to. Is this just your stereotype of what a drug dealer is like? I was hoping you could fill in some more context, I guess, because I can't even think of a question to ask you to get more information. And I can't even comprehend your theory well enough to ask for clarification, because I don't understand who you're referring to.

How does CIA stop the DEA from stopping foreign drug dealers?

They essentially tell them that the person is an asset to the United States Government and should be left alone because the work they are doing for the USG is more important than anything else they may be involved in. There are some good quotes in The Politics of Heroin. Things like (paraphrasing), "We are not generally in the habit of attempting to build criminal cases against our strategic allies."

Yup. Additionally, Opium Wars 1 and 2...