WTF. This isn't 1989. The two drugs are meth and fentanyl. This is so inaccurate I don't even know where to start. You can buy Marijuana in a store on the west coast as easy as a beer - the cartels have moved on. There is zero money in Marijuana. Cocaine was taken over by the Dominican Republic ten years ago. Cocaine takes actual agriculture - the cartels are no longer interested in mass slow farming competing with 3rd world producers.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf (page 16-)
>Cocaine of Colombian origin supplies most of the U.S. market, and most of that supply is trafficked through Mexico,
>In 2017, Mexico seized 421 metric tons of marijuana and eradicated more than 4,230 hectares of marijuana, according to the State Department’s 2019 INCSR. However, some analysts foresee a decline in U.S. demand for Mexican marijuana because drugs “other than marijuana” will likely become dominant in the future. This projection relates to more marijuana being grown legally in several states in the United States and Canada, which have either legalized cannabis or made it legal for medical purposes, thus decreasing its value as part of Mexican trafficking organizations’ profit portfolio.
However, the same report indicates I underestimated the relevance of heroin coming via Mexico. In this case, poppy production in Mexico has increased in recent years, so apparently "actual agriculture" is still not too much work for the cartels.
Unfortunately, opioid use is a much more difficult question, due to the "laser-like" effect of opioids: the capacity for non-drug pleasure is slowly degraded[1] and users may not notice until it's too late, similar to the way that the visual cortex will try to correct for laser damage until the retina is irredeemable. Decriminalizing any opioids comes with significant risk, since they are easily the deadliest sort of drugs.
Instead, approaches similar to that currently applied in the Netherlands may be more fruitful. A bright spot is that medical cannabis seems to decrease the likelihood of opioid prescriptions, which narrows the medicine-to-streets pipeline.
i don't see why cartels wouldn't switch overnight to meth or heroin (or both) the moment that cocaine and marijuana become legalized. what then? we know that the illegality creates the massive black market/financial incentives for these regional drug powers to exist, so it seems important to get all cards out on the table, lest we "fix" two problematic drugs only to have at least two left over.
Heroin, mostly, comes from Asia, so I did segment a little there. In particular, a lot of heroin comes from Afghanistan, specifically, and American interventions there may have contributed to the opioid crisis. See e.g.: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47861444
Really the post was just too long and I was tired of writing. Opioids will indeed be another problem we have to deal with.
In the case of methamphetamine, there is some hope of substitution with less dangerous drugs like amphetamine, methylphenidate, et cetera. One of the biggest reasons people start using meth is that it's cheaper than other drugs; it's by far the easiest for chemists to make. It's heavily ingrained in various "party" subcultures for this reason, and also features in stories of rural poverty. But that also means that even a strikingly different (hopefully safer) drug could potentially take its place, if it were stimulating and pro-social. In that case we have no appeal to tradition; we have to confront the question of whether "party drugs" can have a place in legal society, which is another matter entirely.
Luckily, the market for methamphetamine is significantly smaller than that for marijuana or cocaine according to the RAND report, and I think this is because demand for meth, which we might call the "ramen noodles" of drugs, is more price-sensitive than other drugs. If the power of cartels is reduced by decriminalization efforts targeting the marijuana and cocaine markets, the price of meth may not be able to rise so easily without impacting demand.
If you want to stop the violence and corruption of the cartels, you’ll have to either change the culture that makes their existence possible, or defeat/imprison/kill them all. I’m not sure which of those would be more difficult.
In any case, even if legalizing drugs still leaves you with some cartels, you would still have fewer and smaller.
I would assume they are already trying to expand as much as possible. Legalising drugs doesn't look like it would make that expansion easier. If anything, it would become harder, because funding dries up, so investments are harder to make.
How sustainable is any change if people believe criminals will just regain power once help leaves?
The fight isn't over. While the populace has coalesced the political will is still lagging behind.
> The decriminalization of coca tea in Western countries may lead to less gang activity as illegal cocaine manufacture economics shift from large-scale to small-scale extraction.
Who would substitute coca tea for cocaine? Decriminalized marijuana has same sought-after effects of criminalized marijuana, so can reduce the crime associated with it. I don't think you'd get the same reduction in cocaine trafficking crime unless you decriminalized refined cocaine.
Couldn't you say the same thing about meth, especially in the past when pseudoephedrine medicines were easier to get? It sounds simple enough that regular people can make it from a receipe, but the cartels still traffic it: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvgazz/sinaloa-cartel-dru....
There are really two things to respond to here: first, all powder cocaine starts as the leaf, so the powder cocaine market would move downstream to extraction from widely-available coca leaf. This is the biggest reason we haven't tried this already. However, I hope that the economics will not favor transporting large amounts of still-illegal cocaine across long distances, so that instead it will mostly be produced near the point of consumption, with lower profit margins and less violence.
Second, addicts are more likely than you think to recognize their own usage as a problem, yet rely on the drug to do things that most people expect to be able to do. Someone who uses cocaine so they can focus on work or participate in social activities would probably be willing to substitute at least some of their usage with tea, if it were cheaper than powder and legal. Drug abuse isn't usually a problem of simple uncontained hedonism. It's not a perfect analogy, but the availability of beer probably likewise moderates the demand for spirits.
It is not the same as drinking coca tea for cocaine addiction.
Most coke addicts will switch to amphetamines and booze, which gives similar dopaminergic effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_tea
>A cup of coca tea prepared from one gram of coca leaves (the typical contents of a tea bag) contains approximately 4.2 mg of organic coca alkaloid.[1] (In comparison, a typical dose (a "line") of cocaine contains between 20 and 30 milligrams.[2])
It's fair to point out that there is still a discrepancy and many habitual cocaine users have some tolerance to the drug, but it's not impossible to drink five cups of tea. Also, it looks like you'd need more like half a pound.
Nobody is going to drink 10 cups of coca tea every 45 minutes. They're going to pop adderall and hit the bottle.
Violent criminal activity is not attractive from a business perspective. Security is expensive, paying bribes is expensive, mistakes are expensive. Without the huge money influx of drug trafficking (which is an insane source of profit) to maintain an army, it'd be more cost-effective to simply not have one.
Don't get me wrong, these aren't good people and right off the bat would probably still be involved in lots of corruption, blackmailing and even murder. But I doubt they'd be able to afford a paramilitary branch and maintain violent conflicts without the profits from drugs.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
Marijuana is a problem that we are already addressing. A majority of Americans and Westerners in general have supported marijuana legalization for years now, raising hopes that the problem will be solved in some way. Our knowledge about the drug and experience with legal marijuana problems suggests that the downsides of legalization are not very large.
Cocaine is a little bit different. It puts severe stress on the heart because it inhibits action potentials in peripheral neurons directly via action on voltage-gated sodium channels and increases metabolic rate via CNS activity. The downsides of cocaine prohibition are massive, but in this case the downsides of legalization have a large uncertainty.
However, the severe death toll associated with a $30bn market puts the onus of responsibility on any conscientious American to want to put a stop to it.
Unlike powder cocaine, coca leaf has a long history of relatively safe use in the northern Andes. Widespread coca tea use is not considered a public health crisis of any particular concern in Peru and southern Colombia:
https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/uwoja/article/download/8770...
http://eva.fhuce.edu.uy/pluginfile.php/128760/mod_resource/c...
The decriminalization of coca tea in Western countries may lead to less gang activity as illegal cocaine manufacture economics shift from large-scale to small-scale extraction. The same situation occurs presently with DMT, albeit on a much smaller scale. Optimistically, addicts may substitute with oral formulations which are generally less addictive due to the relationship between reward delay and the intensity of operant conditioning. Cocaine also substitutes for methamphetamine, which may lower the street price of the latter.
However, there is also the possibility of increased crime associated with cocaine extraction, which poses another quandary. It is highly unconventional to enact a policy that will clearly empower certain types of criminals.
Nonetheless, I think we need to be open to ideas like these if we are to be ready to take responsibility for the role of US drug policy in destabilizing equatorial Latin America. The situation as it stands is not acceptable. It must be strenuously opposed.