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Re:Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexi... by ypcx on Friday July 17, 2020 @09:57PM (#23878282)
I think most of us would agree that all drugs (drug use) should be decriminalized. But even if you go as far as to imagine the Mexican cartels being (eventually) legitimate businesses, the strong competition between them would not subside, so they would still fight each other and keep their grip on the government and the population. (Then there's also the ties they have to the governments of the target markets, and their policy making.)

I think to solve this situation, you'd have to diminish the demand for their product in the target markets, which is next to impossible due to the addictive nature of the product. One way to do this would be to legalize and promote therapeutic use of drugs which are known (among many other positives) to break drug addiction (in just a few sessions), like psilocybin mushrooms or Ayahuasca.

Re:Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexi... by newacct583 on Friday July 17, 2020 @10:02PM (#23878308)
> if you go as far as to imagine the Mexican cartels being (eventually) legitimate businesses, the strong competition between them would not subside, so they would still fight each other

Exactly. Just look at the much larger market contested by the Apple/Google blood feud for an example!

This doesn't actually happen. The expense of running a private army makes a firm catastrophically non-competetive vs. the new flood of now-legal competitors selling at a much lower price.

Re:Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexi... by racnid on Friday July 17, 2020 @10:56PM (#23878516)
I wonder how that works in a world where more than a few competitors are willing to chainsaw apart the upstarts.
Re:Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexi... by HPsquared on Saturday July 18, 2020 @05:55AM (#23880298)
It'd be a brave new world of businesses trying to fly under the radar and evade 'prosecution', I guess!
Re:Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexi... by eru on Saturday July 18, 2020 @10:09AM (#23881480)
Keep in mind that the actual drug producers are just as much victims of the drug cartels as anyone else.

Legalising the production of drugs would make it so that they could, at least in theory, turn to the police for help.