Uh, no–they’re the ones that want it to remain criminalized, because they’re the ones making astronomical sums of money off the trade. If cocaine were legalized, it would be about as attractive to them as booze was to the mob post-Prohibition repeal.
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They would still make money off of Americans and others who kept it illegal, they just could grow it, refine it, and transport it out of Mexico with out hassle.
How does he feel about paying taxes to the US government?
The majority of products we buy from developing countries are produced in sweatshops or other inhumane conditions by workers who are often abused, exploited and underpaid. There is little regard for health and safety of the workers or the protection of the environment. Interesting you should quote Levitt as anything other than a self-congatulating clown as he is in favor of private prison slave labor.
http://shameproject.com/profile/steven-d-levitt/
Capitalism is a system that allocates money to areas where it can generate more money, not necessarily to where it is most needed. Thus we have 25,000 people dying every day from hunger in developing countries as there is more money to made making useless consumer crap than in growing food.
To argue that drug trafficking is particularly egregious in regards to the violence it foments is to ignore the history of what happens when the workers of those countries rise up to demand a better deal, or simply wage war against each other for control of these resources.
The US and other Western powers have fought numerous wars leading to the deaths of millions to ensure that the workers in their supply chains are kept under control. Smedley Butler’s book “War is a Racket” is still timely reading. Look at how many millions died in Mexico’s various revolutions.
The economic benefits of drug running are obvious. Money is money, and bringing drug money into the economy tends to benefit the economy even if it imposes other costs. Drug-running brings over $40 billion into the Mexican economy, and this money is laundered and invested in legitimate businesses.
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Your car runs on gas. 'Nuff said, I should hope. Everything made has to be manufactured and transported, and the fuel for that manufacture and transport is a source of far more violence, exploitation and conflict than the drug trade. Obviously we have to eat and purchasing food is less avoidable than purchasing cocaine, but let’s not forget the human cost of the food we eat and every other product we consume.
The whole point of this article was to point out the human cost of the drug trade which many drug users are oblivious to. My point was to cast light on the fact that most of the products we consume, however necessary some may be, also have human costs that often dwarf those of the drug trade. The evils of the drug trade can be confined largely to the ill effects of the drugs themselves if we eliminate prohibition.
Australia produces more petrol than it uses and mines most anything you care to mention. I avoid buying anything (especially food) from China. Still not buying it.
Citation please? I’d like to read more about this.
LOL. Wow. You typed this with a straight face, didn’t you?
Rawr! Capitalism bad! Capitalism promotes “sweatshops or other inhumane conditions by workers who are often abused, exploited and underpaid… [with] little regard for health and safety of the workers or the protection of the environment”!
But “The economic benefits of drug running are obvious. Money is money, and bringing drug money into the economy tends to benefit the economy…” Never mind that the drug trade is basically the purest form of capitalism (while it is illegal, there is NO oversight, no regulation of the industry guaranteeing purity and safety of product, no proper disposal of chemicals used in the making of drugs, etc) the drug trade is injecting much needed capital into these local economies. Isn’t that what is exactly happening with “exploited and underpaid” workers? Do they not also benefit from the system (even if it imposes other costs)?
And Steven Levitt could eat babies and make vests from skinned-alive kittens, the research he referenced in that speech is sound. Most of the people in the drug trade are getting exploited more than your average “sweat shop” worker.
And further more, I think saying "The majority of products we buy from developing countries are produced in sweatshops or other inhumane conditions " is completely false. Shitty work, long hours, and low pay - perhaps. But given the alternative, there is a reason for the huge boom cities in China with the explosion of manufacturing. Working 10 hrs a day making an iPhone is no picnic, but the prospect of working on ma and pa’s rice farm isn’t a very good one either.
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In case you missed it, the mexican drug cartels are the Nazi party in that analogy.
During my personal era of drug experimentation I found out that coke was not it: I talked too much, told all my secrets and woke up with a piercing migraine unrivaled by the worst alcohol induced hangover.
The very idea that my mostly youthful indiscretions could be connected to girls with pink nail polish getting their skulls bashed in with hammers and dumped in a charnel pit…is disturbing. But I have to place the blame (since we live in a world where the finger of ‘blame’ must always be pointed when bad things occur) on the War on Some Drugs. Moreso than the growers, the refiners, the smugglers, the distributers, the sellers/buyers/users…Because people will always do coke.
Not all people and not all the time: but humans like to get high. If ground nuns’ bones delivered the effects of MDMA, sepulchers across the land would stand empty and Hamlets line to Ophelia would be the hip slang for those willing to try the new high…
Criminalizing drug use is the greatest evil the American government has perpetrated upon its own people. (The curse of Slavery is our nations greatest crime: but since it was in effect before there was a government to speak of…I’m going with the WO(S)D as our biggest domestic fuck up… ever.)
How did this happen? Politicians are proxies; they do what they are told…by those who hold the reins. Monied interests and puritanical busybodies (also…lawyers) helped bring this system about; now that the prison/police industrial complex sucks hard on the federal tit, plus gets to keep the drug (any) money they find…why would anyone so involved want the game to change?
Drugs can be bad…no argument there. The wrong dose can be deadly, some people cannot handle the effects, minds are cracked, lives are ruined. Even pot is not harmless; still, the reality that possession of said substance can result in prison time in some states fills me with contempt. Alcohol is orders of magnitude more harmful than marijuana. That’s plan old fact.
What’s worse: cocaine or tequila?
WHO CARES!?! People are going to drink, people are going to do drugs. Some will get hooked, some will get addicted, some will get dead. Most will not. I wish I lived in a nation that actually gave face value to it’s original ideals of personal freedom…or in a world strong enough to stand firm and say ‘we don’t believe we should take our cues from the country with the most folks in jail per capita outside of Gulagistan’. But more often than not I feel like I live in a venial, corrupt society with precious little cultural cohesion, populated mostly with self righteous hypocrites who’s every action is primarily motivated by self interest…with a xenophobic ruling class that uses violence to achieve its strategic desires. Even all that would be alright (because these are not yet the days to stand upon the barricades waving a flag of defiance) except for the part about punishing any citizen who gets solace or excitement in a manner the majority is not accustomed to.
That’s the kind of bullshit that might lead a man to take a line or two…and damn the migraines.
Or the corpses.
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It never occurred to me that people interested in fair trade practices etc could have an consumer interest in cocaine as well, marijuana maybe, cocaine no. Somehow those two dont mingle in my brain
@teapot, come on when you say “My car was manufactured in Japan and my phone was manufactured in Taiwan. How is there blood on my hands?” you either trolling or have no knowledge of basic things. We obviously do not dig to find camshafts and LCD screens. So where did the materials for your car and and phone came from? Japan and Taiwan? Highly doubtful.
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If I did coke, I would be happy to buy the cruelty-free kind. Let’s make it available.
Part of the reason for all the violence is the fact that drug dealers can’t use the government to enforce contracts. Low level dealers can’t call the cops if a customer tries to rip them off, and higher level dealers aren’t going to get sued for not delivering. To some extant that is what markets can look like without a government to collectively enforce contracts.
Yes, at some level the government enforces order through violence, but if you can’t see the difference, you’re just being silly.
The War on Drugs is not going away any time soon, unfortunately. It’s already been more than 40 years!
But consider it just a little differently, in light of recent news. This isn’t just a government that likes profit. Dollars are nothing but paper counters - they aren’t even backed by any valuables like gold, any more. Really, you use dollars to measure power! Not just purchasing power, but living power, bargaining power, and power-brokering power.
And this is a government that likes to snag every call you make, every email you send, can search your electronics without warrants in most of the country, shoot x-rays through your entire body unless you ‘opt’ to be groped by a government employee, and gets to use it ALL to fund its power structure. Even newborns incapable of working and paying taxes for decades have Social Security numbers now.
Give up the War on Drugs? Are you kidding? Not own a DEA? And the prison contracts? And the FDA/NSA/CIA/FBI/TSA/DHS? Oh - and the ability - nay, the need to perform cavity searches? (And, really - what tells you who is in control better than a good old cavity search?)
Oh. Hayell. No. They aren’t giving that up! And it’s not because, capitalism. The Soviets did the same, and capitalism wasn’t their fave game. Actually, Hitler also pulled it off for a while - and capitalism wasn’t his best game, either. Those who want power have always gone for it, and what we see happening all around us is just the latest round.
Coke is nothing more than one product in a hoard of such essential bargaining chips in the power game. You don’t like how the coke trade works? Because a friend of a writer said so. Ok. Fine, use domestically-produced speed instead. Or, stay clean. Then you can go to work and pay taxes every day. They don’t really care one way or the other, as long as you fill a spot in the desired power structure. People who eat regularly won’t mess with them, and people in prison cells can’t. It’s quite nearly perfect. So. There’s your freedom - you get to choose whether to be a jailed or non-jailed consumer, and if jailed? Via which product.
See? At last. An issue you can really do something about!
/snark
/despair
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Commodities markets.
Any of us with a smart phone, we’re all guilty of fuelling the wars, killing, child soldier recruitment, the lot. We just like to live in a nice fuzzy warm world of pretending it’s not associated with us.
But it all is, including me. I salve my conscience by donating money to organisations that help develop alternative economic means and education in deprived areas.
The US sends billions of dollars a year to the Mexican government to fight trafficking. Decriminalizing it would remove an enormous flow of cash that is relatively easy to skim off of. The system in place now is the best of both worlds for the government. They get a ton of cash from the US to fight the drug trade, and a ton of cash from the Drug Lords to be allowed to continue their trade. All it costs is thousands of lives in border towns every year.
Please don’t say that if you are trying to construct a convincing argument.
Life’s cheap. Money isn’t. Power isn’t.
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As opposed to… ? Communism isn’t associated with violence and famine ?
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