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No. 381847
>>381787
>So they kill to protect their business because it's illegal, so making it legal would be the solution so they don't have to kill? Because in case that was what you're implying, it's stupid.
Um, no it isn't, not really. It's basically exactly how the Law works. If something is legitimate, it can be held to standards of cleanliness and regulated doses, and also receive protection from the police in the case of robbery or unlawful infringement into "territory" (setting up a competing business near the other business that undercuts the first business' profits).
When something is illegal, it is only traded for in cash because cash is one of the more difficult methods to actually trace. In order to protect your cash and your product (it is also illegal and directly translates to your revenue stream in the drug trading business). Therefor, you can't go to the Police, so if somebody robs you, you have no legal recourse within the system. Ergo, you arm your "dealers", the members of the organization who peddle the dope or do other assorted tasks for you, and you task them with protecting the money until you launder it through a "legitimate" front business and back into the normal streams of society where it can't be detected. The lack of law also means that the most effective method of maintaining your business is by brute force, at the point of a gun.
Electronics smugglers don't put up a fight because their product is not worth the amounts of money that drugs are. You seriously underestimate the absolute scale of the Drug Trafficking Industry, and it is an industry now, even if it operates outside the Law. Understand the scale that these people have to operate with; one of the most recent and best ways to smuggle Marijuana and Cocaine into the United States is that the Cartels down in South America build low-tech Submarines and fill them each with around 100 tons of Cocaine and Weed. Then they send them like 14 at a time to run to U.S. coast. If a Submarine is apprehended by the Coast Guard or other Drug Enforcement Agents, there is usually a mechanism to scuttle the Submarine with the cargo onboard, allowing the crew to bail out, usually to be returned to their home country with no charges, because they didn't have anything on them and that's all we can really do. They scuttle 100 tones of Coke because all the other runs that make it will pay 3 times over what the cost in lost product is. When they import Opium or other Narcotics from Asia, they just use Planes because hell, they own fleets of Airplanes.
And the thing that you have to understand about this International Drug Trade is that 99% of that product, whatever it is, goes to America. America is the single largest consumer of recreational Narcotics in the entire world, and also the only real reason for the War on Drugs. We deliver directives (Money) from on high to the Nations that this stuff is grown in (Poorer nations) to combat this epidemic, but we're actually the ones creating the "epidemic" in the first place. We generate the demand. Not just for these poor communities in our nation to have "businesses", but also because White People are the single largest buyers of illegal narcotics. Given any given white person, by the actual numbers it is far more likely that they will have drugs, use drugs, and even sell drugs, than any given black person. This is in part because of the long-standing Racial Stereotypes in our country; Black People are inordinately targeted by Cops for even the most minor of things, everywhere. They are caught because they use illegal narcotics roughly at the same rate as White People, but they are more frequently targeted rather than the people who always drive the Demand and never really get stopped except when their own personal situations get bad. It has actually been suggested that the C.I.A. was in part responsible for the introduction of Crack-Cocaine to the inner cities of America in the 70s and 80s in attempts to get Latin American countries under the Agency's thumb. The sad thing about this is that while there's no proof, given a working knowledge of C.I.A. operations that isn't even outside their playbook, in fact it's probably in the top 10 greatest hits.
The result of this is that people get cycled into the Prison system, and they become worse offenders. You know those perpetrators of truly Heinous Shit that you think Should Be Put Down for the Good of Humanity? Well, there were a lot of them, even before the Drug Trade began in earnest, and now that the Drug trade is going, what happens is that those guys help turn otherwise non-violent offenders into even worse offenders. You send someone into a Rathole filled with Criminals, Gangsters and Psychopaths, and it's like given them a College Degree in being a Psychopathic Criminal Gangster. Killing people doesn't actually turn them away from Killing; generally, it just aggravates their hatred for you, and the system you are enforcing, and makes them want to kill you more.
Our prison system as it stands actually produces more Criminals. Once you're inside, your chances for a Real Job are sharply removed; you have the Stigma of a Convict, both on the Papers that the Hiring Managers will be looking at and in Real Life. And you're hanging out with a whole bunch of big time drug dealers who are experienced with all of this stuff, in a place that, while vicious and inhumane, is actually statistically less likely to Kill you than being on the streets. Oh, and you still have access to all the narcotics that were floating around out on the streets, you just have to be more discrete about using or selling them.
Couple all this with our failing education system and the actual inability of an increasing amount of people to be able to get a job (either because they don't understand enough to function in a modern job or because they only qualify for Labor and Food Service positions that cannot make monthly bills), and what it looks like is that America is teaching its' public to be Criminals. Weed wasn't made Legal in Colorado because everyone just decided to make it legal; it was made Legal because our Prisons were getting so full of non-violent pothead offenders that they were pitching tents in the Prison yards just to be able to hold all of them. A few years after its' initial decriminalization, it has now been introduced as a legal and legit part of the local economy. It is still subject to a lot of restrictions and for that reason a vibrant Black Market trade is still in existence, but almost the entirety of the Product is coming from Local Growers, and it has driven prices into the ground. Colorado is not supporting the Drug Wars in Mexico and other Latin American countries that are slowly ripping apart those Countries ability to govern their populations from the inside out, and violently ending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And not just Drug Lords; Journalists, Politicians, Police Officers, Lawyers, anyone who tries to cast the Drug Cartels in a bad light.
People who go IN come out as Soldiers for the Cartels because they have no other prospects in life. They don't know any other way to make money, and nothing in their neighborhood will actually make them enough to move out of their neighborhood except for dealing drugs (or as Dave Chapelle jokes "Playing Basketball or Rapping or something"). And it's a 24-7 industry that moves Trillions of dollars and Millions of Tons of Product. The Police are never going to get a handle on this because there will always be a demand, no matter how illegal you make it. And in fact, the Drug War has so over-burdened our Legal System that it is failing to produces results in other areas of Law Enforcement, and costs the Courts untold amounts of time and money prosecuting people who really didn't do anything wrong. Meanwhile, Murders and Rapes and the types of crimes that the system would normally handle are being crushed between all this legwork for drugs and the fact that Drugs are the only Political Action that give Politicians real money. Say you're tough on Drugs and Terror? People love you even though they have no idea what you're actually talking about and Washington kicks you a very tidy contribution to go find more Drugs and Bad Guys, even those most of the people you target are just trying to eat.
The primary source of the violence that arises from Drug Enforcement is the Literal fact of that Enforcement. It's like Prohibition with Alcohol in the 1920s which just lead to a ton of illicit means of getting drunk (Alcohol is still more likely to kill you than Weed, LSD, Mushrooms, and uncut Cocaine). There is a demand that is being fulfilled by Extra-Legal means, a prohibition of a Century of misunderstanding and Christian values concerning drugs, and it is slowly wrecking both our Legal System and our actual sense of Moral Right as a nation (though how morally right a nation built on Slavery and subjugation ca ever be, well that's a story for another time).
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