Whose Fault Is That?

Why are the drug cartels rich and powerful?

They're rich because we're paying them to be.

They're powerful because they're ruthless.

They were able to access this power through the wealth that we gave them.

You may notice a distinct lack of murder associated the the chocolate and coffee trades.

Now that the cartels have accumulated real power that can be sustained independently from selling drugs, what do we do about it?

There's no simple or clean solution.  However this problem is entirely the USA's making.  We should be the ones who solve it because it's ours.

We're almost definitely going to have to make drugs legal.  We're going to have to let people get high.  We're going to have to come up with methods of dealing with high people.

I'll bet that with a supply of something that's cheap and legal we see a lot less of the bullshit associated with drugs.  Like no-knock searches and gun control stemming from the violence that comes with black markets on goods that are as lucrative as mind altering substances are.  The really, really sad thing about the whole mess is we've been here and done this before.  It was called prohibition.  Legalizing booze was a necessary step in stopping the wars between the liquor gangs.

But that's the domestic part one.

The cartels are not going to be happy about cutting off their funding.  Expect a violent reaction.

That's likely going to mean a real war.  A war where we have to invade and occupy one or more nations to our south.

And we'll fuck it up.

We won't do what needs done to break the decades (centuries?) of corruption and patronage.  We won't appoint a MacArthur to run the place autocratically until the old system is completely dead.  We'll do like Iraq and Afghanistan and attempt to leave the existing structure in place but altered slightly.

It would have been far better to have never gone down this road again.  While playing the what-if game I wonder how much power the mafia would have if we had not cut their legs out from under them and repealed the 18th Amendment.  Would it look like Mexico today in the cities of America?  Would we have Appalachian Booze Lords murdering people opposed to the whiskey trade or competitors?

The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.