15 ms·

Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

300 points by potshot 11y ago

cygnus_a 11y ago
This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).
- dominotw 11y ago
  >Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. would this apply to gun ownership too?
  - Archio 11y ago
    Of course. Unfortunately the main issue there is that people disagree on exactly how much gun ownership should be regulated.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    Absolutely, a regulated market would be better than a black market. If every gun and every bullet were marked, all sales (or losses e.g. to theft) required registration with a central registry with the new owner requiring a proper license (including criminal background check, etc.), and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. (Exactly what breakdown of liability is up for debate, but currently there is none whatsoever.) Almost nobody has a problem with “gun ownership” in the abstract, and some type of gun ownership is legal in most parts of the world. The problems are with e.g. semiautomatic rifles being purchased on the black market and then used to shoot up schools, criminals trivially and untraceably getting their hands on as many guns as they want, people leaving guns lying around in places where children can play with them, or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
    - koenigdavidmj 11y ago
      > or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Your own government is the worst offender of this in recent memory.
    - marcoperaza 11y ago
      >and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. My understanding is that this is just an attempt by gun-control activists to effectively ban gun sales to consumers. How can the gun manufacturer be responsible for how the gun is used? Their job is to make the gun to the advertised spec, not keep the peace. You can't sue the knife-maker when you get stabbed. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "liability for damages in the case of improper use"?
      - jacobolus 11y ago
        If a manufacturer or distributor sells a bunch of guns off-the-books to a criminal gang, and one of those is then used in a murder, the distributor should be liable in some way. If there were a proper gun registry and if improper gun use resulted in liability for the last documented owner, it would be much more difficult for criminals to hide the guns’ ownership / distribution history, because distributors and owners would have a strong incentive to properly report sales. In the system we have now, the gun show / flea market / second-hand sales “loophole” is so wide as to basically render gun licensing and tracking requirements entirely useless. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole Think about the way we currently regulate automobiles. Every automobile has a documented ownership history and registration, and every automobile driver needs to pass a set of tests in order to obtain a license.
        chrishynes 11y ago
        A manufacturer or distributor selling guns "off the books" is already highly illegal. Anyone doing that will incur a fat stack of felonies. Are you unaware of that? Or proposing that we make it even more illegal?
  - pcmaffey 11y ago
    Yes. And it's always humorous (sad) when people use ideological reasoning to defend their right to x (e.g. guns). But then are blind to how it applies to y (e.g drugs).
    - x0x0 11y ago
      You can't grow a gun in a pot in your kitchen window.
      - mystikal 11y ago
        You can't print a joint at your computer.
        ridgeguy 11y ago
        Yet.
      - 15155 11y ago
        I can grow one on the mill in my garage.
  - edoceo 11y ago
    In WA and CO (and others) cannabis is more regulated than guns.
- jqm 11y ago
  I'm of the opinion people should be able to do what they want. And certainly drugs being illegal causes more problems than it solves. That being said, here is a case to think about. When I was in my early 20's (20 years ago) I got a job in Phoenix AZ working on a concrete crew. We were building poured in place buildings (something like big box store size). First we would pour the floor. Then the walls on top of the floor and pull them up into place with a crane. It was extremely demanding work and the company beat the crap out of everyone. Very often we would get to work at 3 AM so we could pour before the sun to prevent the mud drying so fast. Lunch time was around 10 minutes and there weren't breaks. If you didn't run at all times... going to get a shovel...run, go for a drink of water, run you got yelled at. If you still didn't run a second time you were fired just like that. My first day there were 7 or 8 new people. At the end of the day they had fired all the new people except me and one other guy. This went on for a couple of weeks until they had the crew they wanted. I needed the job and it paid pretty well (at the time) so I ran and busted ass like you wouldn't believe. After a couple of months I got let go as well and was very OK with it. It was completely nuts and I'm sure illegal as hell but no one appeared to complain and I'm not sure the state at the time and place would have listened anyway. The point being... almost everyone on the job site was doing meth. Except me and maybe a couple of other people. I've never been a fan of meth and find it completely disgusting even though I'm not "anti-drug" and I damn sure wasn't about to do it out there. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. When you finally burnt out, you were thrown away and left with mental/health problems. But the building was up and the company owner made money. That is my fear about legal drugs. Expectations. End results. Even social expectations like booze is now in many places. I want to do what I want to do... not be expected to do anything. It's a complex problem. I don't know the answer. Maybe part of the answer is to invent better/less harmful drugs that are less easy to abuse and legalize those.
  - pille 11y ago
    If I can try to paraphrase: Criminalization has been so ineffective that you were simply expected to use meth at this one job you had, because everyone else was doing it. And you think this might argue in favor of continued criminalization?
    - 11y ago
- citizensixteen 11y ago
  >This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. Nobel economist Milton Friedman said, "The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in 'On Liberty.' is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line? If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.” Milton Friedman interview from 1991 on America’s War on Drugs https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-from-1991-on-americas-war-on-drugs/ https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-fr...
andrewstuart 11y ago
Pot is still illegal in Australia because, you know, it's bad.
- leeoniya 11y ago
  But alcohol is, you know, grrrreeeat! /s
  - dllthomas 11y ago
    You're confusing alcohol with, you know, Frosted Flakes.
    - bitwize 11y ago
      Isn't sugar known to be just as addictive and almost as harmful as alcohol these days?
      - david-given 11y ago
        Ban oxygen. Approximately 93% of all people who have ever consumed it, even once, have died.
        simplexion 11y ago
        Oxygen is necessary to you living... sugar not so much.
        smsm42 11y ago
        Sugars are as necessary for your body to work as oxygen is [1]. Of course, you don't have to take them as refined sugar, there are much better ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose#Energy_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose#Energy_source
        11y ago
pcl 11y ago
The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth. This is a really interesting development. There's always been this "gateway drug" argument around pot: once people start with marijuana, they'll move onto the harder stuff. I can imagine that there might be a correlation, but I expect that the causality is the other way around: once you break the law a bit for pot, and discover that it's really not a big deal, you assume that the other illegal drugs are probably fine too. As marijuana becomes more and more legal in the US, it'll be interesting to see which way the causal link goes.
- notthegov 11y ago
  Cannabis being illegal actually influences people to use prescription drugs and meth. If someone has a job that drug tests them or are on probation, then people will choose harder drugs (or alcohol). The only drug aside from PCP that stays in your system over 3 days is cannabis.
  - random_upvoter 11y ago
    Interestingly, in Colorado it's legal for a company to fire an employee who has (legally) smoked marijuana. So even with legalization drug tests may remain a thing.
    - jamesfe 11y ago
      It's interesting, but taken through some lenses, maybe that's still OK? I've never smoked, but I wonder if I'd like my doctor to be high when he operates on me, or for an armorer to reassemble my rifle while high. Does marijuana influence attention to detail? Is there a way to ensure that people don't get high while at work, that they stay sober on the job? Anecdotally, from watching high people while I was in university, I don't think I'd trust their giggling selves with my life.
      - jalk 11y ago
LAMike 11y ago
Wow what a Black Swan event. Take something illegal and taxing it heavily has a negative impact on the black market's profit and a positive impact on the economy. Truly disrupting the space.
- conceit 11y ago
  I'm sure the black market profit doesn't even notice. However, many operations are still considered at least gray market as the feds take down plantations.
  - alxndr 11y ago
    The black market is noticing; the article ends with this: > "The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth."
spoiledtechie 11y ago
While the seizure rate has gone down, I believe this to be a two part or multiple part reason. Border agents have also gone way down along the border. It's a number that has also been rapidly decreasing over the past four years from the current administration. Ex: I am a past employee of Customs and Border.
- xenadu02 11y ago
  I don't see that in the federal data. Can you cite something to back up the claims? Border & Customs is still employing most of those people to work _somewhere_.
WalterBright 11y ago
It's pathetic that we've learned nothing at all from Prohibition.
caseysoftware 11y ago
> The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. That does not mean there are less drugs being imported, just that less are being seized. I worked with the Border Patrol years ago and it was astounding how they tracked success: - When arrests increased, they celebrated that enforcement was working. - When arrests decreased, they celebrated that deterrence was working. Heads I win, tails you lose. While I'm in favor of legalization, you should take these numbers and the process that created them with a grain of salt..
- pliny 11y ago
  I get that measuring the effectiveness of enforcement is inherently difficult, but isn't the number of arrests made far away from the border an excellent proxy for how poorly border control is working? You can't isolate yourself from drugs manufactured in-state or from failures of other border patrol units (or successes of drug enforcement away from the border), but you also can't fuck with the stats.
  - tamana 11y ago
    Fucking with stats has always a key aspect of law enforcement.
- gregpilling 11y ago
  Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think. Here is a photo of the 2 strands of barbed wire that make up the border fence near Locheil Arizona. If you ride your dirt bike along the border there (I did), then you will find a few dirt roads that cross the border that look heavily used. I spent 8 hours down there and was not approached by any Border Patrol (Saw some from 100 feet away, but no contact) There is so much stuff crossing the border, in so many places. https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s92944321!2e1!3e10!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fproxy%2FwfYrxITpg9k7jdJyFNVk5R-VJ9jooe9tCPegs22ar3VBqeMoOf5uKEVhzSJ4-bmFb5P96lXvrt0Q9u9dInybQl5gCOoZKg%3Dw203-h152!7i3264!8i2448 https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/da...
oldmanjay 11y ago
The actual headline would be better expressed as "legal marijuana undoing what the drug war caused"
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Its nice to have some data to confirm what many predicted. That said, the DEA is acutely aware that it is much easier to move drugs around once they are already in the country and so their mission my require installing border crossing checkpoints on states that have legalized those drugs. I saw a sign on the Kansas side of a highway leaving Colorado that said "If you bought pot, leave it behind." Clearly someone had seen an uptick in drugs coming in that way.
gregpilling 11y ago
Another reason not mentioned in the article is quality. Domestically produced hydroponically grown marijuana is so much better than the Mexican weed. I live 60 miles from Mexico in Tucson Arizona, we see a lot of it around here. The quality difference is huge - compare your favorite craft brew with Bud Light that has been left in the sun too long. I had a friend give me an ounce of Mexican weed last year. That is a fair bit of weed. I tried a sample one night, and then gave it back. It wasn't worth keeping around, even for free. I knew I would just never use it, it was typical Mexican ditch weed and my tastes had gone to better things. So which beer did you want? Sam Adams, or this Miller with a cigarette in it? The Mexican weed is just disgusting now. Only people on a tight budget will use it, not people with a choice; maybe 10% of the users I know. Everyone else gets the good stuff. Light, fluffy with 20 strains to choose from, tested and graded, and you can pick out the individual bud that speaks to you; or compressed brick that smells a little like coffee or grease and has an unknown THC level, unknown origin, unknown anything. The only positive attribute to the Mexican weed is price.
- seizethecheese 11y ago
  Thank you. I hardly ever see comments about the benefits of legalization to casual weed smokers. Maybe we haven't shed the stigma yet, but this isn't just bad for drug lords and for-profit prisons, this is good for millions of consumers!
  - conceit 11y ago
    The biggest commercial operations are run by passionless businesses. The hydro homegrow on the other hand hardly qualifies as casual.
    - eru 11y ago
      Who care whether your weed is grown with passion? seizethecheese and gregpilling care about the quality of the product.
      - 11y ago
LordKano 11y ago
Is anyone surprised by this? It's the same thing that happened when alcohol prohibition was lifted.
logibly 11y ago
Why was marijuana in the "illegal" list in the place ? Any scientific studies that it is more harmful then alcohol or smoking ? Here in India it is legal and part of the religious traditions since thousands of years. It's known as "bhang" in hindi. Essentially legalizing is just getting thing right which was wrong earlier.
- roel_v 11y ago
  "Here in India it is legal " That's a rather spectacular claim to make, and indeed, the very first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India says " All forms of cannabis are currently illegal in India, with some limited allowances made for some traditional preparations." So either you are wrong or the Wikipedia article is, along with all its references, history etc. I'm not a betting man but if I were, I know where I'd put my money...

300 points by potshot 11y ago

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).

dominotw 11y ago
>Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. would this apply to gun ownership too?
- Archio 11y ago
  Of course. Unfortunately the main issue there is that people disagree on exactly how much gun ownership should be regulated.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Absolutely, a regulated market would be better than a black market. If every gun and every bullet were marked, all sales (or losses e.g. to theft) required registration with a central registry with the new owner requiring a proper license (including criminal background check, etc.), and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. (Exactly what breakdown of liability is up for debate, but currently there is none whatsoever.) Almost nobody has a problem with “gun ownership” in the abstract, and some type of gun ownership is legal in most parts of the world. The problems are with e.g. semiautomatic rifles being purchased on the black market and then used to shoot up schools, criminals trivially and untraceably getting their hands on as many guns as they want, people leaving guns lying around in places where children can play with them, or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
  - koenigdavidmj 11y ago
    > or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Your own government is the worst offender of this in recent memory.
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    >and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. My understanding is that this is just an attempt by gun-control activists to effectively ban gun sales to consumers. How can the gun manufacturer be responsible for how the gun is used? Their job is to make the gun to the advertised spec, not keep the peace. You can't sue the knife-maker when you get stabbed. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "liability for damages in the case of improper use"?
    - jacobolus 11y ago
      If a manufacturer or distributor sells a bunch of guns off-the-books to a criminal gang, and one of those is then used in a murder, the distributor should be liable in some way. If there were a proper gun registry and if improper gun use resulted in liability for the last documented owner, it would be much more difficult for criminals to hide the guns’ ownership / distribution history, because distributors and owners would have a strong incentive to properly report sales. In the system we have now, the gun show / flea market / second-hand sales “loophole” is so wide as to basically render gun licensing and tracking requirements entirely useless. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole Think about the way we currently regulate automobiles. Every automobile has a documented ownership history and registration, and every automobile driver needs to pass a set of tests in order to obtain a license.
      - chrishynes 11y ago
        A manufacturer or distributor selling guns "off the books" is already highly illegal. Anyone doing that will incur a fat stack of felonies. Are you unaware of that? Or proposing that we make it even more illegal?
- pcmaffey 11y ago
  Yes. And it's always humorous (sad) when people use ideological reasoning to defend their right to x (e.g. guns). But then are blind to how it applies to y (e.g drugs).
  - x0x0 11y ago
    You can't grow a gun in a pot in your kitchen window.
    - mystikal 11y ago
      You can't print a joint at your computer.
      - ridgeguy 11y ago
        Yet.
    - 15155 11y ago
      I can grow one on the mill in my garage.
- edoceo 11y ago
  In WA and CO (and others) cannabis is more regulated than guns.
jqm 11y ago
I'm of the opinion people should be able to do what they want. And certainly drugs being illegal causes more problems than it solves. That being said, here is a case to think about. When I was in my early 20's (20 years ago) I got a job in Phoenix AZ working on a concrete crew. We were building poured in place buildings (something like big box store size). First we would pour the floor. Then the walls on top of the floor and pull them up into place with a crane. It was extremely demanding work and the company beat the crap out of everyone. Very often we would get to work at 3 AM so we could pour before the sun to prevent the mud drying so fast. Lunch time was around 10 minutes and there weren't breaks. If you didn't run at all times... going to get a shovel...run, go for a drink of water, run you got yelled at. If you still didn't run a second time you were fired just like that. My first day there were 7 or 8 new people. At the end of the day they had fired all the new people except me and one other guy. This went on for a couple of weeks until they had the crew they wanted. I needed the job and it paid pretty well (at the time) so I ran and busted ass like you wouldn't believe. After a couple of months I got let go as well and was very OK with it. It was completely nuts and I'm sure illegal as hell but no one appeared to complain and I'm not sure the state at the time and place would have listened anyway. The point being... almost everyone on the job site was doing meth. Except me and maybe a couple of other people. I've never been a fan of meth and find it completely disgusting even though I'm not "anti-drug" and I damn sure wasn't about to do it out there. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. When you finally burnt out, you were thrown away and left with mental/health problems. But the building was up and the company owner made money. That is my fear about legal drugs. Expectations. End results. Even social expectations like booze is now in many places. I want to do what I want to do... not be expected to do anything. It's a complex problem. I don't know the answer. Maybe part of the answer is to invent better/less harmful drugs that are less easy to abuse and legalize those.
- pille 11y ago
  If I can try to paraphrase: Criminalization has been so ineffective that you were simply expected to use meth at this one job you had, because everyone else was doing it. And you think this might argue in favor of continued criminalization?
  - 11y ago
citizensixteen 11y ago
>This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. Nobel economist Milton Friedman said, "The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in 'On Liberty.' is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line? If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.” Milton Friedman interview from 1991 on America’s War on Drugs https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-from-1991-on-americas-war-on-drugs/ https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-fr...

andrewstuart 11y ago

Pot is still illegal in Australia because, you know, it's bad.

leeoniya 11y ago
But alcohol is, you know, grrrreeeat! /s
- dllthomas 11y ago
  You're confusing alcohol with, you know, Frosted Flakes.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Isn't sugar known to be just as addictive and almost as harmful as alcohol these days?
    - david-given 11y ago
      Ban oxygen. Approximately 93% of all people who have ever consumed it, even once, have died.
      - simplexion 11y ago
        Oxygen is necessary to you living... sugar not so much.
        smsm42 11y ago
        Sugars are as necessary for your body to work as oxygen is [1]. Of course, you don't have to take them as refined sugar, there are much better ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose#Energy_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose#Energy_source
        11y ago

pcl 11y ago

The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth. This is a really interesting development. There's always been this "gateway drug" argument around pot: once people start with marijuana, they'll move onto the harder stuff. I can imagine that there might be a correlation, but I expect that the causality is the other way around: once you break the law a bit for pot, and discover that it's really not a big deal, you assume that the other illegal drugs are probably fine too. As marijuana becomes more and more legal in the US, it'll be interesting to see which way the causal link goes.

notthegov 11y ago
Cannabis being illegal actually influences people to use prescription drugs and meth. If someone has a job that drug tests them or are on probation, then people will choose harder drugs (or alcohol). The only drug aside from PCP that stays in your system over 3 days is cannabis.
- random_upvoter 11y ago
  Interestingly, in Colorado it's legal for a company to fire an employee who has (legally) smoked marijuana. So even with legalization drug tests may remain a thing.
  - jamesfe 11y ago
    It's interesting, but taken through some lenses, maybe that's still OK? I've never smoked, but I wonder if I'd like my doctor to be high when he operates on me, or for an armorer to reassemble my rifle while high. Does marijuana influence attention to detail? Is there a way to ensure that people don't get high while at work, that they stay sober on the job? Anecdotally, from watching high people while I was in university, I don't think I'd trust their giggling selves with my life.
    - jalk 11y ago

LAMike 11y ago

Wow what a Black Swan event. Take something illegal and taxing it heavily has a negative impact on the black market's profit and a positive impact on the economy. Truly disrupting the space.

conceit 11y ago
I'm sure the black market profit doesn't even notice. However, many operations are still considered at least gray market as the feds take down plantations.
- alxndr 11y ago
  The black market is noticing; the article ends with this: > "The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth."

spoiledtechie 11y ago

While the seizure rate has gone down, I believe this to be a two part or multiple part reason. Border agents have also gone way down along the border. It's a number that has also been rapidly decreasing over the past four years from the current administration. Ex: I am a past employee of Customs and Border.

xenadu02 11y ago
I don't see that in the federal data. Can you cite something to back up the claims? Border & Customs is still employing most of those people to work _somewhere_.

WalterBright 11y ago

It's pathetic that we've learned nothing at all from Prohibition.

caseysoftware 11y ago

> The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. That does not mean there are less drugs being imported, just that less are being seized. I worked with the Border Patrol years ago and it was astounding how they tracked success: - When arrests increased, they celebrated that enforcement was working. - When arrests decreased, they celebrated that deterrence was working. Heads I win, tails you lose. While I'm in favor of legalization, you should take these numbers and the process that created them with a grain of salt..

pliny 11y ago
I get that measuring the effectiveness of enforcement is inherently difficult, but isn't the number of arrests made far away from the border an excellent proxy for how poorly border control is working? You can't isolate yourself from drugs manufactured in-state or from failures of other border patrol units (or successes of drug enforcement away from the border), but you also can't fuck with the stats.
- tamana 11y ago
  Fucking with stats has always a key aspect of law enforcement.
gregpilling 11y ago
Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think. Here is a photo of the 2 strands of barbed wire that make up the border fence near Locheil Arizona. If you ride your dirt bike along the border there (I did), then you will find a few dirt roads that cross the border that look heavily used. I spent 8 hours down there and was not approached by any Border Patrol (Saw some from 100 feet away, but no contact) There is so much stuff crossing the border, in so many places. https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s92944321!2e1!3e10!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fproxy%2FwfYrxITpg9k7jdJyFNVk5R-VJ9jooe9tCPegs22ar3VBqeMoOf5uKEVhzSJ4-bmFb5P96lXvrt0Q9u9dInybQl5gCOoZKg%3Dw203-h152!7i3264!8i2448 https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/da...

oldmanjay 11y ago

The actual headline would be better expressed as "legal marijuana undoing what the drug war caused"

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Its nice to have some data to confirm what many predicted. That said, the DEA is acutely aware that it is much easier to move drugs around once they are already in the country and so their mission my require installing border crossing checkpoints on states that have legalized those drugs. I saw a sign on the Kansas side of a highway leaving Colorado that said "If you bought pot, leave it behind." Clearly someone had seen an uptick in drugs coming in that way.

gregpilling 11y ago

Another reason not mentioned in the article is quality. Domestically produced hydroponically grown marijuana is so much better than the Mexican weed. I live 60 miles from Mexico in Tucson Arizona, we see a lot of it around here. The quality difference is huge - compare your favorite craft brew with Bud Light that has been left in the sun too long. I had a friend give me an ounce of Mexican weed last year. That is a fair bit of weed. I tried a sample one night, and then gave it back. It wasn't worth keeping around, even for free. I knew I would just never use it, it was typical Mexican ditch weed and my tastes had gone to better things. So which beer did you want? Sam Adams, or this Miller with a cigarette in it? The Mexican weed is just disgusting now. Only people on a tight budget will use it, not people with a choice; maybe 10% of the users I know. Everyone else gets the good stuff. Light, fluffy with 20 strains to choose from, tested and graded, and you can pick out the individual bud that speaks to you; or compressed brick that smells a little like coffee or grease and has an unknown THC level, unknown origin, unknown anything. The only positive attribute to the Mexican weed is price.

seizethecheese 11y ago
Thank you. I hardly ever see comments about the benefits of legalization to casual weed smokers. Maybe we haven't shed the stigma yet, but this isn't just bad for drug lords and for-profit prisons, this is good for millions of consumers!
- conceit 11y ago
  The biggest commercial operations are run by passionless businesses. The hydro homegrow on the other hand hardly qualifies as casual.
  - eru 11y ago
    Who care whether your weed is grown with passion? seizethecheese and gregpilling care about the quality of the product.
    - 11y ago

LordKano 11y ago

Is anyone surprised by this? It's the same thing that happened when alcohol prohibition was lifted.

logibly 11y ago

Why was marijuana in the "illegal" list in the place ? Any scientific studies that it is more harmful then alcohol or smoking ? Here in India it is legal and part of the religious traditions since thousands of years. It's known as "bhang" in hindi. Essentially legalizing is just getting thing right which was wrong earlier.

roel_v 11y ago
"Here in India it is legal " That's a rather spectacular claim to make, and indeed, the very first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India says " All forms of cannabis are currently illegal in India, with some limited allowances made for some traditional preparations." So either you are wrong or the Wikipedia article is, along with all its references, history etc. I'm not a betting man but if I were, I know where I'd put my money...