The Price of Prohibition

[Mister Agenda]

Funny how people don't usually get killed in turf wars over alcohol anymore. I wonder what changed?

[Cinjin]

Take all their power away. Legalize it.

Keep it illegal to sell to minors (just like tobacco & alcohol) and educate the public.

Hell, if you really want to destroy a criminal's business ... do what they do in this country: Make it so god damn difficult to do business that they eventually send their operations to India.

[Tempus]

But... if we legalize drugs then everyone will start taking them! Because 1) everyone wants to and 2) nobody does now. People really should be made to see the images of people affected by this.

[Annik]

Alrighty, here's the skinny on it.

The US "War on Drugs" is sadly the cause of this tragedy. How refusal to understand drugs, drug use/abuse, and how to properly handle it had made smuggling drugs profitable. This money is being funneled into these cartels at an alarming rate. The Mexican government hasn't been able to keep them in check for a while. These cartels have become known for their cruelty. In addition to bringing in the innocent families of people they thing have wronged them (and usually killing, if not torturing them), they take random people off the streets.

They take tourists they think they might get a ransom for, or even just the money in their pockets... The violence is incredible. I'm sure some of you have heard of the travel warnings Mexico has? Drug cartels are why.

It would be easy to make this go away. Everyone but the US government (including the Mexican government, who is begging us to do something) has admitted the War on Drugs as a failure. We can patrol all of our boarders with enough efficiency to keep out smugglers. In fact, these organizations usually don't care when they are caught. They move more product that they have to so that they can counter the possibility of getting caught. Drug prevention methods don't work because the programs we have only focus of peer pressure and "Drugs are bad, m'kay", instead of thinking to teach children how to get natural highs (such as pride in a good grade or scoring a goal-point in sports). On top of that, these programs usually lie/distort information to their own purposes.

These people died for nothing. It makes my blood boil and my heart weep at the same time. Their lives were taken from them for no reason... 50,000 people for nothing.

[liam]

nothing ceases to amaze me more than the willingness of man to be cruel.

[Autumnlicious]

I'm still not forgetting the screw up with the ATF over letting assault rifles be sold to drug cartels on the "assumption" the weapons could be tracked.

That assumption was proven false shortly afterwards when nearly all said rifles went "missing".

REF: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-20039031.html
REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

Truly horrific.

Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest "gunwalking" probe, led to the sale of over 2,000 firearms, of which fewer than 700 were recovered as of October 20, 2011.[15]

[Anomalocaris]

nothing ceases to amaze me more than the willingness of man to be cruel.

Nothing makes men feel better about being cruelty to his fellow men than christian and islamic self-righteousness.

[liam]

I think that just sinks me further into sadness, the human race is such a malevolent one.