[shadowmanifold]

I think we need to stop making an argument about personal rights with the drug war and make it about what most of this document is about.

The drug war is empowering the most dangerous organized crime gangs ever created. They could be destroyed overnight by law makers with a pen.

At some point we are going to have to make the decision that dealing with kid's coke and heroin addictions is easier than dealing with thousands of Al Capones that will chop your head off.

We seem incapable of long term planning though so I doubt we will do anything for decades yet. We are like a cancer patient in denial that this cancer is growing and spreading.

[potato3732842]

>The drug war is empowering the most dangerous organized crime gangs ever created.

Are you talking about the feds or cartel?

[salawat]

It's the same picture.

[K0balt]

From some of the unique positions of insight that I have been exposed to, I think it’s safe to say that at least in the late 90s through early 2000s, the primary political will to fuel the “war on the low price of drugs” was to prop up the ability of the USA to covertly divert funding to favoured political groups worldwide.

The Iran-contra shenanigans made it clear that political cover could not be relied upon for overtly shady air-America style operations, and a plausibly deniable strategy was needed for our covert influence operations.

By being in charge of the semi-global” war on drugs”, the USA could make sure covert allies were well funded by allowing them relatively unimpeded access to the wildly profitable US illicit drug market.

This was largely accomplished by targeting any competition and ignoring or sometimes even assisting favoured groups. We saw this on blatant and dramatic display with US troops protecting poppy crops in Afghanistan.

The war on the low price of drugs also made for great television, so most people were happy for a while.

Inevitable consequences being what they are, now that the cartels have become powerful enough to supplant the US influence on market conditions, this strategic justification is increasingly weak. Accordingly, international spending has plummeted.

But do not despair, gentlereader. Our adventurism has created shiny new villains for us to combat, so all is not lost. Great television is once again within our reach.

The MIC and Netflix will be well employed in the coming cartel wars and eventual occupation of regions of Mexico. We just have to wait patiently for the cartels to start using autonomous weapons with alarming frequency on us soil, a treat we can reasonably expect to see soon enough.