Robert Wilson said:
ATL Bear said:
This is just a new point on the escalation continuum that has failed every step along the way. This "war" has only gotten more violent and riskier to the U.S. and its citizens at each point the stakes were raised.
Maybe once we start sending American soldiers home in body bags from the coca leaf jungle wars all because some schmucks need to ingest poison to feel good, we'll start questioning the strategy.
I'm totally down with the general sentiment that the market is going to provide things for which there is a demand. But I think you're also oversimplifying.
You want to suggest some sort of broad legalization and regulation of the drug trade, so that we are keeping the money here and arguably making product safer rather than enriching narco terrorists throughout Mexico and Central America, while tacitly encouraging overdoses on fentanyl? I'm all ears. But we both know that we as a country are nowhere near ready for that.
And given where we are, I'm totally fine letting the narcos know that while they are getting rich helping a certain portion of our population kill itself, they might just get blown the **** up. That seems like a fair occupational hazard.
Maybe that pushes the market in a slightly less unhealthy direction, maybe not, but it's good sport, and I am game to find out. There is probably some net benefit to the criminal element in those countries at least being aware that if they become too brazen we just might blow them up.
I'm not oversimplifying the solution, I'm only simplifying the explanation of the problem to the economics. As to the solutions, maybe we're not being creative. To try and beat the drug cartels at their own game would likely prove difficult, so simplistic "legalization" isn't a real answer. As I said earlier, you have to defeat the need for them.
I think one thing we could do from a legalization perspective is to possibly mimic Portugal in that trafficking is still illegal, but possession of all types of drugs up to a certain amount from weed to heroin is not a crime. And they attack it from a public health perspective.
The more radical ideas might revolve around allowing schedule II type substances such as oxycodone related drugs to other types that are prescription available commercially but are similarly heavily sought after in the black market (fentanyl happens to be one of them) to be sold at dispensaries. Another radical idea is to engage pharmaceutical companies in creating, for lack of a better parallel, a series of drugs intended to provide the need for a high like methadone but safer than illicit provided drugs with varying effects. Subsidize it so it's cheap and readily available, and maybe put some strings around it after extended use like a required monthly treatment meeting. Again, I'm not trying to answer the moral or ethical concerns of drug distribution and use, I'm thinking in terms of shifting the market so we reduce/remove the distribution dangers, which gives better opportunity to control/change the demand aspect.
