One of the smartest "anti-drug" proposed policies I've seen.
You're never going to win any war against drugs, the demand is too strong. But deliberately targeting fentanyl with some real teeth is indeed the absolute maximum impact action you could do - we went from ~20k people dying of overdoses pre-fentanyl to 105k+ dying ever year, the biggest cause of death for people under 40 - and those incremental overdoses are basically all fentanyl. I wrote a whole post about this a few weeks ago.
Kudos for an interesting and well thought out article!
Interesting theory, and while I find the "let's leave criminal operations intact" part pretty distasteful, realism may require it.
It's one thing to share a 2000 mile border with a poor, 3rd world state. But Mexico hasn't been THAT for a couple of decades. Mexico is a failed state, a largely "ungoverned space" more similar to Yemen or Somalia than to India (another poor, still mostly 3rd world country.)
Imagine what a huge Somalia right next door could do to us if it wanted to. Tread carefully.
Interesting. I also stepped out of my lane and wrote my take on this issue. I think it would be extremely dangerous to escalate violence against ultra-violent and secretive organizations which are essentially appendages of the Mexican state. Should Americans die for this? Not while our banks profit from laundering their money...
Substack is a safe platform for going out of your lanes, human and drug trafficking is a serious issue and progress requires ideas on how to deal with those
>The Mexican cartels are not one big organization and have not been since the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989. Gallardo founded the Guadalajara Cartel and convinced all the other cartels to work together in one big cartel in the 1980s. I would recommend the Netflix series, Narcos: Mexico, to learn more about how Gallardo accomplished this
No ( I don't deny the role of Gallardo as hard as this piece I linked to does [which completely denies the existence of the Guadalajara cartel] but it's still a good one )
> [Stop cartels] Traffic fentanyl across the border or distribute it within the United States.
Fentanyl and whatever comes next need such trace amounts to have a physiological effect that it's essentially impossible to stop the epidemic via border security. The lethal dose of fentanyl for normal people is 0.00007054792 ounces.
>Conduct raids to arrest or kill high-level members of the cartels. Any arrest will lead to decades in American prison (which is what the cartel leaders fear most). This gives a strong incentive to the Mexican cartels.
Mexico did this from 2006 to ~2018 and all it did was decentralise cartels, empower younger and more violent and 'irrational' leaders eager to prove themselves, completely change their operation methods and organisational structure and massively increase violence.
>Partly with the assistance of the United States, Plan Columbia has returned the nation to something like normalcy. But this was only possible because President Álvaro Uribe was committed to ending the political dominance of the cartels.
Cartel entrenchment in Mexico is very deep and there are many, many actors. Columbia had a few highly centralised cartels which were killing each other in spades, weakening themselves then a well orchestrated push by the Columbians under some guidance of Americans allowed the mid-level cartel men to be killed or brought under control. The situation in Mexico is too far beyond this, "cartel" cells are too autonomous and numerous to properly infiltrate and take out in one fell sweep, so the survivors just get stronger, like a bacteria after anti-biotics.
>(if the above does not work) Shut down all cross-border traffic on the border. This gives an even stronger incentive to the Mexican government as this could collapse their economy
It's not clear that the Mexican government can actually accomplish the destruction of the cartels, even if they try really hard. I strongly believe that they can't. If the Mexican economy is collapsed it will lead to a migration crisis in the United States. It also wouldn't dislodge the cartels, hyper-violent Los Zetas and the Salvadoran MS-13 survive without making the bulk of their money from drugs.
I'm writing a piece on the evolution of the cartels and their entrenchment over the past 40 years that will be out shortly if you want more structured arguments. These are just rebuttals to some flawed points I noticed in this article that you may want to revise.
Again, you do not seem to understand my proposal at all. I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants."
There is no need to “Take out the leadership” or “just eliminate them.”
It is essentially saying to the Mexican cartels and government: “Give up on the small part of your business (fentanyl and illegal immigration) and it will be business as usual.” You do not actually to deal with the various actors. You establish a red-line.
The independent labs stand no chance if the cartels move against them.
The cartels are not stupid. They mainly want to make money and stay out of American jails.
You seem to have misunderstood my argument. All these "flawed points" that you claim that I made are points that I never actually made.
I never claimed we should stop fentanyl "via border security."
I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants." That is very different.
No, it is not true that Mexico sent cartel members to American prisons from 2006 to ~2018. Some went to Mexican prisons, but that is very different. As I mentioned in the article, the Mexican cartels do not fear Mexican prisons. They do fear American prisons.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing like what I propose has been implemented before.
I never claimed that "the Mexican government can actually accomplish the destruction of the cartels, even if they try really hard." I never advocated for the destruction of the cartels at all. I said that we should try to change their behavior by changing the incentive structure so they choose not to:
1) Traffic illegal immigrants across the border.
2) Traffic fentanyl across the border or distribute it within the United States.
And the Mexican government should be incentivized to shut down the trafficking of illegal immigrants across the border.
These are far more limited goals than "the destruction of the cartels." I believe that it makes them far more achievable.
Do not call my points "flawed" until you actually understand my argument.
>No, it is not true that Mexico sent cartel members to American prisons from 2006 to ~2018. Some went to Mexican prisons, but that is very different. As I mentioned in the article, the Mexican cartels do not fear Mexican prisons. They do fear American prisons.
They do fear American prisons, that is true. But sending these leaders to American prisons for a long time if they cannot communicate and run their organisations would have similar effects as killing them in terms of the effects to their organisations. Which is exactly what happened after High-Value Targeting from 2006 - ~2018. Their organisations will fracture and/or typically younger, more bellicose men who want/need to prove themselves find themselves at the top.
>To the best of my knowledge, nothing like what I propose has been implemented before.
Taking out the leadership to incentive cooperation or just eliminate them for being problematic has been tried (look into High-Value Targeting), it just caused Mexican drug organisations to evolve from what they were in the 1990s to what they are today.
>I never claimed we should stop fentanyl "via border security."
Ok fair
>I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants." That is very different.
I believe there are too many actors to have to deal with. I could see this working if there were true 'cartels' who controlled tightly the drug trade, but today a lot of fentanyl is produced by independent labs. It's a minor problem for the more established cartels right now. If the Mexican government found a lever to make the major cartels not produce fentanyl (the 'cartels' don't necessarily have full control of themselves!) then other groups will spring up. So little fentanyl has to be produced and trafficked to have a country-wide problem.
>And the Mexican government should be incentivized to shut down the trafficking of illegal immigrants across the border.
This is more doable, especially considering so many of the migrants (right now) aren't Mexican.
The various cartels account for around 20% of all economic activity in Mexico. They have money invested in every aspect of the Mexican economy. Encouraging them to "go legit" could be possible. Unfortunately they fill an economic need in illegal goods and human trafficking that would just be filled by other entities if the cartels got out of those businesses.
In a wholly different vein the advent of AGI and it's eventual deployment along with robotics will decimate the workforce and destroy incentive for immigration. Drugs as the circuses along with some form of ubiquitous will find the cartels in competition with Big Pharma in providing chemical entertainment. Warring on cartels is a strategy for distraction
One of the smartest "anti-drug" proposed policies I've seen.
You're never going to win any war against drugs, the demand is too strong. But deliberately targeting fentanyl with some real teeth is indeed the absolute maximum impact action you could do - we went from ~20k people dying of overdoses pre-fentanyl to 105k+ dying ever year, the biggest cause of death for people under 40 - and those incremental overdoses are basically all fentanyl. I wrote a whole post about this a few weeks ago.
Kudos for an interesting and well thought out article!
Interesting theory, and while I find the "let's leave criminal operations intact" part pretty distasteful, realism may require it.
It's one thing to share a 2000 mile border with a poor, 3rd world state. But Mexico hasn't been THAT for a couple of decades. Mexico is a failed state, a largely "ungoverned space" more similar to Yemen or Somalia than to India (another poor, still mostly 3rd world country.)
Imagine what a huge Somalia right next door could do to us if it wanted to. Tread carefully.
Interesting. I also stepped out of my lane and wrote my take on this issue. I think it would be extremely dangerous to escalate violence against ultra-violent and secretive organizations which are essentially appendages of the Mexican state. Should Americans die for this? Not while our banks profit from laundering their money...
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-secret-war-down-south
And just like that, I understood why no progress has ever been made to stop the drug trade.
Substack is a safe platform for going out of your lanes, human and drug trafficking is a serious issue and progress requires ideas on how to deal with those
>The Mexican cartels are not one big organization and have not been since the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989. Gallardo founded the Guadalajara Cartel and convinced all the other cartels to work together in one big cartel in the 1980s. I would recommend the Netflix series, Narcos: Mexico, to learn more about how Gallardo accomplished this
No ( I don't deny the role of Gallardo as hard as this piece I linked to does [which completely denies the existence of the Guadalajara cartel] but it's still a good one )
https://noria-research.com/mxac/the-guadalajara-cartel-never-existed/
> [Stop cartels] Traffic fentanyl across the border or distribute it within the United States.
Fentanyl and whatever comes next need such trace amounts to have a physiological effect that it's essentially impossible to stop the epidemic via border security. The lethal dose of fentanyl for normal people is 0.00007054792 ounces.
>Conduct raids to arrest or kill high-level members of the cartels. Any arrest will lead to decades in American prison (which is what the cartel leaders fear most). This gives a strong incentive to the Mexican cartels.
Mexico did this from 2006 to ~2018 and all it did was decentralise cartels, empower younger and more violent and 'irrational' leaders eager to prove themselves, completely change their operation methods and organisational structure and massively increase violence.
>Partly with the assistance of the United States, Plan Columbia has returned the nation to something like normalcy. But this was only possible because President Álvaro Uribe was committed to ending the political dominance of the cartels.
Cartel entrenchment in Mexico is very deep and there are many, many actors. Columbia had a few highly centralised cartels which were killing each other in spades, weakening themselves then a well orchestrated push by the Columbians under some guidance of Americans allowed the mid-level cartel men to be killed or brought under control. The situation in Mexico is too far beyond this, "cartel" cells are too autonomous and numerous to properly infiltrate and take out in one fell sweep, so the survivors just get stronger, like a bacteria after anti-biotics.
>(if the above does not work) Shut down all cross-border traffic on the border. This gives an even stronger incentive to the Mexican government as this could collapse their economy
It's not clear that the Mexican government can actually accomplish the destruction of the cartels, even if they try really hard. I strongly believe that they can't. If the Mexican economy is collapsed it will lead to a migration crisis in the United States. It also wouldn't dislodge the cartels, hyper-violent Los Zetas and the Salvadoran MS-13 survive without making the bulk of their money from drugs.
I'm writing a piece on the evolution of the cartels and their entrenchment over the past 40 years that will be out shortly if you want more structured arguments. These are just rebuttals to some flawed points I noticed in this article that you may want to revise.
Again, you do not seem to understand my proposal at all. I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants."
There is no need to “Take out the leadership” or “just eliminate them.”
It is essentially saying to the Mexican cartels and government: “Give up on the small part of your business (fentanyl and illegal immigration) and it will be business as usual.” You do not actually to deal with the various actors. You establish a red-line.
The independent labs stand no chance if the cartels move against them.
The cartels are not stupid. They mainly want to make money and stay out of American jails.
You seem to have misunderstood my argument. All these "flawed points" that you claim that I made are points that I never actually made.
I never claimed we should stop fentanyl "via border security."
I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants." That is very different.
No, it is not true that Mexico sent cartel members to American prisons from 2006 to ~2018. Some went to Mexican prisons, but that is very different. As I mentioned in the article, the Mexican cartels do not fear Mexican prisons. They do fear American prisons.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing like what I propose has been implemented before.
I never claimed that "the Mexican government can actually accomplish the destruction of the cartels, even if they try really hard." I never advocated for the destruction of the cartels at all. I said that we should try to change their behavior by changing the incentive structure so they choose not to:
1) Traffic illegal immigrants across the border.
2) Traffic fentanyl across the border or distribute it within the United States.
And the Mexican government should be incentivized to shut down the trafficking of illegal immigrants across the border.
These are far more limited goals than "the destruction of the cartels." I believe that it makes them far more achievable.
Do not call my points "flawed" until you actually understand my argument.
>No, it is not true that Mexico sent cartel members to American prisons from 2006 to ~2018. Some went to Mexican prisons, but that is very different. As I mentioned in the article, the Mexican cartels do not fear Mexican prisons. They do fear American prisons.
They do fear American prisons, that is true. But sending these leaders to American prisons for a long time if they cannot communicate and run their organisations would have similar effects as killing them in terms of the effects to their organisations. Which is exactly what happened after High-Value Targeting from 2006 - ~2018. Their organisations will fracture and/or typically younger, more bellicose men who want/need to prove themselves find themselves at the top.
>To the best of my knowledge, nothing like what I propose has been implemented before.
Taking out the leadership to incentive cooperation or just eliminate them for being problematic has been tried (look into High-Value Targeting), it just caused Mexican drug organisations to evolve from what they were in the 1990s to what they are today.
>I never claimed we should stop fentanyl "via border security."
Ok fair
>I claimed that "The US government needs to change the incentive structure so the Mexican government or the Mexican cartels voluntarily do what the US government wants." That is very different.
I believe there are too many actors to have to deal with. I could see this working if there were true 'cartels' who controlled tightly the drug trade, but today a lot of fentanyl is produced by independent labs. It's a minor problem for the more established cartels right now. If the Mexican government found a lever to make the major cartels not produce fentanyl (the 'cartels' don't necessarily have full control of themselves!) then other groups will spring up. So little fentanyl has to be produced and trafficked to have a country-wide problem.
>And the Mexican government should be incentivized to shut down the trafficking of illegal immigrants across the border.
This is more doable, especially considering so many of the migrants (right now) aren't Mexican.
The various cartels account for around 20% of all economic activity in Mexico. They have money invested in every aspect of the Mexican economy. Encouraging them to "go legit" could be possible. Unfortunately they fill an economic need in illegal goods and human trafficking that would just be filled by other entities if the cartels got out of those businesses.
In a wholly different vein the advent of AGI and it's eventual deployment along with robotics will decimate the workforce and destroy incentive for immigration. Drugs as the circuses along with some form of ubiquitous will find the cartels in competition with Big Pharma in providing chemical entertainment. Warring on cartels is a strategy for distraction