Terror Defense No Al Qaida Terror
Miscellaneous Defense Drugs
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- Cocaine production is drastically decreasing now
- Marijuana legalization has diminished drug production
- Marijuana legalization decreases ALL illegal drug trafficking
Miscellaneous DefenseDrugsThe Drug trade no longer fuels DTOs or their violenceMorris 13— Ph.D, International Security program fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard (Evelyn Krache, “Think Again: Mexican Drug Cartels, Foreign Policy, December 4, 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/12/04/think-again-mexican-drug-cartels/). WM The same can be said of the DTOs, which are independent and competing entities — not an association like OPEC. The sale of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and meth remains extremely profitable. The U.S. Justice Department has put the cartels’ U.S. drug trade at $39 billion annually. But the DTOs have diversified their business considerably, both to increase their profits and to exclude rivals from new sources of revenue. For example, they are dealing increasingly in pirated intellectual property, like counterfeit software, CDs, and DVDs. The most destructive new “product,” however, is people. The cartels have built a multibillion-dollar business in human trafficking, including the shipment of both illegal immigrants and sex workers. What the DTOs are really selling is logistics, much like Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. Wal-Mart was one of the first retailers to run its own fleet of trucks, providing tailored shipping at a lower cost that in turn gave the company an edge over its competitors. Similarly, Amazon may have started as a bookseller, but its dominance, as Fast Company put it, is “now less about what it sells than how it sells,” providing a distribution hub for all sorts of products. Drug-trafficking organizations are using the same philosophy to cut costs, better control distribution, and develop new sources of revenue. The one element of the U.S.-Mexico relationship that has received no shortage of attention is the border, yet the technology and money dedicated to enhancing security there have not been enough to thwart creative DTOs. The Sinaloa cartel, for example, has an extensive network of expertly constructed tunnels under the border, some featuring air-conditioning. (The workers who build the tunnels are frequently executed after the work is completed.) At the other extreme, traffickers have used catapults to launch deliveries from Mexico into the United States. Logistics, then, are the DTOs’ main source of revenue, and illegal drugs are but one of the products they offer. As the cartels’ revenue streams become increasingly diversified, the drug trade will become less and less important. In fact, the prospect of the DTOs’ selling their services to terrorists, say by transporting weapons of mass destruction across the U.S.-Mexico border, has begun to frighten analysts both inside and outside government. “But the Violence Is Unique to the Drug Trade.” No. The most brutal DTO battles are not over customers or suppliers but over ports and trade routes. The Mexican state of Michoacán, with its large Pacific port of Lázaro Cárdenas, has suffered a surge in violence as the remnants of La Familia Michoacana and the rising Los Caballeros Templarios fight for dominance. This May, Los Caballeros Templarios ambushed and shot 10 farmers after they met with government officials to protest cartel extortion. As one farmer described the DTO, “It’s like a monster with a thousand arms.” Brutality on Mexico’s borders is also largely a function of logistics, or so the pattern would suggest. On the U.S.-Mexico border, for instance, the city of Nuevo Laredo has been racked by violence for over a decade. Not coincidentally, the city’s northern edge lies less than a mile from Interstate 35, a north-south highway running through Dallas, Kansas City, and Minneapolis and connecting to major east-west routes. Mexico’s southern border has also seen a spike in violent crime, as the cartels move their products — guns, cocaine from Colombia, and immigrants from Central America — north to the United States. Cartels also use violence to further less concrete objectives. Spectacular acts, such as rolling severed heads onto a nightclub dance floor (as La Familia Michoacana did in 2006), are designed to shock and frighten, not to move product or attract customers. Assassinating the family of a Mexican marine who had participated (and been killed) in a raid against a DTO, as happened in late 2009, was an unambiguous threat against all law enforcement personnel. And the DTOs regularly threaten and kill reporters — Mexico is the fourth most dangerous nation in the world for journalists (behind only Syria, Somalia, and Pakistan), according to Reporters Without Borders — both to prevent the release of specific information about cartel activities and to discourage reporting on them in the first place. A recent narcomanta (“drug banner”) posted over two bodies hanging from a highway overpass in Nuevo Laredo sent a clear message: “This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the Internet.… I’m about to get you.” Violence, in other words, is not a function of the drug trade specifically. It is how the cartels manage everything from marketing to public relations to human resources. Cocaine production is drastically decreasing nowThompson 15— Latin Post Reporter (Nicole Akoukou, “South America's Cocaine Industry in on the Decline, Impacting the International Drug Market,” Latin Post, Mar. 09, 2015, http://www.latinpost.com/articles/41302/20150309/south-americas-cocaine-industry-in-on-the-decline-impacting-the-international-drug-market.htm). WM South America's cocaine industry is losing speed, according to recent reports, which suggests Colombia and Peru has seen a decline in production. Colombia's drug industry has been appraised at more than $10 billion, and the cultivation of coca has contributed to the worldwide movement and consumption of drugs, particularly in the U.S. Likewise, Peru, a nation that overtook Colombia as the world's leading coca and cocaine producer, has a transnational crime network that produces 340 tons of cocaine annually, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). But, both nations seem to be losing gusto. According to the United Nations, Peru's position as the No. 1 coca and cocaine exporter is fleeting. In recent years, crop levels dropped in Peru, and Bolivia's crops have diminished. And even though Colombia's level of crops have not changed, the nation has the highest number of drug busts and seizures in South America. However, seizures also have dipped 5 percent since last year. According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), South American land covered by the coca plant dropped by a third in the last seven years. And though Colombia's cocaine territory is unchanged, production dropped by 25 percent between 2012 and 2013. Crop reduction signifies an impact on Colombia's economics of cocaine capitalism and its international consumer markets. And this has translated to lowered availability of Western Europe and U.S; it's tremendously low compared to its highest point. The INCB has insisted that the Integral and Sustainable Alternative Development program has contributed to Peru's recent decline. It's an initiative that's been credited with decreasing the household production of the coca bush by 35 percent in the last three years. According to Colombia Reports, the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, publicized a pilot program to address illegal crop substitutions in Putumayo to take effect in April 2015. He claimed fumigation wouldn't be necessary. Instead, the plan will integrate reparations through the Victims' Unit and with infrastructure improvements, reported newspaper El Espectador. Drug consumption and public health will also be addressed. Also, Colombian officials and FARC have come to the agreement that the FARC will abandon drug trade and trafficking to facilitate their legalization as a political association. Marijuana legalization has diminished drug productionReisenwitz 14—DC based writer (Kathy, “US Marijuana Legalization Already Weakening Mexican Cartels, Violence Expected to Decline,” Town Hall, Aug 11, 2014, http://townhall.com/columnists/cathyreisenwitz/2014/08/11/us-marijuana-legalization-already-weakening-mexican-cartels-violence-expected-to-decline-n1876088/page/full). WM America’s first foray into rolling back prohibition 2.0 is barely underway, and already marijuana prices have dropped low enough to convince some cartel farmers in Mexico to abandon the crop. Mere months after two US states legalized marijuana sales, five Nobel Prize-winning economists released a UN report recommending that countries end their war on drugs. It would seem they were onto something. But in order to further decrease drug-trade violence in so-called producer states, the US first needs to legalize marijuana, but then also the US must stop using the UN to pressure producer countries into supply-based drug prohibition. Marijuana legalization decreases ALL illegal drug traffickingBRICKEN 6/29— attorney focused on marijuana law (HILARY BRICKEN, “Marijuana Legalization: Bad For The Cartels, Better For All,” Above the Law, a legal organization viewing the world of law and the legal offshoot of breaking media, Jun 29, 2015, http://abovethelaw.com/2015/06/marijuana-legalization-bad-for-the-cartels-better-for-all/). WM According to Mexican security analyst Alejandro Hope, “approximately 30 percent of cartels’ drug export revenues come from marijuana.” Though on one level marijuana legalization has little effect on the cartels’ ability to smuggle hard drugs like heroin into the United States, just reducing the cartels’ marijuana sales will reduce their power, influence, and wealth and should correspondingly reduce their ability to move heroin and other hard drugs across borders. Standing alone, any reduction in the drug cartels’ power and presence in Mexico and in Colombia would be a great achievement. We may already be seeing the results in Mexico of marijuana legalization in the United States. Violent crimes are decreasing in Mexico. Homicides hit a high in 2011, with Mexican police departments reporting almost 23,000 murders. Last year, they reported 15,649. It is both our responsibility and to our country’s benefit to help reduce the drug violence in Mexico and Colombia that we helped create. Legalizing marijuana is a pretty good place to start. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 2.62 Mb. Share with your friends:
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