Drug wars and the balloon effect
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
Why have billions of dollars and thousands of anti-narcotics agents around the world failed to throttle the global traffic in cocaine, heroin and marijuana? Blame wrong-headed policies, largely driven by the United States, and what experts call the balloon effect.
Squeezing a balloon in one place makes it expand in another. Destroy drug crops in one region and cultivation moves to another. Cut a supply route in one place and another one springs up. Take the example of Colombia and Mexico, at present a focus of U.S. attention because of large-scale violence that threatens to spill across the border.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, almost all the cocaine consumed in the United States was grown in Colombia and shipped to South Florida along a variety of sea and air routes. Colombian traffickers fighting for market share turned Miami into a city where shootouts, contract killings and kidnappings became part of daily life.
That began to change when enraged citizens appealed to the federal government for help to crack down on the “cocaine cowboys.” Then President Ronald Reagan established a special force to cut the cocaine pipelines and end the violence. “The Mexicans must rue the day the South Florida Task Force was set up,” said Peter Reuter, a scholar at the University of Maryland. “That was the beginning of the problems it faces today.”
Within weeks of its formation in 1982, the task force scored several spectacular successes. A string of seizures of large quantities of cocaine and marijuana prompted Colombian trafficking organisations to shift their smuggling routes to Mexico, where they partnered with criminal networks.
By 1988, the balloon effect had become obvious: The Mexican Defence Ministry reported it had discovered 4.8 tonnes of cocaine in a cave in Chihuahua near the U.S. border. It was then the world’s biggest seizure of the drug. Its Colombian origin was not in doubt — Mexico produced no cocaine of its own.
In American crisis, anger and guns
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. —
In the first two months of this year, around 2.5 million Americans bought guns, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2008. It was great news for gun makers and a sign of a dark mood in the country.
Gun sales shot up almost immediately after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential elections on November 4 and firearm enthusiasts rushed to stores, fearing he would tighten gun controls despite campaign pledges to the contrary.
After the November spike, gun dealers say, a second motive has helped drive sales: fear of social unrest as the ailing economy pushes the newly destitute deeper into misery. Many of the newly poor come from the relentlessly rising ranks of the unemployed. In February alone, an average of 23,000 people a day lost their jobs.
Tent cities for the homeless have expanded outside a string of American cities, from Sacramento and Phoenix to Atlanta and Seattle, for people who are living the American dream in reverse. First they lose their jobs, then their health insurance, then their homes, then their hopes. The encampments are reminiscent of Third World refugee camps.
Often former members of the middle class, tent dwellers’ accounts of their plight to television cameras have a common theme: “I never thought this could happen to me.” Unlike the victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that destroyed much of New Orleans, many of the newly-poor are white.
The FBI says it carried out 1,213,885 criminal background checks on prospective firearms buyers in January and 1,259,078 in February, jumps of 28% and 23.3% respectively. Keen demand turned the stocks of publicly-trade firearms companies like Smith & Wesson (up 80% since November) and Sturm Ruger (up more than 100%) into shining stars on the New York Stock Exchange.
I have just got to leave a comment on this, I have been reading here and I am just shaking my head. The ignorance I see is unbelievable. First, to the idiot who stated that this is a democracy, well, first of all, this is supposed to be a Constitutional Republic, this is so that 51% of the population doesnt legislate tyranny on the other 49%. Boy did you flunk history class and really hooked up the umbilical cord to the cool-aid tv tube. Your brain has been washed, this also goes to the ones who keep thinking in the left-right paradym, hellooo! The dems and the repubs are working the same policies, they just highlight different aspects of the same plan, and do the same things that the other does, just under the radar more than what they publicised. Obama, who was heralded by the mainstream media (now that should have been a red flag there) who are bought and paid for by the corporate elite, who actually have the money to control this, well, the list goes on with them. But, the old devide and conquer, give the illusion of separate parties, own the “opposing” mouth pieces, and keep the sheep distracted while taking everything from them one piece at a time. Have you ever seen them repeal anything the other party does? I havent, at least nothing of value, they just add onto it and runn with that ball, or bury it. Has the war criminals been indicted? Patriot act repealed? A real investigation into 9/11? NO you havent and you wont, because they work together to accumulate more power for the government and less for you. Left right is a lie and a brainwashing technique, get out of that, it IS us and them, but not the way your thinking, it is the people, and the government now, the police dont protect and serve as much as they enforce “policy” of the “rulers”, and also act as extra tax collection through absurdities. Wake up, as for the idiots who want to twist the 2nd ammendment….heh, maybe you should READ and stop parroting your fox news hero or something, a well regulated militia is a well stocked and maintained militia…what is the militia?….it is the whole of the people, not the collective, but individuals working together which is the “unorganized militia”. Back then, there were no police, there was no military in the time of peace, the people themselves were educated and respected what it meant to be armed, and its primary purpose was to throw off a corrupt government, so if you think the government should be registering and giving permission through permits for a right that was to keep that same government in check is a good idea, you should get some chickens, and find a fox to guard them for you while your sleeping. Idiots.
Logic and reason are concepts Americans have not warmed up to in over 50 years. Clearly common sense is not very common. As long as public policy is debated from the stand point of dogma and other preconceived notions, working solutions to mitigate the ills that drug use visits upon society will elude us.
Thomas Jefferson stated the sole legitimate function of government is to intercede where the the actions of one party or individual interferes with another party or parties exercise of their inalienable rights. Nothing more.