A Tsunami of Cocaine

WhatInThe said:
Without demand there wouldn't be supply to be smuggled into the US. Drugs and alcohol have been an issue through the centuries. As long as there is that part of the population that wants instant chemical gratification there will be drug smuggling.

Until the addicts actually want to stop drugging for themselves and not others including a court or family they will continue to abuse illegal drugs keeping drug dealers in business. They must want sobriety. Programs, rehabs etc are a tool but until the junkies want to use them to change they won't. Society can help them but not do it for them.

Throw in greed which is another issue it will not help. Both the greedy dealers and corrupt officials etc have onething in common with the junkies and that is selfishness. It's about them and their life. It's about their personal satisfaction.
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Yes, indeed. I once knew a single parent mother who raised her son. Unfortunately, she had no clue on how to discipline him. As a youngster, he began stealing anything that he could, even from his mother. Yet she did nothing to teach him. , Eventually, he became a heroin junkie. His mother kept paying his rent for a nice house.
I tried to talk to her about this...many times. Her response to me ? "Don't even go there."
 

In this vast country of ours, we have lots of land where small cargo planes can land, and do with not only cocaine, but tons of fentanyl as well. How pure that junk is, we can only guess unless they are caught. We've attempted to close off the borders to this country, but between politicians and lack of employees, it is a daunting job. This is a huge country.
 
Lewkat said:
In this vast country of ours, we have lots of land where small cargo planes can land, and do with not only cocaine, but tons of fentanyl as well. How pure that junk is, we can only guess unless they are caught. We've attempted to close off the borders to this country, but between politicians and lack of employees, it is a daunting job. This is a huge country.
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We have radar. When any plane crosses the border, it IMMEDIATELY shows up on radar.
 

Lewkat said:
Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you what's inside nor does it always track you once you fly below it.
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True, radar can not tell you what is inside, but I'm fairly certain that ALL aircraft show up on radar. That is why we developed the ultra expensive "stealth aircraft".

In any event, we must use all of our available arsenal of weapons, manpower, finances, diplomacy, citizen involvement, and pressure on foreign governments.

One of the 1st things I'd do if I had the power is to hire more and better trained armed personel to patrol the border regions. Yes, that would cost significant amounts of money, but there must be some ways we can reduce costs in other areas to pay for more personel.

Currently, there are numerous areas along the lower Rio Grande where Mexicans simply float huge amounts of drugs into the U.S. Not even a fence of any kind on our side of the border. That, my friends is totally unacceptable.
 
senior chef said:
Something must be done. Perhaps something drastic, like completely closing the Southern border from all traffic. This would surely have a most dramatic impact south of the border.
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Probably won't work, too much comes by air and sea, not to mention through tunnels under the border.

So long as there is demand and money it will get here. The only solution I see is legalization and regulation. Not ideal, I would like to see it disappear but we now have abundant evidence that our war on drugs ain't working and I don't see how it ever can work.
 
Border security that might effectively reduce drugs coming into our country would also complicate illegal immigration entry that significant numbers of corporations quietly depend on to reduce product costs, provide a low end market for, and increase their profits. This is also why housing costs are now so high. Allow unlimited immigration and force working class people that can actually barely pay for high housing costs into buying and renting higher cost properties they would not otherwise choose to if given a choice. What they might is being taken by the lowest immigrant and poorest desperate wealth classes. Another side of increasing wealth disparity, haves and have nots.

Even after 911 and the threat of nuclear weapon entries, corporations given their global markets, we citizens given our politicians in control were not able to change how vast numbers of huge shipping containers enter or leave the USA without the slightest inspections lest it affect profits. Our Western capitalist economic systems as controlled by powerful elites depends on constant endless increasing infrastructure and development, population growth, a Ponzi scheme, that ends with all of we Earth monkeys living like sardines in a can as the planet's environment and all its precious life just gets worse that each succeeding generation loses perspective on.

When people talk about what are considered illegal drugs, they almost always ignore as though they don't count equating whatever with socially acceptable legal drugs like caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and a long growing list of prescription behavioral neuron phamaceuticals. Consider taking away those legal drugs from society and then ask the same question of how that might be possible.

The only obvious solution would require a totalitarian government that requires everyone to pee into bottles etc. But then that black and white solution doesn't address the real problem of what level of use might be allowed without resulting in significant abuse and negatives. In a society that has convinced itself that administering pain or unpleasantness to lawbreakers (aka corporal punishment) is uncivilized, barbaric, primitive, there will never be enough pressure to change attitudes of those that not only break drug policies but also all manner of other illegal activities.
 
senior chef said:
True, radar can not tell you what is inside, but I'm fairly certain that ALL aircraft show up on radar. That is why we developed the ultra expensive "stealth aircraft".
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to clear up that point
In many cases, yes you can fly under the radar because typical civilian radar is line of sight, meaning that it has to have a straight unobstructed path to an object in order to "see" it.

This is because it works by sending a radar signal out and waiting for it to reflect off of something. If it reflects off of another object, like the ground, a mountain, a building, a thunderstorm, etc. then it won't see what is behind it.

Since the earth is round, flying "under" the radar is flying beneath the coverage area that the radar can "see" directly from where it is, and the height of radar coverage depends on the distance from the site as well as the terrain.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/...ny cases, yes you,to reflect off of something.
 
Knight said:
In many cases, yes you can fly under the radar because typical civilian radar is line of sight, meaning that it has to have a straight unobstructed path to an object in order to "see" it.
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And as I understand it a lot of the drugs are dropped from the planes, often at night, so they are clean when they land. Trying to stop this is an unwinnable game of whack a mole...
 
senior chef said:
True, radar can not tell you what is inside, but I'm fairly certain that ALL aircraft show up on radar. That is why we developed the ultra expensive "stealth aircraft".

In any event, we must use all of our available arsenal of weapons, manpower, finances, diplomacy, citizen involvement, and pressure on foreign governments.

One of the 1st things I'd do if I had the power is to hire more and better trained armed personel to patrol the border regions. Yes, that would cost significant amounts of money, but there must be some ways we can reduce costs in other areas to pay for more personel.

Currently, there are numerous areas along the lower Rio Grande where Mexicans simply float huge amounts of drugs into the U.S. Not even a fence of any kind on our side of the border. That, my friends is totally unacceptable.
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You are talking about military intervention. This is a Homeland Security issue, so all those types of aircraft, etc. are not available to halt drug traffic. The Coast Guard is a close to military as you can get.
 
If we can't stop the drugs coming in, it seems like we could do a better job at stopping the money from going out.

Money_Laundering_Cycle.png


If we can impose/enforce sanctions/seizures against the Russians, it seems like we could launch a similar campaign against the major drug cartels and gangs involved in the distribution of drugs.
 
Murrmurr said:
Solve the problem of addiction.

.........................
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True reduce or eliminate demand is a HUGE part of it.

But it's not all about the chemicals. On the addict side the chemical doesn't manufacture all thoughts and actions. It lowers impulse control and allows the addict to act on thoughts and ideas running through head. In other words when they rob, steal, kill, lie or try to manipulate people including family, spouses etc many were already weak willed, ethically and criminally challenged. There's some that had traumatic events or injury but many don't.

Perhaps teaching everyone the life skills that are emphasized in rehab programs and/or that addicts seem to lack including coping skills and self sufficiency as a start. I see two big issues in society today-instant gratification and inability to handle negative events. People must understand things won't always go their way and must learn to keep going on. This is where sayings like it's not that a person lost it's what they do after-that is the test and where life skills must be taught.

But there are also just a bunch of selfish greedy people in the culture which keeps the drug train rolling. It's about them.

It's not all about the chemicals
 
Murrmurr said:
We funded it up until just recently...like only a few years ago, I think.
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Money wasted. We have more addicts than we have ever had. Oregon is now known as the drug state. They do not arrest open drug use for any drug. It’s like them saying, “Hey, you want to kill yourself? Come to Oregon. We support open addiction.”

I do agree with Oregon that incarceration for drug use does not deter using drugs. But, I think if they are going to allow open use, the addicts need to have a place to go to get help, if they wish.
 
As said above full legalization is the only reasonable answer. Putting half of the money that's spent on enforcement and incarceration into rehabilitation and education would go a long way to helping things, not to mention removing the majority of the crime and violence end of things. Just the act of legalizing it would remove much of the incentive for using, human nature being what it is.
 
Aunt Bea said:
If we can't stop the drugs coming in, it seems like we could do a better job at stopping the money from going out.
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One interesting thing I learned this week from watching the YouTube videos of Canadian Border Security is that nowadays there are dogs trained to sniff out cash! I knew about drug sniffing dogs, but was surprised about the cash ones. I wonder how they know the difference between people with a couple dollars versus people with a lot of drug-money-cash.
 
Murrmurr said:
Solve the problem of addiction.

It would actually have been far less expensive to research the causes of addiction and ultimately effectively treat it than to fund the "war on drugs" the way our gov't did. Nearly every dime of the trillion dollars we spent on the War on Drugs was totally wasted. A trillion toward research and treatment could have actually accomplished something extremely beneficial to our society at large and our collective futures. But, of course, the gov't has a totally different mind-set/frame of reference/ultimate goal. A generally improved society doesn't seem to come into it at all.
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I agree 100%, we should stop wasting money on the "War".

And to the extent we can reduce addiction that would be great. I am behind spending some money on it.

However I suspect it is unrealistic to expect to "Solve the problem of addiction", its too much a part of human nature, and has been since we discovered drugs.
 
Alligatorob said:
I agree 100%, we should stop wasting money on the "War".

And to the extent we can reduce addiction that would be great. I am behind spending some money on it.

However I suspect it is unrealistic to expect to "Solve the problem of addiction", its too much a part of human nature, and has been since we discovered drugs.
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I disagree. With research and trials based on research, I don't think it's unrealistic at all. Isn't it true that most of the drugs addicts get addicted to changes their nature?
 
I know this is not an easy fix - but how did we change from a tobacco-smoking society where everyone smoked in restaurants and hotels (I still remember that) and now you hardly see anyone smoking? How did we stop so many people from smoking? This is mostly about the U.S. I am talking about.

The campaign to stop smoking worked. Why? Smoking was linked to cancer and disease. Cigarette boxes talked about the health hazards of smoking. Here's an interesting article about that -
https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/the-study-that-helped-spur-the-us-stop-smoking-movement.html

Maybe link the illegal drugs to health problems. Do any of these illegal drugs cause health issues? Also, can we link the illegal drugs to economic problems? For example, people who take these drugs drop out of society, cost their families money, cost the health system a load of money...

We need a lever that can push this huge problem of illegal drugs into orbit and away from our families and children. I know of at least two families that are dealing with this issue and it has devastated them.
 
Murrmurr said:
I disagree. With research and trials based on research, I don't think it's unrealistic at all. Isn't it true that most of the drugs addicts get addicted to changes their nature?
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"Isn't it true that most of the drugs addicts get addicted to changes their nature?"

I am sorry, but I don't understand what this means. Please say it so an oldman can better understand. Thanks.
 

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