A Tsunami of Cocaine

senior chef

senior chef

Senior Member
You might be surprised to learn that the annual importation of cocaine into the U.S is aprox 470 TONS. Only a tiny percentage of that is ever intercepted by authorities.
IMO, the U.S. is not doing anywhere near enough to stop this tsunami.

Yes, the U.S. does try to stop that flow at the border. Especially, trying to catch "mules" at the auto border. ( the line to cross the border at at Tijuana, by car, is usually 3-4 hours long wait in line. Even at 2-3 am the line is 1.5 hours long. For trucks, they must cross a special line a few miles east.

The drug dealers use every means possible to escape detection ... even semi-submersible submarines. They fly it across, hand carry it, use autos, trucks, trains, high speed boats, cargo ships, and even tourists.

One of the results of this is that the biggest Central and Southern American drug dealers are worth in excess of BILLIONS of dollars. They, the big drug dealers, can easily bribe their local officials/police. If they can not bribe them, then they are assassinated. This results in a nearly Something
complete corrupt government south of the border.

It is true that SOME Central American officials are free of corruption, and they occasionally manage to capture and punish big dealers BUT this is rare.
You may remember "El Chapo" who was caught and imprisoned. He escaped Mexican prison TWICE. The last time he had his army of "soldiers" dig a mile long tunnel under the walls and came right up into "El Chapos" prison cell. (Finally, when he was recaptured, the Mexican authorities relented and turned him over to the U.S. "El Chapo" is now doing life without possibility of parole in Federal maximum prison.)

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.
 

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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The traffickers would just go to another border. Or fly private planes to private, hidden airfields.

I agree with you that the situation is awful, I don't care if people want drugs, and I think more could be done, but I don't know what. It doesn't help that the money involved is so huge -- plenty to pay bribes with.

Drug rehab mostly doesn't work. Perhaps we could do a better job with that. When my client was in a locked rehab, he somehow managed to get cocaine in there and sell it to the other patients. I screamed bloody murder about that, but no one cared, except they arrested my client. It's not like he was Houdini.
 
WheatenLover said:
The traffickers would just go to another border. Or fly private planes to private, hidden airfields.

I agree with you that the situation is awful, I don't care if people want drugs, and I think more could be done, but I don't know what. It doesn't help that the money involved is so huge -- plenty to pay bribes with.

Drug rehab mostly doesn't work. Perhaps we could do a better job with that. When my client was in a locked rehab, he somehow managed to get cocaine in there and sell it to the other patients. I screamed bloody murder about that, but no one cared, except they arrested my client. It's not like he was Houdini.
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The only other U.S. border is far to the North, in Canada.
I could be wrong but I believe that the U.S. does a good job keeping track of all planes flying across the border. When any unregistered planes are located, the U.S. Air Force intercepts them and escorts them to an airport where U.S. Customs are waiting.
 
How do we know that 470 tons of cocaine comes into the country, are the drug traffickers providing statistics on their illegal activity? 🤔

Unless the United States provides bigger incentives to the Mexican government than the drug cartels nothing will stop drugs from coming into the country.

IMO it would take military style crackdowns and raids to stop the flow of drugs and cash through Mexico.

Very sad situation.
 
Uptosnuff said:
I agree that we have a horrible drug problem in the U.S. and it's getting worse all the time. The problem is - people want drugs. It's as simple as that. How do you fight a problem that so many are addicted to?
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Well, one of the 1st steps is to attack the problem at it's source. Do whatever it takes to get governments where cocaine is grown, to allow us to burn the plantations.

I firmly believe that if we can defeat the Taliban, and kill Usama Bin laden, we can do anything IF we set our minds to it.
 
Uptosnuff said:
I agree that we have a horrible drug problem in the U.S. and it's getting worse all the time. The problem is - people want drugs. It's as simple as that. How do you fight a problem that so many are addicted to?
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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.
 
Aunt Bea said:
Unless the United States provides bigger incentives to the Mexican government than the drug cartels nothing will stop drugs from coming into the country.

IMO it would take military style crackdowns and raids to stop the flow of drugs and cash through Mexico.

Very sad situation.
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The U.S. has been waging the War on Drugs for since the Nixon administration. Much of the war on drugs has been military style, but at the end of the day the Big Money flows into the pockets of officials, insuring the uninterrupted flow of drugs along the supply chain.
In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the War on Drugs, estimated that the United States spends $51 billion annually on these initiatives, and in 2021, after 50 years of the drug war, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it
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Nathan said:
The U.S. has been waging the War on Drugs for since the Nixon administration. Much of the war on drugs has been military style, but at the end of the day the Big Money flows into the pockets of officials, insuring the uninterrupted flow of drugs along the supply chain.
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We lost the war years ago. Nancy Reagan tried, but it never helped.
 
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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Solve the problem of addiction? Easier said than done. It’s like any other addiction whether it be smoking, food, sex, gaming, whatever. You do it a few times and each time you do it, the person enjoys it more. After awhile, the person is hooked. The best way to avoid addiction is to never start.
 
Moon Rat said:
Solve the problem of addiction? Easier said than done. It’s like any other addiction whether it be smoking, food, sex, gaming, whatever. You do it a few times and each time you do it, the person enjoys it more. After awhile, the person is hooked. The best way to avoid addiction is to never start.
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Nobody's saying it's easy, but there are causes and there is treatment. It's criminal (imo) that the US hasn't yet funded the research that would greatly improve identifying causes and finding effective treatment.
 
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.
Click to expand...
I've been enjoying watching Canadian, British, and Australian border YouTube videos this past week, they all have drugs trying to get into their countries too. It is interesting to see how the drugs are disguised. But, it would not be practical to close all borders of all countries, we'd all lose more than would be gained (tomatoes, avocados, etc). I'd hate to think of the price increases if we could only get fruit grown in our own country, omg just thought about coffee, do we grow any coffee at all in the USA?

I think we should try, maybe as a limited couple year experiment, legalizing all the drugs. It seems like we just are wasting tax dollars and enriching drug cartels by trying (unsuccessfully) to prevent drugs, it would seem more logical to spend the money trying to fix the 'demand' side and also would be helpful economically to tax it.

Plus the prices would drop and that would go a long way to reducing the money the drug cartels have (though depends I guess if they have been investing their money well, I read that organized crime in America got so much money during prohibition that they still benefit from it).
 
senior chef said:
The only other U.S. border is far to the North, in Canada.
I could be wrong but I believe that the U.S. does a good job keeping track of all planes flying across the border. When any unregistered planes are located, the U.S. Air Force intercepts them and escorts them to an airport where U.S. Customs are waiting.
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What about Florida? And the east coast? And the west coast?
 
Another thought. We could put a bounty on illegal drugs. Pay a wide range of people to snitch on dealers (not users). I'm talking about significant amounts of money. The more drugs recovered, the higher the reward/bounty.
Also, a huge reward for turning in BIG dealers.
 
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.
 
Aunt Bea said:
How do we know that 470 tons of cocaine comes into the country, are the drug traffickers providing statistics on their illegal activity? 🤔

Unless the United States provides bigger incentives to the Mexican government than the drug cartels nothing will stop drugs from coming into the country.

IMO it would take military style crackdowns and raids to stop the flow of drugs and cash through Mexico.

Very sad situation.
Click to expand...
Mexico occasionally uses Mexican Marines to go after certain big dealers. that is how El Chapo was finally caught for the last time.
 

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