Corporations instead of cartels -- or be careful what you wish for.

[Robb]

Obama spoke in Colombia on the "war on drugs", and had I thought a rather nuanced answer to a question about legalization.

President Obama said the answer to the increasing power of drug cartels in the hemisphere was to encourage societies with strong economics, rule of law, and a sound law enforcement infrastructure.

"I personally and my administration's position is that legalization is not the answer, that in fact if you think about how it would end up operating, the capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries, if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting, if not more corrupting than the status quo," he said.

This sounds to me like a transition strategy. If legalization happened tomorrow, he's suggesting cartels would exert the same corrupting influence on countries like Colombia that they do today -- only without fear of even a token reprisal from law enforcement. Instead, I think he's saying, you knock out the cartels first, then legalize.

Then, of course, corporations will move in. Drugs will always be big business -- you can grow your own, but people can grow their own vegetables, too, and don't. I understand the administration's position that a corporation might operate slightly more ethically than a cartel that suddenly gains legal status -- but I don't agree the difference will be as marked as one might hope.

[elleng]

1. Well regulated corporations, in all spheres,

address MANY of everyone's legitimate issues, imo.

[Vincardog]

2. His position is a sellout to the for profit Prison industry. It is not the one I support.

[Robb]

3. What's your vision for a path to legalization that avoids the issue of corruption?

...be it cartel or corporate?

[Vincardog]

6. U grow it U smoke it, The corruption is a result of the WOD. It is disingenuous to demand that it

be solved before the failed policy is withdrawn.

[Robb]

7. Do you grow your own vegetables? How about your neighbors?

Do you raise your own pigs?

Do you truly expect everyone to grow their own cannabis?

[Vincardog]

18. How is that relevant? Disingenuous red herring

[Fumesucker]

10. There is no path that avoids corruption..

Corruption is part of the human condition, it exists in every human endeavor to a greater or lesser extent.

The the politicians created the drug war which created these powerful cartels and now the government is being held hostage by their very existence.

A fine pickle you've got us into Ollie..

[4th law of robotics]

21. What kind of corruption?

A) unethical business practices found in every large sector of the economy or B) murdering or threatening officials to coerce them in to not enforcing the law?

If it's A . . . well nothing. That's going to happen. Same as with any kind of industry.

If it's B then that will be effected by legalizing the trade and forcing it to settle disputes in court, using lawyers rather than hitmen.

[Rex]

4. It is convenient for a superpower to develop

a form of fundamental attribution error. Also a lot of willful binary thinking.

Afghanistan is a GREAT example of this and also a perfect lesson that having a 'military' in a country actually increases growth of illegal narcotics and growth of the drug trade.

Governments can ignore this as administration after administration passes the buck to the next group, never actually having any sincere intentions of legalizing something they spent trillions of dollars on. That is how people get voted into office, who cares the end results in 20 or 30 years.

The DEA means JOBS! Homeland Security means JOBS! JOBS JOBS JOBS! DHS will probably become the next MIC.

We can build more private prisons.

There are other cartels out there that would love us some more private for 'profit prisons'.

They can make stuff.

[Junkdrawer]

5. Cocaine or Marijuana?

Marijuana is and could be a US crop.

For the record: I am on the fence in regard to marijuana legalization.

[Robb]

8. Consider fruits and vegetables.

Intuitively we should import next to none, but as the price of growing produce abroad shifts down, we import.

This chart of volume vs. value is illustrative:



We don't spend much more on foreign produce than we used to, but we're getting a lot more of it by volume. I don't think cannabis would be different.

[Junkdrawer]

9. I think, make that know, there are lots and lots of corn farmers who would LOVE to grow marijuana...

we have more than enough capacity to supply ourselves with pot. To say nothing of tobacco farmers.

Apples and oranges (pun intended).

[Robb]

11. Well, they'd love to grow it for what they could make *now*.

We don't need to import wheat, either, but we do -- mostly in pasta and noodles, but doing it reduces demand for our own wheat domestically. Which causes the price to drop.

If cannabis was legal tomorrow, where would the cheapest pot be grown -- Indiana or Mexico?

[Junkdrawer]

12. If needed, tariffs. I can think of lots of reasons for not legalizing marijuana.

Mostly having to do with pot and kids. But the reason cited is thin. In fact, the putting foreign marijuana cartels out of business would be a plus for legalization.

[Robb]

13. Tariffs could solve the import issue.

But tariffs on value-added products -- I don't know what the pot corollary to the noodle is, but it's surely something -- are historically unsuccessful.

More to the point: could the cartels even compete with, say, Monsanto or ConAgra getting into the cannabis business? Could the small Oregon grower?

Imagine WalMart sourcing its newest product, a wildly successful marijuana soda, from Thailand.

See where I'm going? Obama's talking about a post-cartel world that's controlled by the same corporations that almost by design limit consumer choice and quality. I'm wondering how we avoid that.

[Junkdrawer]

15. Notice the flood of Chinese cigarettes?

Neither do I.

Look, I don't know what a Legal Pot country would look like. And in many, many ways it scares me. But this is not one of them.

[Robb]

17. Corporate dealmaking.

That's actually a great example. IIRC Marlboro now makes cigs for its Chinese market in a partnership with state-owned tobacco production facilities inside China -- and with Chinese tobacco, no less.

[4th law of robotics]

22. I think you'd find that we'd grow even fewer fruits/veggies here

and it would be a far more profitable venture for foreign importers if they were subject to the same laws as marijuana.

Legalizing it doesn't mean we will become entirely self-sufficient over night, or ever really. We import all sorts of things that are legal to produce here.

But it does put us in a better competitive position if we can do it here legally.

[Peace Patriot]

14. Yes, I noticed Obama's iffy language, too. Very interesting.

I think it is notable that rightwing presidents in LatAm are the ones pushing for legalization. Santos in Colombia (of all places--the Cocaine Capitol of the World!). Perez in Guatemala. And, just prior to them, a commission of former presidents of Mexico (mostly right or centrist). They said legalize marijuana and re-think the entire "war on drugs." Santos and Perez have not fudged it that way--they are for legalization of all the outlawed drugs.

You'd think it would be the leftist presidents: Say, Chavez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia, who threw the DEA out of their countries. Morales, who legalized the coca leaf (Indigenous medicine, not cocaine). Correa in Ecuador who threw the U.S. military base out (ostensible purpose of the base--drug surveillance).

But nope, this is coming from the right. And who does the right serve? Corporate interests. And which corporate interest would profiteer nicely from legalization and has probably completed their R&D by now?

Big Pharma.

Another fact into this mix. Colombia is a U.S. client state and no one becomes president of Colombia without vetting and approval by the U.S. Leon Panetta's first visible action as CIA Director was to go to Bogota amidst rumors that its Bush Junta-approved president, 'mafia boss' Alvaro Uribe, was planning a coup to stay in power. Panetta yanked Uribe from the stage--but gently, with guarantees of U.S. protection against prosecution and nice perks (such as cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard)--and vetted and approved Santos. Santos is also a rightwinger but hated by Uribe and his criminal organization, and sometimes sounds like a leftist. (Santos' first act in office was to make peace with Venezuela; then he proposed universal health care for Colombians; then he came out for legalization of drugs.)

My suspicion all along has been that Santos was "running" legalization "up the flagpole" with a secret okay from the U.S. (Obama). These leaders (Obama, Santos) are turning Colombia into a U.S. "free trade for the rich" zone--after a decade of bloody prep by Bush/Uribe (thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists and other advocates of the poor slaughtered by the Colombian military and closely tied death squads, on our dollar, and FIVE MILLION peasant farmers brutally displaced from their lands, also using $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid). How does drug legalization fit into this picture?

Big Pharma.

Obama has a problem, if Big Pharma wants legalization. How can he serve two masters--the War Profiteers and Big Pharma (and associated corporations, for instance, Monsanto and Chiquita)? Legalization has to come from outside the U.S. And who would do that for him? Not Chavez. Not Morales. Not Correa. Not most LatAm leaders. Who would he and his administration have cache with? Only the rightwing.

That's my best guess about what is going on with this. Big Pharma is making its big push to legalize and monopolize herbal, recreational and addictive drugs. Obama, if he favors the idea (and his language at the conference means maybe he does) needs strong allies (for instance, the man in charge of completing the corporatization of Colombia--Santos), and he needs rightwing allies (Santos, of course, and also Perez in Guatemala, who has a history of suspected involvement with the horrors against the peasants in that country), to deal with the fascists and war profiteers in this country, who will, of course, try to "crucify" him if he should propose anything as sensible as legalization. (That's the word that Santos used when he first proposed it. He said that he didn't want to be "crucified" so he wouldn't propose it himself but he could go along if someone else proposed it. Then Perez did and Santos strengthened his position.)

The big plus for Obama is that he could wipe out the federal debt and put the U.S. in the black through legalization. (Costs of the "war on drugs," including numerous U.S. military bases in LatAm ostensibly for that purpose, costs of prisons and long prison sentences--SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT in prison for non-violent offenses, mostly drug related--costs of federal, state and local police enforcement, costs of border enforcement, costs of courts, etc., etc.--taken as a whole, an ENORMOUS cost. Add in taxes on the newly legalized drugs, and--presto!--the U.S. is back in business again. In fact, this could be how he sells it to the War Profiteers--more money for the Oil Wars.)

Big Pharma. That's my best guess. All of LatAm wants legalization but it is the right that is pushing this very hard and publicly. Why would they do that? At the risk of being "crucified" by their own war profiteers (not to mention ours)?

[saras]

16. The corporation, as a concept, has failed. I don't think regulation can repair it again.

The real problem is size. It doesn't matter how good you are, if you're too big, even 99.99% success means your failures are too large for communities to tolerate. What is needed is a system by which large numbers of smaller players can form together quickly to accomplish tasks and break up again without getting entangled in each others' finances, and so that no player is big enough to avoid, either politically or economically, the consequences of being inappropriate.

[Uncle Joe]

19. Why do you believe, they're both not intricately involved now?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002553981

STUNNING! Wells Fargo launders Mexican drug cartel money, then invests in for-profit prisons

Last year, Wells Fargo got hit with a slap on the wrist and a fine they could easily afford for laundering $378.4 Billion dollars of drug money for the Mexican drug cartels. If you're keeping score at home that means if you get busted smoking a joint you go to jail, but if you get busted laundering billions of dollars in drug cartel money you get a slap on the wrist. Now, here's the catch, if you get caught smoking pot and go to jail, Wells Fargo will make a profit off of that too thanks to America's growing for-profit prison system.

The greatest losers in this reprisal game are the people because the reprisals against them are neither token nor just.

You will never knock out the cartels so long as the so called "War on Drugs" remains in effect.

The "War on Drugs" enriches and empowers the cartels, while weakening governments via corruption, gradual disenfranchisement and estrangement from its' citizenry.

Thanks for the thread, Robb.

[4th law of robotics]

20. You will never knock out the cartels

individual ones sure, but as long as there are fortunes to be made by breaking the law cartels will exist.

It's like saying we should break the mob first then end prohibition.

Ending it cut the feet out from under them. They still exist of course, by shifting over to other profitable venues that are still illegal. But they were certainly weakened.

[bemildred]

23. We are in an arms race with the cartels already, and we are stupid enough to think we can win.

After 40 years of prohibition we remain awash in any drug, illegal or legal , that anyone can make the big bucks off of; and all these believers in the "free market" don't understand.

[morningfog]

24. As long as drugs are kept illegal, there will be cartels to supply the demand.

Legalization of, say marijuana, in the US would not make cartels all of the sudden legal in other countries. It would, though, open the market to a variety of legitimate sources, including small growers, corporations and individuals.

In answer to your repeated analogy to veggies, consumers would be permitted to choose whether to buy from the large corporate market, the small local farmer's market, an individual or friend, or grow their own.

Barring any of the many legitimate producers guarantees the cartels will stay in business. He seems to have the causal effect backwards.