Dragonlady
Designing Woman
Measuring America’s changing drug habits, on the border
SAN YSIDRO, Calif. — Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America’s marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade.
The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states.
Timeline:
1. Mexico imported most of the nation's MJ. The fed had a delicate balance with the Mexican economy, of which pot exports were a huge part of. This consisted of strategically dialing in suppressing the influx & balancing the market. The cartels also had a delicate balance among themselves, keeping the supply/demand ratio in balance. Pretty much like how commercial merchants of all trades form unions to settle on prices so all can benefit.
2. Pot illegally is "legalized" (against federal law) in the US, state by state, using "medicine" as the shoehorn to ultimate free for all. Unregulated medicine is as illegal as recreational medicine of any Schedule 1 FDA regulated substance.
3. The price of pot and its delicate economic balance re: Mexico begins to plummet. Mexican cartels (and Mexico itself) take what is the equivalent of a baseball bat to the nuts.
4. During the parallel timeline, cartel wars and beheadings begin as competition for that dying market increased. Then the reality of the futility even of that struggle sets in as Mexican-MJ economy gets its last coffin nails...as more and more states illegally-legalize.
5. Then Mexican pot cartels switch to a much more lucrative market, one much more addictive and deadly: opium.
6. The US social situation worsens as the heroin epidemic sweeps the nation "from unknown causes all of a sudden!" Law enforcement is overburdened. Heroin quickly renders addicts derelict dependent criminals and thieves. The social welfare rolls begin to swell, taxing an already precarious economy, law enforcement, jail and prison budgets. Insurance companies take more and more hits as more and more petty and serious crime results in property theft to maintain the blind and strong urge of the heroin addicts.
(Russia/China, are you giggling right now? )
So people would say that this illegal legalizing has no repercussions. I beg to differ. Even when they agree they say "well what are you going to do about it? So many states now have "legal" pot" (while it remains on Schedule 1).
Solution will be tough, but actually simple. It will require brass nuggs on behalf of the fed. Simply pass a resolution in Congress that shuts off federal funding to states that have defied federal law. If they fail to re-criminalize pot, they don't get money until they comply. Period.
At the various state levels, look for heads to roll to blame the chaos on with pot laws. State by state a person or group of people (usually the sitting AG at the time) responsible for screening newly proposed laws, either by legislature or referendum, for compliance with federal law FIRST before they were voted on, are weeded out and brought into the limelight for questioning. Their failure of duty will be the culprit. Adjustments can be made before this becomes a complete US nightmare. Dust will settle and life will go on.
The US officials can strike old deals with Mexican cartels in exchange for reduction or elimination of heroin imports. And, life can go back to normal. People wanting to be rebellious can turn back to pot, and forego heroin, the more deadly of the two Mexican imports. The jails and social service programs can breathe a sigh of relief.
Or, we can accept an escalating heroin problem, economic assault from derelict addicts increasing exponentially, and a real threat to our national security. Our choice. The liberals responsible for this downward spiral are clearly incapable of thinking or understanding even the rudiments of delicate economies of the US and Mexico and how they interplay. Pissing off Mexico at our southern doorstep, with our enemies abroad drooling, is not a good plan for national security. Liberals meanwhile do all they can to keep that permeable border with even more and more holes. This is just simply asinine. Smarter minds need to bypass the kicking and screaming and rip the bandaid off.
Here's the approach lawmakers with brains need to take addressing the liberal outcry
vv
Here’s where your narrative breaks down.
The opioid crisis didnt happen because Mexico flooded the US market with cheap heroin. It happened because American physicians over-prescribed opioid based painkillers to their patients, who got hooked by the millions. When physicians cut off their addicted patients many then turned to street heroin and the Mexicans have taken advantage of that opportunity.
And when people started dying by the thousands, the drug manufacturers asked the FDA to ease restrictions on the prescription and sale of the opioids worsening the situation. And the agency complied with the request.