El Chapo and the History of the Heroin Crisis
esquire.comIt worked for marijuana, so do it for the other things too (but with more regulation for the harder drugs).
Instead of reacting to the symptoms we need to look in the other direction.
* Cartels are a symptom of opportunity for profit that isn't being serviced in a legal way.
* Drug addiction is a symptom of a sick society.
* People chemically (or psychologically) addicted to the affects of drug treatment are a symptom of incomplete medical treatment.
Maybe if everyone had a place to be and a job they could do, a sense of security in work and health, as well as the opportunity to have a life worth living we could actually win the 'war on drugs'.
Of the people I've known who died due to heroin, all of them got started off on narcotic pain killers prescribed by unscrupulous doctors.
One of my friends in university got hooked on pills his doctor prescribed for his back pain. The guy was 300+lbs, maybe that had something to do with the pain? Who cares, pump him full of pills! A year later he was on heroin. Three years later he was dead.
Nobody but a complete degenerate wakes up one day and says "You know what, I think I'm going to mainline some heroin." Opioid addiction starts with pills. If you take heroin out of the equation, they're going to start making krokodil or some other shit. You can't solve the drug problem until you solve the doctor problem.
No, but you can slip into injecting heroin easily enough. I started taking ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD in the party scene in the early nineties. One day some friend turned up with a wrap of heroin, and we smoked it on foil - it was great. fast forward couple of years or so, and a friend introduces me to someone who sells heroin. It was good the first time, so why not. I keep the number, and buy some occasionally - I have contract job that pays hundreds of pounds a day, so cost isn't an issue. I also start taking cocaine as well, because why not, there's a guy in the pub selling it, and my friends like to party. Heroin is pretty good for relaxing after hard night snorting coke, so I take more. Eventually it's more heroin than cocaine, and one day I wake up and realise I don't have flu, I just haven't had any heroin for over 24 hours. Hello, addiction, and the joy of withdrawal! Anyone sensible would quit, but I still have a good job, and I'm earning even more, so why not keep doing it, I can afford it. And it just carries on from there - it's just part of your life, a thing you do, along with going to work, eating sleeping etc. And since you're in this deep anyway, why not try injecting?
So, that's how it happens. Now, there's a lot of places this can go off the rails. If you don't have a good job, and the ability to keep working at it, then you're going to have problems. And if you don't keep up appearances, people will start to wonder what's up, so you have to work pretty hard at hiding the drugs and the habit - if your boss or colleagues find out, no more job, money and there goes the funding for your habit.
Not sure what my point is, except that a heroin habit can get hold of someone quite easily, even people you probably wouldn't expect.
> Nobody but a complete degenerate wakes up one day and says "You know what, I think I'm going to mainline some heroin." Opioid addiction starts with pills. If you take heroin out of the equation, they're going to start making krokodil or some other shit. You can't solve the drug problem until you solve the doctor problem.
It doesn't have to be pills. Snorting and smoking opioids is another way to start as well.
The rest of your comment checks out though. I can't even stand getting a flu shot so the thought of shooting up heroin gives me chills.
Why did he move to Heroin? Was it because it was cheaper/easier due to artificial restriction on regulated, proper, opiates?
Why didn't he move to OxyContin, morphine, methadone, oxymorphone, etc.?
"Krokodil" is also an alright medication on its own. Just another morphine-related molecule. The big complaint with it is, once again, unregulated producers making incredibly unsanity products. Which, if you shove it into your arm, will cause all sorts of infections.
If we had to buy vaccines from some guy making them in a barn, we'd probably see a huge incidence in infections from vaccinations.
I'd also disagree that no one wants to inject heroin. I've been on IV morphine once, due to an injury, and it was _fantastic_. Unbelievably great. I fail to see why someone wouldn't want that, if they could afford it, have proper healthcare and equipment, etc. It's just a weak form of wireheading.
Doctors aren't the problem. The legal penalties for seeking medication are. The social views that addicts are inherently a problem -- that's a problem. The high cost of medications due to gatekeeping is a problem.
Allow people to buy the medications they want (if only on personal liberty grounds!). Then engage in adverts, education, sell help, etc. if it's really a problem. Opiates are so cheap that even a part time job can easily afford to be high all the time -- if they were in a proper competitive market.
well, you have elections, and bunch of people that don't want to live/raise kids next to people like you describe. or at least the image of junkies they have in their head. it's easier and beneficial for politicians to have hard line stance against drugs in many places.
don't expect much beyond +-weed legalization anytime soon, and even that might be rolled back at one point.
With my friend it was Xanax that got him started. He was 14, at 19 he was dead from heroin. Nicest guy in the world. Never touched the stuff beacuse of his example. Thanks Russell.
Apologies if any of the following questions seem inappropriate, and if you don't feel like answering for whatever reason don't feel at all compelled to satisfy my curiosity. Sorry to hear about your friend.
Did you know when he made the transition to heroin? Did he ever try to stop at any point? Did you even know that he was on it before it was too late? Were his doctors aware that the Xanax that was being prescribed was being abused? Did they cut that off at any point, potentially leading him to fill the gap with other substances? Did this guy have a good support system in general?
Once I worked too hard trying to get some bad software installed. I clenched my teeth and cracked two molars. One molar soon got a root canal procedure and a crown. Some years later the other cracked molar got sore. Apparently the crack let bacteria into the core of the tooth.
One day about each 30 minutes, the pain was awful. Eventually the explanation was that the bacteria generated CO2; that built up pressure inside the tooth and pressed on the nerve; at the peak of the pressure and pain, finally the CO2 escaped out the crack and the pain went away for another 30 minutes or so.
I tried this and that. It was a weekend, and I had a dental appointment on Monday, but for the weekend the pain was beyond belief. I called around, and eventually a sympathetic person in a hospital emergency room explained that people commonly rushed in for opioid prescriptions. No such thing occurred to me at all.
But eventually I just drove to an emergency room and said "I'm fine now, but in about 30 minutes I will be climbing the walls in pain."
They let me stay and wait. When the pain started, right away the attending physician dipped a Q-tip or some such and painted my tooth. Pain gone.
He explained that he just used benzocaine which is the same as dentists use just before giving an injection of a stronger local anesthetic and is over the counter and not very expensive. GOOD!
The dentists had told me to take one of the standard aspirin alternatives -- I did; took enough to threaten damage to my kidneys; and it was useless. Not good dentists.
So, I left the emergency room with a bottle of benzocaine and a prescription. I looked at the prescription -- it had lots of super serious markings about a controlled substance, special numbers, etc. Okay, maybe it was an opioid. No thanks.
I rushed to a pharmacy and stocked up on little bottles of benzocaine and Q-tips and didn't suffer again. At the dentists on Monday, I still didn't like their work and walked out.
In a few days, the pain quit. A week or so after that, the tooth was loose. A few days after that, an oral surgeon extracted the tooth. No problem.
So, sometimes, really, whenever possible, to heck with opioids. Instead, just get some benzocaine for the night or the weekend and then go for some good medical care. As far as I know, I never took an opioid. Dangerous stuff.
Thanks. Have bookmarked this post in case I ever need to refer it again.
Is Benzocaine usually available (in the USA) without a prescription?
Yep, unless this isn't what he's referring to. https://smile.amazon.com/Analgesic-Maximum-Strength-Benzocai...
If anyone wants to read a really great book about this topic i suggest "Chasing the Scream"[1]. This book made me think about drug addiction in a completely different way and also change my mind about legalization -- of all drugs, including heroin.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-Drugs/dp/16...
I'm curious if there are any other analogies in history of societal problems that was so widely misunderstood yet spent ungodly amounts of human time, money, and jail time was spent trying to stop in all the wrong ways.
The war on drugs really are the crowning achievement of anti-scientific public policy. Decades of ignoring the results and continuing to try the same thing.
The west isn't the only one with this problem. The DEA has been exporting this failed strategy to other countries for decades. The Philippines has taken the American style war to the extreme: http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-philippines-war-on-drugs-deal...
They've demonstrated that the only way to actually win it like a war is via death squads and the total destruction of human rights. Otherwise governments have to face reality and accept it doesn't work.
Marijuana has been consumed in India forever. It was smoked just like tobacco is today. By a lot of people in society (including high and low status women).
Never was a problem. Probably led to some of the spirituality and mathematics of ancient India.
However, it was the natural variety. Not the genetically optimized powder keg stuff available today.
True, though they made some pretty strong stuff like charas.
What way did it make you change your mind? I'm interested in this book, but I don't want to read something if it's just going to reaffirm what I already believe.
I have a lot more sympathy for people addicted to drugs. I have never tried hard drugs, so before I couldn;t really relate to what it might be like. He does a great job of showing that instead of thinking of people as "junkies", they are sick. It's no different than having cancer or AIDs or something else. Drug addicts are really really sick people that can usually be fixed. The sympathy you have for someone with terminal cancer is the same sympathy for the guy you walk past asking you for a dollar with needle marks on his arm. The only difference is one is always self inflicted, the other may not be.
He also changed my opinion about legalization. I was on the fence before but this book, combined with books about violence in Mexico since 2006 (60K+ dead) have just pushed me over the edge. Other countries/cities have experimented with "legalization" of hard drugs (Switzerland, Vancouver, Portugal, UK back in the 50s?) and it works. When people can buy their daily fix and are treated like humans instead of junkies they are able to change their lives around.
> If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills two hundred people a week, take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels. How did they respond to a major loss in revenue? Like any company, they created an irresistible new product and flooded the market.
That seems like an unfair potshot. Why not emphasize: "An increasing number of Americans were addicted to prescription opioids such as Oxycontin."
It's not just that. It's Americans getting hooked on prescription opiods and the government deciding to fix the problem by cracking down on pill mills without addressing the addiction. They may as well have the Mexican cartels a business plan.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with pot.
> That seems like an unfair potshot. Why not emphasize: "An increasing number of Americans were addicted to prescription opioids such as Oxycontin."
And even THAT is an unfair potshot. Oxycontin specifically has problems that practically induce addiction.
Agreed, the cartels are just reacting to an increase in demand for heroin.
And it's the strict scheduling, the intimation tactics with doctors, that causes people to resort to buying street opiates instead of certified, regulated, opiates like OxyContin (or cheaper alternatives).
If you haven't, I highly suggest you read Don Winslow's two books about this: The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. Both are fantastic.
Agreed! It is also interesting to try to match the characters to the real life drug lords that inspired them by the crimes and strategies detailed in the book, though it can get confusing since Winslow often merges two real drug lords into a single character or branches out a single drug lord into two or more characters.
For example, Adán Barrera—the main antagonist in The Cartel—is based on one of the Arellano Felix brothers in The Power of the Dog, but then takes on Chapo Guzman's persona in The Cartel.
But when you realize that a lot of what Winslow describes actually happened in real life it puts a lot of things into perspective—especially the US's involvement on both sides of the coin.
Heroin is cheap. Really, really cheap. It's really, really addicting. It's easy to overdose on. And people mix it with shit like fentanyl which makes it even easier to kill yourself with.
It's a really terrible drug.
Heroin can be a useful medication. Street opiates are bad because there's no regulation. It's not inherent in the medication. Take _anything_ and vary the strength/purity by 50x and see how many people die. A 50x dose of Tylenol will kill you just as well (more painful, actually).
You don't really need regulation to get consistent strength/purity, branding (Buy Mack's Heroin - guaranteed 99.99% pure with no adulterants!) and tort law (you said this contained 20mg of heroin, it contained, dangerously, twice that amount, you are liable for my consequent overdose) should be enough to handle that, if producers were competing on quality and not "ability to operate in a black market".
So with people here talking about opioids from docs leading to heroin, a question came to mind:
If you have been given opioids for pain, did they work? I ask because for me they don’t. I get buzzed, euphoric, but they don’t do squat for pain for me. Same with marijuana. No effect on my pain at all.
In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical discomfort. Am I just an oddball?
> If you have been given opioids for pain, did they work?
They make a huge difference to my current near-constant headaches (cause unknown). Non-opioids (high dose ibuprofen, naproxen, amitriptyline etc.) make little to no difference, but fairly weak opioids (codeine, tramadol) make a noticeable difference. I generally react well to them - low doses have a pronounced analgesic effect without side-effects (euphoria [obviously it is noticed at higher doses, but I don't need that for adequate pain relief] etc.), and they don't cause dependence (stopped the tramadol cold turkey after ~1 years use, and was completely fine other than the headaches returning).
As with pretty much any drug, the individual effects are fairly variable. I tried zopiclone for insomnia, and it produced unpleasant side-effects (rooms looked to be filled with yellow light, even during the night, and memory issues - being in one room then suddenly finding yourself in another with no memory of the intervening minutes is extremely unnerving).
>> "In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical discomfort. Am I just an oddball?"
Nope. It's the same for me. What I eventually worked out (I'm not 100% sure of this but I'm pretty certain) is that the strain of marijuana is important. Unfortunately I don't get to choose in my country :) But if it's a strain that gives a body high I become more aware of the pain, if it's not I become less aware.
Edit: If someone with knowledge on this matter can confirm (or refute) my assumption I'd appreciate it.
Here is another reason for the decriminalization of Marijuana: I'm pretty sure there would be a lot more research into genuine medical benefits of marijuana if it wasn't dissociated with breaking the law.
I'm curios if Federal research grants can be allowed to study the medical benefits of Marijuana? I know states have made medical marijuana legal but most funding in research comes from Federal agencies.
In my experience, there is a big variation in how people respond to Vicodin (and maybe painkillers more generally). Vicodin was hugely beneficial in reducing pain after a surgery I had. The main downside was the increase in tolerance after a few days. Some friends I have spoken to said Vicodin did very little for them.
depends on the type of pain for me. deep pains, cannabis helps. if it involves my extremities, or skin, or I dunno, often it has the opposite effect like you described. Getting a light indica-HEAVY edible can have good body effects without the heady effects.
Firstly what has happened with the quality of journalism in Esquire, you can not call this serious journalism when the author writes:
"You can't make this shit up ...",
"The story's goes ..."
"The Mexican authorities had a line on the little bastard."
This is like listening to a person in a bar recounting a story.
Second, the increasing legalization marijuana in the US and the current flow of heroin into the US are orthogonal. Legalization of marijuana is not the cause of an influx of heroin. Mexican marijuana has always been considered cheap and inferior quality. The fact is that US has developed a taste for highly cultivated quality weed, the same as the US has with coffee and craft beer. Its "conspicuous consumption", quality weed, is a status symbol - a sign of discerning taste. The people that were hurt by the legalization of marijuana were the small time neighborhood dealers not the Mexican cartels. Mexican cartels most significant revenues have always been Cocaine which needs to transit Mexico to get to the US. While Cocaine production is still centered in South American the trafficking and logistics were taken over from the Colombian Cartels by the Mexican Cartels after the demise of the Medellín Cartel in Colombia.
The real reason the US is seeing an uptick in Mexican heroin is because there has been a market created for it by those who have become hooked on prescription opioids. When they run out or can no longer obtain their Oxycodone or Hydrocodone they satisfy their withdrawal with street dope.
I think that's what they were going for... They're following the "Vice" model (which I actually like). News the averge modern person can relate to. Walter Cronkite is dead and gone man.
That would be the Vice of 15 years ago then. Vice the news channel(HBO) is respectable journalism. Shane Smith had the good foresight to see that they could grow with their audience. It doesn't have to Cronkite but it doesn't have to be "brah" either.
The opener really frustrates me. It's basically saying that if these folks have no choice but to engage in illegal activity. If their product somehow becomes legal, well.... we shouldn't have done that... because now they have to sell something worse.
OR, OR, they could stop manufacturing poison and perhaps get a legitimate job and stop making money off of people with serious problems.
Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill. I guess I can't lay the blame totally on the manufacturers, but my god.... quit acting like their careers somehow deserve to exist one way or another and it's the USA's fault.
> Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill
Not at all. There are plenty of people using heroin that are not your typical junkie, just like there are many recreatioal weed users that aren't unemployed stoners. Take me - I've been working in IT for twenty years, and have been a heroin addict for just about the same length of time. My career is going pretty well, I'm in charge of a team of engineers, I speak about my particular subject at conferences around the world regularly, I have plenty of work up on GitHub that people use.
What does kill people is stigmatizing addicts, and preventing them from getting the help they need to allow them to live a normal life and become usefully employed. Instead, attitudes like yours mean they are forced to become criminals and marginalized.
It doesn't seem like the author was trying to make a moral or ethical argument that what the cartels are doing is either right or proper. It is rather that it flows naturally.
As far as I could tell it was common knowledge that the cartels would turn to some other source of income if cannabis was legalized in the US. It was unclear exactly what, but corruption and violence would still play a part as they were large parts of how the cartels functioned.
Okay, here's a warning if you haven't read this article yet. Up near the beginning, there's a really, really unfortunate line about pot legalization being the cause of this and that. I'm sure it's tongue in cheek, but that doesn't come across in text, and people are tripping over it. Just skip over that line and keep reading. The rest of the article is excellent.
It's not tounge in cheek. Pot sales dropped by 40% so they pivoted to heroin.
I stopped reading after the lead:
> If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills two hundred people a week
About 3,000 people died today and about 60,000 got seriously injured in car accidents TODAY, according to ASIRT. I think the word "grips" is a bit of stretch here, no?
> take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels.
How is that legalizing sales of Apples will somehow made Oranges' lovers to switch? Hard to believe. Any proof of that??
> I think the word "grips" is a bit of stretch here, no?
No, because there isn't a $50bn domestic and >$10bn international market in car deaths. There isn't a massive machine that perpetuates car deaths; indeed, quite the opposite.
> Hard to believe. Any proof of that??
Yes: a 40% drop in profits from marijuana, and a corresponding spike in the rate of production (and because supply/demand, a drop in the price) of heroin in (and from) Mexico.
You really should have kept reading.
Multiple people working on multiple things.
Tesla is trying to solve the car death problem, others are trying to stop deaths from super potent mexican heroin.
Both are noble pursuits and will save thousands of lives.
You stopped reading too soon. This is like a train-wreck of unintended consequences.
I forget he name of the fallacy you are committing but it is some kind of a decoy or red herring one, whereby you are attempting to deny the problem is real because of another problem you hold is more important.
Well you stopped reading at a bad point for a silly reason.
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You're using a browser version from January 2015 (it's currently at 48.0 as of 8/2/16), and your OS has not had support from Microsoft since 4/8/14. Your system is in desperate need of an upgrade, which could help prevent viruses. The longer you operate an outdated system, the likelier you are to encounter a virus.
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While I agree with you on Windows versions later than XP being markedly worse from a technical guy's usability perspective (actually Windows Server 2003 + nlite/ xplite was the best client OS setup I ever used ), you are denying yourself a very significant amount of security patches and I would define this behaviour as a bit irresponsible of your PC only contains your own data, and possibly illegal if you have any customer personal data or payment information. I hate the newer Microsoft OSes as much as you but run Windows 10 (plus a healthy amount of Non-Microsoft OSes). At least upgrade your browser because that's the main entry vector for malware nowadays, you will find that recent versions of Firefox are quite enjoyable - latest one even started running some tasks in dedicated processes (just experimentally for now) resulting in a more responsive interface.
I have no solid information at all that indicates that any Microsoft operating system is more secure than Windows XP SP3 with the latest Microsoft patches. None. No such information at all.
For all I know, all Microsoft patches for later Microsoft operating systems are only for bugs in those operating systems and not for bugs in the XP version I am running.
I have no even reasonable information that there are any security bugs in the XP installation I have.
I have no reason to believe that Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 is more secure than XP; as far as I know, XP is more secure than those operating systems.
And similarly for Windows Server.
How the heck Flash could give malware to my XP system is beyond me, and I've seen no explanation.
XP should be able to run any user mode software at all safely. I have heard no claims that it can. It it cannot, then I very much want to know why not. For decades several time sharing systems apparently could run any software at all, including operating systems, safely.
These systems are essentially all multiple virtual memory systems built on the Intel x86 architecture with hierarchical file systems with capabilities and access control lists. If there are security holes, I sure as heck want to know why; but apparently there have been security holes, and I never got even reasonably good information on why.
A few years ago, I saw that Microsoft had patched a security hole caused by a buffer overflow bug. Outrageous that Microsoft should still have buffer overflow bugs.
I intend to bring up an instance of a recent version of Windows Server, but I have no solid information or even an idea, none, not even zip, zilch, or zero, what the situation is on bugs or security.
I would have no idea at all on how to run a secure Windows system attached to the Internet.
Looking around at my XP system, I was just outraged to the point of screaming to discover that Microsoft had started some message service that was later seen to be a security risk. I didn't ask for that message service. I wasn't informed that it was running. I wasn't using that message service. I had no intention of using that message service. What the heck other obscure, hidden, secret software is Microsoft starting, not telling me about, and that could infect my system? I'm torqued. But there isn't much I can do about it.
To me, that moving to Windows 10, that apparently keeps phoning home, would solve security problems instead of causing them is a really bad joke. Windows 10 apparently has a lot of new software that likely has bugs. That new Microsoft software, I want nothing to do with it.
Also I have long been totally torqued off, even screaming, as I clicked and clicked and clicked and said over and over and over, for years, to NOT, under any circumstances at all, NEVER but NEVER, ever, read any removable media unless and until so instructed. Don't look at it. Don't check it. Don't permit even a single bit to be read at all. Of course, if you automatically read and execute software from removable media, you should be dragged by two horses in opposite directions. But such screaming didn't work.
Yup, USB thumb drives are a special case.
Instead, of course, I want IP port by port, program by program, each DLL one at a time, and anything and everything else, what the heck is running on my system, why, and what the heck the risks are. But I have no reasonable way to get such information.
For my startup and its Web server, for now it will store nothing or next to nothing on users -- no cookies, user IDs, user passwords, etc. My site makes no use of cookies. Users don't login or give passwords. Users don't give e-mail addresses. Yes, the Web site log file likely has the user's IP address, but actually that does not much identify a user.
Maybe at a high end site, are supposed to put outside of a computer running Windows some special boxes. All IP, maybe even all Ethernet, traffic flows through these boxes, and they check, track, and analyze the heck out of every packet, every bit, that flows through. That data plus some more such tracking on Windows may be enough. But I have no idea what such boxes or associated Windows programs might be.
Of course, the server should make no use of wireless. That a server could get malware from a USB drive is outrageous.
One reason to upgrade from XP to something newer is to be able to use WiFi, my one remaining XP laptop won't do WPA.
I have no access to, interest in, use for, or patience with WiFi. My computer is a desktop. My Internet connection is via a cable modem via my cable TV vendor. I have nothing that is wireless, not even a cell phone. For my desktop computer, I don't want to do the outrageous, absurd, vague, risky, mud wrestling of struggling to understand what the security risks are for wireless.
For a while, I tried a wireless mouse, but it seemed to eat through a lot of batteries and otherwise didn't work very well. I returned to a wired mouse connected via USB.
My laser printer? Connects via USB. My old daisy wheel printer (great for envelopes) connects via async serial.
I just don't have any wireless. So, that's a lot of system management, monitoring, maintenance, security, etc. surface I don't have to worry about.
Apparently a lot of the interest in wireless is having computing devices growing around the home or office like weeds for a lot of toys. I have no interest in such things and am concentrating on my startup.
Gee, a lot of HNers got really, really, really totally off the top of the charts PISSED OFF at me. Strange.
WPA stands for what, the old Great Depression Works Progress Administration? I know; I know; in computer land supposed to use TLAs (three letter acronyms) as much as possible.
It's strange. You seem to be really concerned about wifi security and the greater implications but are using the most exploited OS in the universe and you seem unfazed by the fact that security updates have stopped.
Stick with XP, none of my Windows 10 machines will talk to my USB laser printer.
Windows... XP? Is that still a thing?
We need a stronger border to prevent heroin from entering our country.
...but in the case of pills, one of the predominant causes is from within our borders.
There is no evidence to suggest that would be successful.
A "stronger border" and "higher walls" are nothing but campaign slogans.
OP's comment was about the smuggling of drugs, specifically heroin, into the country. You said "bullshit" and then cited that NPR article as your source. The article discusses a decrease in apprehensions, but it clearly states the following:
> This is still an active smuggling route, especially for drugs.
I'm a little confused as to how this article supports the argument that building a wall helps limit drug smuggling. Care to explain?
Not the op, but it seems to me that stopping huge numbers of bodies crossing the borders illegally would free up resources to focus on the smaller amount getting through and the drugs in particular.
Supply side tactics have failed for as long as they have been tried.
I can't tell... are you being sarcastic?
Do you lock the door to your house?
My house isn't 2000 miles long with 20 billion$ of sales inside of it.
If you had 20 billion dollars in your garage you would definitely lock it up. Right?