Legalization Won’t Hurt Cartels… Much

An interesting piece was published on Cracked.com called “5 Insane Things I Learned About Drugs As An Undercover Agent.” While a good read taken as a whole, there are two items on this list that really piqued my thoughts.

1: The War on Drugs is much harder to shut down than many of us assume.

“If you buy marijuana, you’re supporting the murderous cartels.” We’ve heard that since the dawn of the Reagan-era anti-drug gestapo. In case you’re wondering if “gestapo” is too harsh a word, keep in mind that Reagan was able to say (completely straight faced), “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.” Although, in the interest of considering the source, the man also said, “you can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans.” So, take it for what you will.

While, yes, it is true that 15-30% of cartel profit is linked to cannabis, that still doesn’t account for even most of the up to $30 billion annually that goes south into Mexico. Legalization of cannabis in America could feasibly dig into that percentage.

“As we’ve learned from states where marijuana has already been decriminalized, consumers prefer to buy their drugs from people who aren’t psychopathic murderers. It’s estimated that legalization in Colorado and Washington will cut around $3 billion from annual cartel profits, so in a very real way, legal dispensaries are a powerful weapon against the cartels.”

Legal weed will eat up some cartel profit, but only from that 15-30% share. Some might suggest that we should legalize everything, thus defeating the cartels outright. That won’t happen for many reasons, not the least of which is that if the US is having this much of a wet-underpants moment about legalizing the hyper-safe cannabis, we are eons away from any sort of utopian drug realization, and I’m not even sure that’s a good idea anyway. Also, cannabis (from the point of view of the very business-like cartels) is a low risk/high reward situation. It is dirt cheap for the cartels to produce.

Another big reason why the cartels won’t just vanish is that $30 billion revenue mentioned above. Even if we somehow managed to keep all cartel narcotics out of the US, those cartels aren’t just going to close up shop and open a Jamba Juice. As the undercover agent put it, “It would be like the last scene of Scarface, only spread across all of Mexico.”

And to further complicate the matter…

2: Cartels are not what you’d expect.

Perhaps it’s the influence of Hollywood, but many of our imagined “truths” about how the cartels operate are highly flawed. They (mostly) aren’t run by sweaty, gun-toting maniacs who will flay you alive and feed you to piranhas. Nor are they as obvious as Don Johnson’s CI’s. And, cannabis (as mentioned above) is very inexpensive for the cartels.

“The truth is, cartel members look just like every other upper middle class person from the Southwest — they wear designer jeans and collared shirts and keep very few tigers. The cartels are very sophisticated, especially in Mexico. They’re closer to being their own countries than gangs. And unlike the drug barons you see in movies, actual cartels know that loss is a part of the game, and that drugs are the one thing they will literally never run out of. For example, marijuana is cheap to produce, so if you walked into a bar in Mexico and lied about your smuggling skills, a cartel might just front you a thousand pounds of weed to see if you live up to your own hype (and that is a shitload of weed). From the cartels’ perspective, it’s worth it to shotgun cheap drugs like pot out onto the streets because it costs them almost nothing and they don’t take on any risk.”

The cartels also have a fabled radio network that is nearly uninterruptible. This thing crosses three countries and is rumored to be engineered by a former special ops communications officer.

I encourage you to read the whole article, it is very intriguing. I do feel good knowing that the weed I buy from my local dispensary is not sending money back to the cartels, but I think it’s worth stating that no amount of cannabis regulation one way or the other will change the cartels. Basically, it comes down to the fact that marijuana is nearly a non-issue when talking about stopping cartels. As long as they love money and people love drugs, they will be around.