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The Mexican Cartel's Hi-Tech Drug Tunnels
In the past five years, more than 100 drug tunnels between Mexico and the U.S. have been discovered. This is double the number found over the previous 15 years. Not only are they growing in number, but the tunnels are becoming much more sophisticated, including electric rail systems, hydraulic elevators, and secret entrances (one opened via a fake water tap). From the article: "When architect Felipe de Jesus Corona built Mexico's most powerful drug lord a 200-foot-long tunnel under the U.S.-Mexican border with a hydraulic lift entrance opened by a fake water tap, the kingpin was impressed. The architect 'made me one f---ing cool tunnel' Joaquin 'Shorty' Guzman said, according to court testimony that helped sentence Corona to 18 years in prison in 2006. Built below a pool table in his lawyer's home, the tunnel was among the first of an increasingly sophisticated drug transport system used by Guzman's Sinaloa cartel. U.S. customs agents seized more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine which had allegedly been smuggled along the underground route."
...that they could detect the activity required to build a tunnel.
I've never used marijuana, but at this point I don't see its' continued illegality being beneficial. Legalize it for those of-age, require standards for safety, and regulate it in a fashion similar to tobacco and alcohol, where one can't smoke it in public generally outside of the marijuana-equivalent of a beer garden similar to how tobacco consumption is prohibited in many places, where one can't drive after consuming it like a DUI, but where some businesses could get licenses to allow consumption on the property, and where people could consume it in their homes, provided that it doesn't impact their neighbors and if they're renting, that it's permitted by their landlord, similar to cigarettes. Allow employers to dismiss employees who show up high in the same fashion as dismissing employees who show up drunk.
Do that and you just gutted much of the business of the cartels, put many of the street gangs and lowlife dealers out of business, and would prevent it from being cut with dangerous chemicals.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This kind of thing speaks to the geek in me.
I think of it just like building a model railroad, except its a model subway. And its about half scale instead of "N" or "HO" scale.
It would be fun to have your own subway, just for the sake of having your own subway.
And you get to build an electric car, well, a electric railroad car, without having to hear an infinity of people whining about how it only has a 300 mile range per charge and is therefore useless under all conditions.
If I ever have enough rural property to build a railroad, I'm going to way outdo the live steamers have a subway instead of an aboveground railroad.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I love the way people blame the War on Drugs for all of the related problems.
It is responsible for all the related problems.
If people would, you know, just stop buying the damn stuff then the cartel's main income would dry up within a month
Yeah, and if the cat would stop puking on the floor I wouldn't have to clean it up. The same was said about alcohol in the 1920s, but guess what? Alcohol consumption doubled during prohibition. People have been intoxicating themselves since before they were people, and they're not going to stop just because some idiot writes a law against it.
The only way you're going to stop the violence, graft, corruption, and all the other ills caused by the drug laws is how we stopped it in 1933 -- legalize, tax, and regulate. You'd have far fewer heroin overdoses if purity was standardized.
If crack was legal and crackheads could buy the stuff for a dollat an ounce they wouldn't have to break into my house to support their habits. The drug laws are counterproductive and insane.
Free Martian Whores!
"Essentially legal" and "actually legal" are very different.
The "legal" dispensaries have essentially the same supply issues as the street dealers and in some cases are competing with them for the same product and have to match street dealers for supplies. And the whole supply chain is still considered illegal.
In some cases, dispensaries may have a supply advantage (grow operation) but they also have to supply a high quality product that its more expensive to produce and also seem to provide a lot of high quality variety which, again, comses from a constrained and illicit supply.
In short, the dispensaries have high supply costs, just like street dealers, and they also have to supply high quality -- no brown Mexican crap.
Even if the dispensaries had lower supply costs, they are selling something else -- high quality and more importantly, the convenience and safety of a retail purchase.
If marijuana was ACTUALLY legal, the supply constraints go away -- what does it do to prices when farmers figure out how to grow high quality marijuana measured in the millions of bushels? When 'elite' brands can setup hydroponic grow operations in half-million square foot warehouses?
At this point retail competition will push the price down since there's little incentive or need to keep it at parity with street prices.