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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."
somebody has been playing too much minecraft!
This is blinging
Remember, if we just increase the enforcement budget a little more and give up just a couple more of our basic rights, next time, we'll get them all for sure.
Clearly the war on drugs is very successful and victory is immanent.
This kind of thing speaks to the geek in me.
I mean, who else hasn't daydreamed about how we would do crime. Personally I'd never actually do anything of this nature... not only for reasons of morality and ethics.. but because I'm somewhat of a coward.
The thing that really gets me, is that we only hear about the guys who screw up.. and usually they screw up for dumb reasons. This would indicate to me that there are smarter people with even crazier schemes that have and will go undetected.
With the discovery of this tunnel and the seizure of 2000 pounds of blow, the War on Drugs is clearly all but over.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Hogan!!!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
...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.
As a former politician recently said, the truth with politics is that *everything* revolves around money generated by drugs, war and energy.
As TWX's comment appears to imply, it's not the tunnel tech but the concealment tech that's sophisticated.
Why not bore holes along the US/Mex border, about 50 ft deep, drop in some TNT and break up the rock?
You can't dig a tunnel through sand.
Seems some seismic listening devices could be used, as well, to identify tunneling activity.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's pointless trying to shut these operations down. The cartels don't care about loosing a tunnel or the drugs; they will just use/build another. The loss is written off as operating cost. I don't understand what drives the gov to continue this stuped cat-and-mouse game. I'd love to see the numbers for the US cost for one of these seizure operations though.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
1. Move the production from off-shore to real USofA American farmers and small businesses. Then tax them.
2. Make sure that the products from #1 are "clean" and "certified". That means jobs for government workers filling in the paperwork and running the labs. And fees.
3. Distribution. Real Americans driving real trucks. (Tax their paychecks.)
4. Sales. More taxes.
One important thing would be to maintain the same price in every market in the nation so that there is no profit in smuggling it any more.
Another would be to limit the production by each grower. You do not want mega-corps involved. This is just to fight drug-related crime. Not to drive brand marketing. No "Joe Camel" ads. No ads at all. Plain black on white labels with the product name and the growers government ID and the health warning.
And dump some of the tax profits into FREE programs to get people to stop using the products.
Most of the people out there would be fine as recreational users. Just as with alcohol.
We should obviously BAN illegal assault shovels! No citizen needs a shovel that's painted black and has rubber grip with finger grooves! (http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202562616/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053) Or one with a adjustable handle! (http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202819477/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053) Just like a telescoping stock, these adjustable shovels only have one use: to build hi-tech drug tunnels!!
I say we force landscapers, contractors and other manual laborers to be fingerprinted, obtain a shovel license and be limited to buying one shovel a month. Who the hell needs more than one shovel a month! Plus, you must specify the make, length and blade material on your shovel application. And specify exactly show good cause for needing a shovel. Though, the licensing officials will never objectively define what "good cause" is.
It can be done if you use a 'Tunnel Shield':
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/tunnel/challenge/sand/shield.html
. . . will be a Mexican drug cartel. Hey, that's where the money is to be made, and will attract he best and brightest, and be able to invest the most money in the new technology.
Wow! Won't that be ironic . . . the first stuff to boldly go . . . will be drugs.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Your plan sounds flawless, except for two minor quibbles, so minor that I feel almost bad for bringing them up...
Quibble one: a smidgeon under 2000 miles of border takes a lot of dynamite to turn to sand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border).
Quibble two: the evil Mexican drug runners might have access to Wikipedia too, and might find out that it is, in fact, entirely possible to tunnel through sand. The tunnel shield method was even patented in 1818 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnelling_shield).
Like I said, just minor quibbles really.
Just convince the oil companies that there are billions of billions of barrels of oil down there on the border. They just need to frack it enough to get it out.
Frack it really hard.
All that fracking ought to make tunnel building a bit uncomfortable.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Why don't they just run a 6" pipe under the ground and package the pot in cylinders moved by little cars - they can even slope the pipe so the cars just fall down - ?
That would be lots harder to find.
Hmmm, While living in farming areas growing up, That name was given because they worked out in the hot weather and sweat, a lot. Since they were bent over forward, their shirt would only get 'wet in back'...
Either something about how it's working because we found this, or something about how it's not working because we found this. It doesn't seem to matter which, somehow the evidence supports my opinion!
Cocaine hydrochloride ("powder") is water soluble. The freebase is soluble in alcohol. So no worries about the environment, cheap and relatively benign solvents can be used.
If some of the "harder" more addictive substances were legalized and made cheaper we would see a huge increase in abuse.
Look to the crack epidemic in the 80's. Cocaine made so cheap for a powerfully addictive high that a person's habit could be supported by petty theft, burglary, and robbery.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/pictures/110624-cocaine-subs-submarines-first-submersible-science-colombia-drug-smuggling/
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
If what I have heard is correct, the drug smugglers often kill the low level after their work is done. ( Low level as in diggers This gives the term a whole new meaning. ) They do this because the workers know the location of the tunnel and "dead men tell no tales". The architect probably didn't have to be killed if he just designed the tunnel and didn't know where it was. At any rate, if they plan to kill the workers later for security reasons, they can promise very high salaries knowing that they won't have to pay up. Another tactic I heard they use is slave labor. Again, wages are not a consideration.
Of course. I'll give you three guesses at which industry builds the first holodeck, but I guarantee you'll only need one ....
... (Hi, my name is Yuropian Stonah and I'm an addict!) a few things.
First, I cannot believe how many uninformed, apologetic postings in favor of current US / EU drug policy are gathered here. Come on, isn't this a hub of scientists, bright minds and people who know their empirics from mere belief? Every scientific evaluation of man's natural tendency to get high - and it's just that, a natural tendency ranging from apes in Africa eating moldy fruit to get their groove on to Professor Shulgin making crazy new synthetical enthegoens - has shown just how futile a totally abstinence oriented lawmaking ethos is. I mean, we can probably all agree on the fact that humankind is flawed in some aspects, for example I doubt anyone here would say there's any way to get rid of our general egocentrism, so any man-made system is probably subject to corruption. Why not just once and for all accept that people are going to do drugs, no matter what? The most popular ones, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine for our Western world and current time period, are usually just seperated from most of the other narcotics in their status in most people's thoughts. That doesn't make them, and here is the part where I really think the scientists in you should have no problem understanding, NOT DRUGS. Yeah, a lot of functioning people punch down a liter or two of red a night. Every other TV series has that male, older character with the complete bar in his office gulping down Scotch while handing down jovial advice to other characters. I for one, mid twenties German addicted to morphine and some other pharms with a rich history of drug abuse, state that alcoholism is worse and more devastating than any opiate addiction could ever be - 72 hours in hell and you're off smack for good whereas I remember people withdrawing from as little as a bottle of wine a day in their third week of detox still having seizures and crying for help at night. I guess what bothers me is, like everywhere else, the hypocrisy of advocating abstinence without admitting to the fact that a great, great majority of society IS in fact suffering from some kind of addiction. If you are telling people to not use drugs, why use made up arguments?
Heroin, for example, will shorten your life by not a single day IF administered in pure form. Of course, that also calls for sterile equipment and firm background knowledge on the topic. So why is it banned? I mean, seriously? Maintenance treatment with methadone, buprenorphine, morphine or heroin itself has shown how people on those drugs for decades have little to no tendency to crime or other life-shortening hobbies if given the chance to take part in social life without stigma. Cocaine and methamphetamine etc. are all quite strainous on the heart, yeah. But lots of the negative effects of black market usage are due to the life style forced onto people with a taste for these kinds of yummies. Switzerland research on Cocaine addict maintenance on pharmaceutical stimulant drugs has pretty much shown how unnecessary that is, though.
I for one am getting my daily dosage of morphine from the nice guy at the pharmacy with whom I often chat about recent developments in his scientific field. I then go about my academic/social/professional life which I will not, for obvious reasons, further depict. But I can tell you, my not-12-stepping-kinda-NA-group consists of two thirds academics, a lot of medical doctors and even people in administrative, political positions. You'd be surprised. I for one have pretty much recovered from the blows my life got delivered from the struggle that is illegal drug addiction and have been focused on my academic work ever since. I'm on enough morphine to kill an elephant (900 milligrams/day over 24 hour slow release) and 80 milligrams of methylphenidate for ADHD treatment, but neither prevents me from getting good grades. Or having a social life. Hell, I even get along with my family again since admitting to my addiction, seeking and getting help. But it's my personal luck that I have found both a very
Funny we never hear about the success Portugal has enjoyed by legalizing drugs, isn't it? Crime has plummeted and even overdoses and usage rates have dropped, but you'll never hear about it from the money-addicted Jonnny Laws nor the corporate news organs.
If you are pulled over by the cops on your way to purchase a car from a guy on Craigslist, the cops can outright confiscate your money if you're holding more than $10k in cash.
Since most people on Craigslist require cash transactions, that jeopardizes a great many peoples' right to presumption of innocence. After the money is confiscated, they are put into the position of proving they are innocent.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
If they were legal, the money wouldn't be going to violent criminal gangs that terrorize whole cities.
One of the most addictive drugs on earth, nicotine, is legal. My mother smoked. She died quietly, in a hospital, with pain medication. No bloggers got beheaded by the companies who sold her the tobacco.
The right to have control over your own body.
Right. Yeah, see, there's a reason they call it substance dependence .
That's the whole fucking point. With many drugs, you don't have any control without (significant) outside interference.
Meanwhile, you destroy your body. Your life falls apart. You hurt people close to you emotionally and physically, sometimes for life (children of alcoholics are a good example.) You commit crimes to pay for drugs. You lose control and inhibitions that keep you from committing violent crime. Ask anyone who lives in rural America right now and has had a meth house open up in their neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the people supplying your drugs are kidnapping people in border towns and slaughtering police and military every step of the way from production to our border. "Make it legal to produce!", you say. Right. So, if you're a violent thug with a mafia and cartel behind you that generates billions in profits...how are you going to react to people producing their own drugs? Sit around and twiddle your thumbs?
Anyway - that adds up to a real cost in terms of quality of life, health, safety, etc. Yes, we need more treatment programs. Yes, we have socioeconomic problems that exacerbate it. But thinking "let's just cut out that chunk of the budget we use for enforcement, and everything will be OK" is childish and naive.
Change will not happen through enforcement either way, but removing enforcement will only make things even worse. Change will happen when society makes drug use of any kind completely unpalatable and unacceptable, instead of simpleton assholes like you saying "hey, let people do what they want, it'll be ok."
"Let people do what they want" is how we've ended up with everything from mass genocide to environmental disasters to dozens of banking scandals and endless government corruption. To be laise-faire and libertarian is to ignore centuries of history and about as naive as socialism.
Please help metamoderate.