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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.
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.
. . . 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!
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.
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 some of the "harder" more addictive substances were legalized and made cheaper we would see a huge increase in abuse.
That's a fallacy. Alcohol use and abuse soared during prohibition. Tobacco use has been falling for decades, while marijuana use has increased. Cocaine was still illegal in the eighties when crack was invented.
Crack use has declined because people see what it does. Anybody who would smoke crack under any circumstances at all is already smoking it. Would you smoke it if it were legal? All of the illegal substances are easily obtained on the black market. The laws aren't stopping anyone.
Free Martian Whores!
... (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!