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."

Comments

Ah, the war on drugs...

[clonehappy]

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.

Re:Ah, the war on drugs...

[Ultra64]

The right to have control over your own body.

Re:Ah, the war on drugs...

[TheRealGrogan]

Let's see... drug testing as a requirement of employment, jack booted thugs throwing flash bang grenades terrorizing your family and killing your pets in the night from bad intel, drug interdiction techniques by the police that profile citizens and justify searches (and if you exercise your right to refuse, they will go over the situation with a fine tooth comb and find a reason). They make no apologies for these acts, in the name of the War on Drugs.

It may not have happened to you personally, but you should not accept that behaviour because it just as easily could.

It's working

[AdrianKemp]

Clearly the war on drugs is very successful and victory is immanent.

Re:It's working

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the war on spelling.

Re:It's working

[betterunixthanunix]

Clearly the war on drugs is very successful and victory is immanent.

Actually, I think it has been successful. How else would law enforcement have been able to convince people that they need automatic weapons, panopticon surveillance capabilities, and the right to seize private property and recycle the proceeds into their own budgets? The war on drugs has been vastly successful for all the prison companies and their investors, the firearms companies and their investors, surveillance equipment makers, and all those politicians who can always vote for more war-on-drugs funding as a way to get some cheap votes.

Re:It's working

[Anonymous Coward]

If people would, you know, just stop buying the damn stuff

But they won't. Any other fantasies you'd like to share?

Re:It's working

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:It's working

[kilfarsnar]

I love the way people blame the War on Drugs for all of 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, compared to the years to decades it'll take to convince the USA and other nations to legalise the stuff.

Well, that would be simple, now wouldn't it? I take it you have no vices? If we arbitrarily made your favorite food illegal, I assume you would just stop eating it and be happy with that outcome.

Really though, the reason the War on Drugs is blamed is that it is what causes the violence and crime. If drugs were legal, the black market for them would cease to exist, or at least become a shadow of its former self. It is that black market, and the risks it entails, that causes the crime, not the drugs themselves. Alcohol prohibition should have taught us this, but we are slow learners it seems.

If you want to take drugs that's fine, it's your choice. But it's also your choice to give the money to the people who commit these crimes. Are the thrills really worth that, or do the users just not give a damn what they're doing to the Mexican people so long as they have their fun?

Again, it is not the user who causes the crime and violence. It is the behavior necessitated by the illegality. The ones who do not care about the suffering of the Mexican people are the Mexican and US governments. For it is they who keep the laws in place that cause the violence, corruption and crime. If they would allow a free and fair market to exist, we wouldn't have the trouble we have.

Or, we could just try your solution. It seems much more simple, right? All we need to do is stop millions of people from doing something they like to do. How hard could it be?

Re:It's working

[Archangel Michael]

The real solution is to legalize drugs, and tax them. Instead of spending all sorts of tax dollars on a losing proposition, the government could be making hand over fist in revenue AND take the narco gangs out of the picture. Mexico isn't a dangerous place because of drugs, it is a dangerous place because of the WAR on drugs.

But then again, that is pure fantasy of mine.

Re:It's working

[swb]

"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.

Re:It's working

[Attila Dimedici]

No, no the OP really meant "immanent".

Immanent: taking place within the mind of the subject and having no effect outside of it.

Re:It's working

[bipbop]

I'd say your remark, "take the Breaking Bad approach and eliminate your competition", shows you to be clearly out of touch with reality, but you put in a smiley so I guess I can't. Frickin' smiley.

Re:It's working

[Hatta]

1. Legalizing drugs would lead to more drug users and addicts. A vast majority of crime is perpetrated by drug users (alcohol included)

This is unsupported by data. Wherever drug laws are liberalized drug use stays the same or decreases. Also, you're starting off on a disingenuous note. The vast majority of *everything* is perpetuated by drug users because the vast majority of humanity uses drugs.

2. Legalizing and then taxing drugs would lead to... wait for it... black market for untaxed or cheaper drugs ! (see cigarettes, alcohol, past attempts at legalizing drugs like opium)

We already have a black market for untaxed drugs. Legalizing would move at least some of that into the legal market. Looking at alcohol and tobacco, most of that traffic is legal. Wouldn't we benefit by doing the same with other drugs?

3. Legalizing and sanctioning drugs would lead to drugs with potentially limited potency due to Government control on the product which leads to.. black market

Which is why a sound drug policy wouldn't do that.

4. Drug dealers, runners, and general baddies are not going to suddenly because good citizens just because drugs can be purchased over the counter. The sell this shit for money, cause they want money... See #2 and #3 - they won't be out of a job anyways.

Organized crime will never disappear, but we can make it less profitable. You've offered no reason why we shouldn't.

5. Imagine our healthcare costs when we increase drug users drastically by making drugs acceptable and more available. We've already wasted lives, energy, and costs on smokers and heavy drinkers, why on Earth would we want to add more to this???

It's more likely that drug abusers will die more rapidly than the rest of the population. That will save us money on end of life health care. This is the case with tobacco today.

Legalizing these things just redefines the problem.

F. U. D.

Re:Sounds like

[LWATCDR]

Funny I was thinking they watched too much Hogan's Heros.

Re:Sounds like

[Reverand Dave]

I really like how the Mole People are pinning this on the Mexicans. They are obviously more clever than I thought they were.

Geek In Us All

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Geek In Us All

[Requiem18th]

Like the guys at wall street.

Obligatory

[Esion Modnar]

Hogan!!!

You'd think...

[TWX]

...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.

Re:You'd think...

[dkleinsc]

...that they could detect the activity required to build a tunnel.

Which 'they' are we talking about here? If you're talking about the Mexican authorities, bear in mind that right now just about any officer that attempts to do something about the cartels is killed off fairly quickly.

All about the drugs, guns and gasoline ....

[King_TJ]

As a former politician recently said, the truth with politics is that *everything* revolves around money generated by drugs, war and energy.

As always ... legalize it and tax it.

[khasim]

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.

Ban Assault Shovels!

[niko9]

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.

Re:We won!

[clonehappy]

With the discovery of this tunnel and the seizure of 2000 pounds of blow, the War on Drugs is clearly all but over.

In other news, after the 250 pounds of blow was submitted into evidence, a flood of cheap blow somehow made its way onto the streets.

Re:You just can't legalize ALL substances.

[mcgrew]

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.

try walking around with $10,000 in cash

[SethJohnson]

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