Americans spent $150 billions on narcotics in 2016

Dream Seller

Chief Minister (5k+ posts)
mexico-cartels-avocado.jpg


Reports from south of the border say Mexican avocado farmers are taking up arms to protect their increasingly valuable crop from the country’s rapacious cartels, always on the lookout for a quick buck.

But considering the ease with which cartel gunmen dispatched the Mexican army in a pitched battle in Sinaloa state this month, one would guess that the odds don’t favor the avocado farmers.

Or Mexico itself, for that matter — and this has ominous implications for the United States, too.

Flush North Americans — think millennials, in particular — love avocados; they will pay top dollar for them, which sets the market into motion. Most often this means good things. But not always.

Think cocaine and other illicit drugs.

As with avocados, drug dollars follow demand: A recent RAND Corporation study reports that Americans spent just shy of $150 billion on illegal narcotics in 2016. The bulk of this money goes to Mexico, which also has become a major conduit into the United States for synthetic opioids like Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, upping the cartels’ take.

Americans, in other words, love their illegal chemicals, they have the ready cash to indulge themselves — and they are not particularly mindful of the consequences of this for others.

Hence the emergence of the Mexican drug cartels, not the sole supplier of the American drug market, but pretty much at the top of the list. Mexico’s fragile political institutions, and its long history of overtly corrupt local government, made it fertile territory for the rise of extralegal quasi-governments.

The recently concluded US federal trial of Joaquin Guzman — “El Chapo” in the headlines — revealed the extent to which the Sinaloa Cartel he once headed has insinuated itself into Mexico’s power structure.

Guzman is in US federal prison now, presumably for life, but the cartel is chugging along. On the small end of the scale, it is Sinaloa gunmen who are cornering the avocado trade — while on the other, the organization is one of the globe’s major players in illegal drugs, other organized crime and money-laundering.

It is not to be trifled with, as the Mexican army discovered this month when it took two of Guzman’s sons into custody — igniting an eight-hour battle with Sinaloa gunmen in the city of Culiacan. The gun battle ended with an ignoble surrender of government troops and the release of the prisoners.


 
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kakamana

Minister (2k+ posts)
Now some randian bhakt bot, who been abusing armed forces of pakistan in name of DHA & blah blah, bother to do further research that how much being custodian of this drug mafia, Americans Generals & top military position earn through opium production & its logistics ??? and y they r not willing to leave Afghanistan????
 

Nice2MU

President (40k+ posts)
But their generals and CIA agents have made 100s of $$$$ by selling heroin from Afghanistan.

In the last 17 years poppies cultivation was on its peak during NATO and USA army in Afghanistan.