Posted on 02/24/2026 5:35:28 AM PST by Cronos
Drug lords have been killed or captured, and cartels have splintered or collapsed, only to see more violent ones replace them and the illicit trade expand.
So, 60years of war on drugs, what has actually worked?
...The Sinaloa Cartel, after all, did not go away after its chief, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the notorious drug lord known as El Chapo, was captured and extradited to the United States.
...Rather than simply going after kingpins like Mr. Oseguera, the authorities need to take a holistic approach to dismantle these groups more completely, analysts say.
The Mexican government has to use a combination of force on the ground and smart investigative work to defeat the Jalisco Cartel, former diplomats say. It is a model similar to the one Colombia adopted beginning in the 1990s.
...Colombia’s initial success battling the cartels in the 1990s offers a good lesson for Mexico, former U.S. diplomats who have worked on both countries say.
Back then, the Colombian government deployed its security forces to capture and kill high-ranking cartel members, while also increasing its investigative capacities to unravel the groups’ hidden financial infrastructure. It also strengthened the judicial system to end impunity.
After Colombia largely brought down the country’s kingpins in that decade, the United States helped the government there expand its authority across the country.
For every dollar the U.S. spent, Colombia spent three, Mr. Robinson said. It was part of an effort to eradicate coca crops and bring schools, roads and other economic incentives to remote communities where the government had dislodged drug trafficking groups.
But the government was not able to expand its authority to all parts of the country. In the vacuum, paramilitary and guerrilla groups took over cocaine production and trafficking. Cocaine production exploded across the country about a decade ago, analysts say.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Why in the world would I read an article by the New York Times on what to do about the drug problem?
What should happen nexT?
Give them more, unaccounted, American tax money.
That’s what we always have done.
This is plain silly. It’s an opinion piece in The Times that has some good ideas. The suggestion that The Times is a monolithic voice of the Left is as wrongheaded as saying Fox News is uniformly conservative.
How is the conclusion partisan or incorrect?
“The Mexican government needs to immediately start working across municipalities and states to dislodge the Jalisco Cartel and start exerting authority, Mr. Robinson said. But historically, Mexico’s federal governments have been reluctant to work with political rivals, creating a patchy security response that provides safe havens in which cartels can operate.
” ‘Mexico is not traditionally good at that,’ “ Mr. Robinson said. “The ruling party tends to support the governor or mayor that are part of their party, and leave those mayors who are from the opposition alone to fend for themselves against the cartels.”
“In contrast, the Jalisco Cartel works closely with dozens of smaller criminal groups to exert its muscle across the country and challenge the government’s authority.
“On Sunday, the cartel was able to showcase its strength and territorial reach when it set fires to banks and storefronts and blocked roads and highways in some 20 states across Mexico. In many states, the Mexican government failed to respond.”
What works? The same thing that works for alcohol addiction — people realizing that their wellbeing is not in a pill or a bottle. People have a hard time with this nowadays because the mental health industry relies heavily on psychiatric drugs to help people to cope with life’s inevitable problems.
Each and every day we gain more proof that NYT journalists successfully compete for “lowest of the low”.
Well, we know a couple things that don’t work - leaving the border wide open to allow cartels to easily bring fentanyl into the country. But if the relatively wealthy US wants drugs, people will find a way to supply it.
End the War On Drugs. Educate people as to the risks. Let the chips fall where they may. Self eradicating problem. Won’t be pretty, but would probably work. Heartless? Probably, but 60 years in what is being done isn’t working even a little bit.
Do something that I was trying to do with pot smokers in the late 60s and early 70s, get the public to connect drug use, including the glamorous, or humorous, or cool portrayals of Cocaine and Marijuana with the horrors of the business of it all, everything from booby trapped national forests to pot growing murders to the cartel tortures that makes ISIS flinch, it is all ugly, nasty, brutal, deadly, and this can be done while the heavy hitting part of law enforcement and military focuses with more violence on the producers and shippers, and distributors.
The law and government shouldn’t just maintain a parallel industry of fighting drugs in a bureaucratic permanent status quo, but start fighting to win, with coordination from combat attacks internationally on the drug factories and bosses, to local sheriffs and local small town cops on the domestic sidewalks and trailer parks, and state agencies working on drug/chemical transport smuggling.
Dig a moat with alligators and seal the Mexican border. The government is corrupted at every level either by plumbo or oro. The cartels employ 100s of thousands of Mexicans. Billions are made with banks laundering. There is nothing we can do it op has to be the Mexican people are sick of it, are allowed to own guns, and Mexico gets leadership that will treat it as a civil war and be willing to kill a hundred thousand Mexican citizens to clean it out. The problem is the cartel gangsters don’t run around with big stupid face tattoos like the ones in El Salvador. They keep a low profile and look like anyone else. The cartels established themselves as a cult status with vows and quasi religious ceremonies. The authorities know where the money is but don’t want to do anything about it.
The modern ‘war on drugs’ came about because LSD made it difficult for Nixon to prosecute his highly unpopular foreign war, and no other reason.
I can tell you what didn’t work.
Decriminalizing drugs.
Gave the green light for the Cartels to do anything they wanted.
Were we at peace with drugs before Nixon?
The Drug War’s been going on for more than 70 years.
“ But the government was not able to expand its authority to all parts of the country. In the vacuum, paramilitary and guerrilla groups took over cocaine production and trafficking. Cocaine production exploded across the country about a decade ago, analysts say.”
The NYT conveniently left out the part where Colombia elected a leftist, pro-cartel president who has embraced the rebel/cartel groups.
How does a society cure their citizens of wanting to be sedated, in one form or another?
They'll find a way to sedate themselves. The key is to make them not want to.
How do we do that?
The problem will continue as long as the drug dealer has customers and they will have customers as long as we paint the addict customer as a victim and not a criminal.
Where did America source its cocaine in the early 1900s?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.