By: Brant
29 September 2010
COA Analysis: Mexico (Reader Participation Required!)
Might Mexico take the plunge and try to take the power out of the cartels' hands by legalizing drugs and taxing them? Will the US finally get serious about securing the border to contain the drug violence? How do you see any of these courses of action playing out?
By: Brant
By: Brant
Legalizing drugs, in Mexico or the United States, will not automatically cancel the violence associated with the trade. There is a definite demand for drugs, for whatever reason you might think appropriate, and people will struggle violently to control the supply of them. To counter this, government will have to become the biggest and baddest dealer on the block - not an enviable position.
ReplyDeleteNor will taxing them automatically result in fabulous new revenue streams. Cross-state and cross-border illicit trade in untaxed cigarettes and booze, the A and T in BATF, still attracts a lot of activity and violence even though these have long been legal substances.
COAs: 1) I am not sure about the NAFTA connection, can you elaborate? 2) no more "drug tourism" than there is now I should think, and making something legal in Mexico doesn't make it more available or desirable in the US. 3) Oh boy, let's hope we don't see the contents of Fort Hood rolling south of the border any time soon; I don't think Jose Sixpack, Ordinary Mexican, is going to appreciate such an incursion no matter how bad things actually are. 4) Yep, even if you change the axes of your graph it will be SS,DD.
Just my 2 cents, suitably discounted to 1.9426 in US funds.
NAFTA supposedly allows the free flow of labor/goods between North American countries (with a few politically-protected exceptions). If Mexico legalizes narcotics and the drug violence spills into the US, is it inconceivable that the US would opt out of NAFTA to (finally) seal the border and start shooting border-jumpers?
ReplyDeleteI just didn't see why the US would have to leave NAFTA in order to shoot people crossing the border. They seem to be doing some of that now.
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't it still just as important to keep the jobs and capital flowing out of high-cost areas and into low-cost ones? I rather thought that was why NAFTA was put int place to begin with; national security should trump the opportunity for corporations to make cost savings but I can't think of any examples of this right now....