9 Comments

Good article--if you're interested, I wrote something similar arguing that we should not, in fact, go to war with the cartels. https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-attacking-mexico

Expand full comment

Interesting and informative--thanks! Have you read Fentanyl, Inc.? I recommend it for its compelling explanation of how this problem really took off (initially with black tar heroin from Mexico) in the aftermath of the Big Pharma-created Oxy addiction crisis. It continues to amaze me that anyone should trust the very industry which essentially created the new (to the United States) phenomenon of sidewalk zombies.

Expand full comment

I haven't, but I had a long running conspiracy theory that never panned out that the Obama Administration had financial tries to heroin trafficking via organized crime in Chicago. At the very least they didn't at all think through what would happened if they banned OC after everyone was addicted.

Expand full comment

I don't think Vivek has taken a close enough look at policy myself he tends initially to bloviate and then when he's looked more carefully at the issue moderate (at least that's how his foreign policy position evolved over the campaign). Crenshaw strikes me as just a dude with an eye black eye and not much more. CATO have written a lot about and Justin Logan who wrote their paper pet peeve is the war on drugs, and the price of cocaine as the US began operations in Columbia (it fell). There is a solution. It is not rehabilitative it is punitive. (A) The US body politic would not tolerate it (B) Its probably a day late and dollar short. (C) Punition to a certain degree has been tried and failed though death penalty is a lot harsher than long sentencing (D) It may backfire badly in the same way long prison sentences for minor drug offenses did. (E) The US is far bigger and a lot different to places where they are very strict and harsh on both users and traffickers.

Expand full comment

There was certainly a chance thar Vivek was shooting from the hip but regardless he repeated such things more than once

Expand full comment

When he first announced his campaign, I was less than thrilled I thought him an opportunistic grifter. As the campaign progressed (foreign policy my only real interest since I am not American) He went from arm every man woman and dog in Taiwan with a gun to an also unrealistic but less militant, reshore semiconductors and revert back to strategic ambiguity after. I'm pretty certain his advice would have been one of the voices who helped convince Trump to change his tune on Tik Tok. I was a heavy user/addict of various substances myself and the main reason I moved back to India. Duterte was doing a Bukele way before Bukele was being Bukele and even harder in the Philippines. Drug use and drug related crime fell substantially. His police and paramilitaries were straight up engaging in extra judicial executions. That would never fly in America. In Indonesia about 2/3 the size of the US and an archipelago death penalty is a real risk for trafficking (Though I have no idea what the usage levels and stats are) In Singapore they do not differentiate between user and trafficker I believe and recently executed a convicted trafficker who did not have the intelligence level to know the nature of the crime he was committing and what the repercussions was. Malaysia is very strict (no clue on data) You can still buy and use drugs in SG and MY, but its probably not worth it. If you want a bit of a bender at the weekend and like a bit of that sort of thing. Its wiser to fly to Bangkok, they just decriminalized pot there, though I seem to remember reading recently they reversed that.

Expand full comment

the funny thing about Vivek is that the main business he got rich from is clearly a scam. He somehow got wealth losing absolutely insane amounts of money and never bringing a product to market. I still suspect he is the next Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman-Fried.

That said, on a surface level it makes some sense to search for unused medical patents and market them

Expand full comment

Occam's razor says that these car of black-women really were running drugs and the cartels hate competition;

The fact that this turf-war has the eye of Sauron; A SUV full of BLM drug-winners transferring drugs the perfect cover at woke border on return, who would even dare to inspect; But the cartel knew.

Soros wants nothing more than infinite Fentanyl sent to Red States, and having black women as couriers is the perfect cover.

The stupid talk about bombing, is just CIA-USA telling CIA-Mexico 'keep your kills off the news'

Expand full comment

I didnt end up discussing that kidnapping case because the piece was already long enough, but it does seem those people were involved in drug trafficking.

In this instance it seems the policy class etc doesnt want this going on and its political candidates being off the chain.

Soros is actually a prominent drug war opponent, though of course that also means he wants drugs to be readily available.

Expand full comment