Playing whack-a-mole - methamphetamine
Our "war on drugs" is more public relations than anything else and policing just shifts the production elsewhere -- talk about unintended consequences.
From
The Economist:
Methed up
Storming a ranch south of the city of Guadalajara, Mexican soldiers last month made one of the biggest drug busts in history. They found 15 tonnes of the banned stimulant methamphetamine, which in America retails for more than $100 per gram, seven tonnes of chemicals used to make it, and a laboratory. The manufacturers had fled.
This was the latest sign that meth, once primarily a home-cooked drug, has become a mass-produced one. Unlike cocaine and heroin, imported from the limited regions where coca and poppy are cultivated, meth can be made anywhere. In most countries the ingredients, principally ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, can be bought as medicine for colds. Cooking them is dangerous. But meth is so addictive that the risk of blowing off your hands is little deterrent: in 2010 the authorities discovered 6,768 makeshift labs in America.
These “kitchens” make kilos of the stuff, not tonnes. Producing big quantities in America has become harder, as the authorities have cracked down on bulk purchases of the ingredients. So production is shifting to big and highly efficient labs in Mexico. The cheap and potent meth they supply now provides some three quarters of the drug consumed in America. Seizures at the border rose from 1.3 tonnes in 2001 to 4.5 tonnes by the end of the decade. In 2008 the Mexican authorities identified 21 labs. In 2009 they found 191.
And of course the corruption in the Mexican Police and Military is so entrenched that they literally can not do anything. They may bust a lab but the chemists will have kept current on their
mordida and will have gotten a phone call before the raid.
Posted by DaveH at March 27, 2012 11:25 AM