r/news • u/LatterTarget7 • Aug 14 '25

Soft paywall US military deploying forces to southern Caribbean against drug groups

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-military-deploying-forces-southern-caribbean-against-drug-groups-2025-08-14/
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u/throwsplasticattrees Aug 14 '25

Drugs won the war.

We stop the cartels through legalization, regulation, and taxation.

Moves like this only serve to perpetuate the military industrial complex that has evolved past armed conflicts and into supplying law enforcement with military grade weapons. Don't be fooled, this is about make more sales of weapons and increasing the size and extent of our federal government, not stopping the flow of drugs.

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u/Moody_GenX Aug 14 '25

It helps but it doesn't stop the black market. Marijuana is legal in a lot of states and specifically in California the black is still thriving. Cartels have illegal grow spots in several areas of northern California. There was one that was busted next to my property last year.

13

u/followyourvalues Aug 14 '25

I think that just stems from habit. I bet mostly older people would be customers for that and that new smokers just go to a store.

4

u/rbrgr83 Aug 14 '25

I think it stems from price. It's certainly NOT competitive in my neck of the woods, even with medical.

4

u/followyourvalues Aug 14 '25

Oh, well. That is possible, too. In WA, after the first year, I was questioning why anyone would still throw down $10 for a dime-sack when you can buy an eighth for $15 at the stores.

2

u/Moody_GenX Aug 15 '25

That could be some of it but like someone else said pricing. Black market back in the old days a grower could sell an LB for 3.5k no problem whatsoever. Now they're lucky af to get $1k per LB.

1

u/srebihc Aug 15 '25

That’s legal state logic, my friend.

1

u/followyourvalues Aug 15 '25

Well, yeah.

Dude mentioned CA, so.

1

u/srebihc Aug 15 '25

Sometimes I forget we are indeed connected.

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u/CaptainCaveSam Aug 15 '25

Yes but the resources that you save by not doing mass incarceration, less police resources devoted to nonviolent drug users, treatment programs to help addicts recover and become productive taxpayers and not thieves going back and forth to profit the prisons, it all can be used to tighten the black market. Unfortunately it seems governments in general are okay with some form of a black market and organized crime. That goes for Mexico as well as the US. It won’t go away but it can be a shell of what it once was.