> % She pointed out that even if we succeed in Columbia, drug
> % growing will just pop up elsewhere. That just an area the
> % size of northern WA state would feed all the addicts in
> % the U.S.
The US could nuke Colombia, kill everyone there, render the land
unihabitable for the next hundred years, and it would slow down
cocaine imports to the US... for a few months, until Peru, or Bolivia,
or any of a dozen other countries pick up the market opportunity. The
US could keep on nuking, and sooner or later, there would be no more
cocaine available, and then what would addicts do? They would shift
over to using methamphetamines, which provide a similar kind of high,
but are synthesized in the US. And then the US could nuke itself,
killing everyone, and then there would finally be no more drug problem
in the US. Mr. Bush, are you reading this? Go ahead, push the
button!
Cocaine is a commodity, and it will always be traded in a market.
It's not a free market, but it is a market, and the demand is pretty
much inelastic, so when supply changes, the price will change, not the
demand.
> % And: when breaking down Bush's budget, enforcement vs treatment,
> % she added in a billion spent on Columbian efforts (I forget her
> % exact numbers, it was more than that). This was a reality check
> % on Bush's WODs.
Colombia is the next big war the US will get involved with. $1.3bil
in military aid for them in Plan Colombia, and it's pretty much agreed
by all parties that it won't do anything to stop the flow of cocaine
into the US.
> % Wait, that wasn't it. It was interesting though. Delta Force is
> % coyly claiming they personally shot Escobar. I still have that
> % segment on tape, because I wanted to transcribe the discussion
> % about the legality of U.S. forces killing furriners.
"Killing Pablo" leaves the question of whether Delta actually killed
Pabo unanswered. Certainly they were there and involved in the hunt.
Certainly if they had killed him, they would not want to leave any
documentation of that. There's really no way we'll ever know the
truth. Does it matter though?
