[boterock]

Maybe they do the same that politicians do here... they keep the cops busy grabbing individuals, but they turn a blind eye to the shipments of tons that are sent via airplanes that could be intercepted easily. In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians.

[darksaints]

Large shipments quite literally rely on small individuals being busted. For at least ten years now, border security agencies have been receiving training on how not to act in the face of a small bust. Their typical response is to start waving people through with little to no scrutiny, because all of the agents want to have some part in the bust, if at least just to have a rubbernecked sort of view at the excitement going on. Now they are being trained that the presence of a small bust is the cue to start raising scrutiny on all vehicles, and larger vehicles in particular.

One of the most disturbing findings is that the largest busts are almost always precipitated by some individual getting caught who is absolutely insistent that they didn't know that a brick of coke was taped to their gas tank (or similar). Previously, those individuals might go straight to prison for a decade or more on trafficking charges. Now that agencies (and defense lawyers) are catching on, there is now a lot of credence given to the idea that those individuals are actually unwitting drug mules used to distract CBP agents from doing their jobs while they slip truckloads past them at the border.

How many "drug traffickers" have we imprisoned that have merely been pawns in a drug trafficking scheme that they had no part in?

[boterock]

Small captures are just the distraction, heck, they even made a tv show “alerta aeropuerto” where they show how efficient they are grabbing mules (that’s the name we give individuals who transport cocaine). The truth is that cocaine transportation is a business that airlines and politicians are into. Nothing unexpected, knowing the dirty records of very high security agencies from both sides.

Well, I can only speak from this side, I don’t really know what happens in the US, but here we have always been fooled by the media, so maybe it can happen there too. And we all know what politicians are capable of.

[imtringued]

No wonder the "war on drugs" is a failure, it literally is the delivery mechanism.

[edgyquant]

It’s definitely not like that in the US (at least on a large scale) and we regularly have large busts and individual cities taking down large operations. Even large scale gangs don’t tend to last long as a centralized bloc because then the fed launches an operation and seizes bank accounts/arrests all the guys at the top.

The problem is that people want to do cocaine, they just do. I’ve been to plenty of parties full of people who aren’t into drugs, the type from well of families with good degrees and good jobs who’ve never been arrested, where cocaine is brought out because it’s considered a party drug like ecstasy among the American middle/upper class. When people like that are willing to spend hundreds of dollars there is a lucrative market and someone is going to supply it. So when American agencies take down large scale operations another (usually decentralized) group swoops in and the cycle repeats.

[boterock]

The skeptical part of me makes me think that it is just smoke... the police takes down large gangs as it draws too much attention, so they gotta do their job. But really big fishes never get caught, and everyone gets good scores in their reports. Down here it is known that some cops are in the trafficking network, and micro traffic is the norm.

[midev]

> In the end everyone knows that it is a deal between traffickers and politicians

This is not true in the US. We have no politicians that are suspected of being involved with cartels.

While our policies might not help the situation, no politician is actually working with traffickers.

[boterock]

Yes you’re right, I can’t say from that side.

What I can say is it has happened here for a long time, and no one questioned as they were also in control of the media. Just until recently it became widely known the 20+ years of smoke of “fight against drugs”. Maybe over there is different, or maybe is not a big of a deal, as, even if there is a lot of money in drugs, there is orders of magnitude more money in big tech, and also from a cleaner origin, so who knows.

[disgrunt]

No, that's what the CIA is for. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca...