
El Chapo and the History of the Heroin Crisis - coris47
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a46918/heroin-mexico-el-chapo-cartels-don-winslow/
======
mjevans
It worked for marijuana, so do it for the other things too (but with more
regulation for the harder drugs).

Instead of reacting to the symptoms we need to look in the other direction.

* Cartels are a symptom of opportunity for profit that isn't being serviced in a legal way.

* Drug addiction is a symptom of a sick society.

* People chemically (or psychologically) addicted to the affects of drug treatment are a symptom of incomplete medical treatment.

Maybe if everyone had a place to be and a job they could do, a sense of
security in work and health, as well as the opportunity to have a life worth
living we could actually win the 'war on drugs'.

------
Crito
Of the people I've known who died due to heroin, _all_ of them got started off
on narcotic pain killers prescribed by unscrupulous doctors.

One of my friends in university got hooked on pills his doctor prescribed for
his back pain. The guy was 300+lbs, _maybe_ that had something to do with the
pain? Who cares, pump him full of pills! A year later he was on heroin. Three
years later he was dead.

Nobody but a _complete_ degenerate wakes up one day and says _" You know what,
I think I'm going to mainline some heroin."_ Opioid addiction starts with
pills. If you take heroin out of the equation, they're going to start making
krokodil or some other shit. You can't solve the drug problem until you solve
the doctor problem.

~~~
MichaelGG
Why did he move to Heroin? Was it because it was cheaper/easier due to
artificial restriction on regulated, proper, opiates?

Why didn't he move to OxyContin, morphine, methadone, oxymorphone, etc.?

"Krokodil" is also an alright medication on its own. Just another morphine-
related molecule. The big complaint with it is, once again, unregulated
producers making incredibly unsanity products. Which, if you shove it into
your arm, will cause all sorts of infections.

If we had to buy vaccines from some guy making them in a barn, we'd probably
see a huge incidence in infections from vaccinations.

I'd also disagree that no one wants to inject heroin. I've been on IV morphine
once, due to an injury, and it was _fantastic_. Unbelievably great. I fail to
see why someone wouldn't want that, if they could afford it, have proper
healthcare and equipment, etc. It's just a weak form of wireheading.

Doctors aren't _the_ problem. The legal penalties for seeking medication are.
The social views that addicts are inherently a problem -- that's a problem.
The high cost of medications due to gatekeeping is a problem.

Allow people to buy the medications they want (if only on personal liberty
grounds!). Then engage in adverts, education, sell help, etc. if it's really a
problem. Opiates are so cheap that even a part time job can easily afford to
be high all the time -- if they were in a proper competitive market.

~~~
saiya-jin
well, you have elections, and bunch of people that don't want to live/raise
kids next to people like you describe. or at least the image of junkies they
have in their head. it's easier and beneficial for politicians to have hard
line stance against drugs in many places.

don't expect much beyond +-weed legalization anytime soon, and even that might
be rolled back at one point.

------
misiti3780
If anyone wants to read a really great book about this topic i suggest
"Chasing the Scream"[1]. This book made me think about drug addiction in a
completely different way and also change my mind about legalization -- of all
drugs, including heroin.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-
Drugs/dp/16...](https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Scream-First-Last-
Drugs/dp/1620408902)

~~~
dmix
I'm curious if there are any other analogies in history of societal problems
that was so widely misunderstood yet spent ungodly amounts of human time,
money, and jail time was spent trying to stop in all the wrong ways.

The war on drugs really are the crowning achievement of anti-scientific public
policy. Decades of ignoring the results and continuing to try the same thing.

The west isn't the only one with this problem. The DEA has been exporting this
failed strategy to other countries for decades. The Philippines has taken the
American style war to the extreme: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-
philippines-war-on-drugs-deal...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-philippines-
war-on-drugs-dealers-choose-retirement-over-death-1468509951)

They've demonstrated that the only way to actually win it like a war is via
death squads and the total destruction of human rights. Otherwise governments
have to face reality and accept it doesn't work.

~~~
hackaflocka
Marijuana has been consumed in India forever. It was smoked just like tobacco
is today. By a lot of people in society (including high and low status women).

Never was a problem. Probably led to some of the spirituality and mathematics
of ancient India.

However, it was the natural variety. Not the genetically optimized powder keg
stuff available today.

~~~
stuaxo
True, though they made some pretty strong stuff like charas.

------
mattnewton
> If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills
> two hundred people a week, take a hard look at the legalization of pot,
> which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels. How did they respond to
> a major loss in revenue? Like any company, they created an irresistible new
> product and flooded the market.

That seems like an unfair potshot. Why not emphasize: "An increasing number of
Americans were addicted to prescription opioids such as Oxycontin."

~~~
rcarrigan87
Agreed, the cartels are just reacting to an increase in demand for heroin.

~~~
MichaelGG
And it's the strict scheduling, the intimation tactics with doctors, that
causes people to resort to buying street opiates instead of certified,
regulated, opiates like OxyContin (or cheaper alternatives).

------
leftnode
If you haven't, I highly suggest you read Don Winslow's two books about this:
The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. Both are fantastic.

~~~
charlangas
Agreed! It is also interesting to try to match the characters to the real life
drug lords that inspired them by the crimes and strategies detailed in the
book, though it can get confusing since Winslow often merges two real drug
lords into a single character or branches out a single drug lord into two or
more characters.

For example, Adán Barrera—the main antagonist in The Cartel—is based on one of
the Arellano Felix brothers in The Power of the Dog, but then takes on Chapo
Guzman's persona in The Cartel.

But when you realize that a lot of what Winslow describes actually happened in
real life it puts a lot of things into perspective—especially the US's
involvement on both sides of the coin.

------
bluedino
Heroin is cheap. Really, really cheap. It's really, really addicting. It's
easy to overdose on. And people mix it with shit like fentanyl which makes it
even easier to kill yourself with.

It's a really terrible drug.

~~~
MichaelGG
Heroin can be a useful medication. Street opiates are bad because there's no
regulation. It's not inherent in the medication. Take _anything_ and vary the
strength/purity by 50x and see how many people die. A 50x dose of Tylenol will
kill you just as well (more painful, actually).

~~~
x1798DE
You don't really need regulation to get consistent strength/purity, branding
(Buy Mack's Heroin - guaranteed 99.99% pure with no adulterants!) and tort law
(you said this contained 20mg of heroin, it contained, dangerously, twice that
amount, you are liable for my consequent overdose) should be enough to handle
that, if producers were competing on quality and not "ability to operate in a
black market".

------
DigitalJack
So with people here talking about opioids from docs leading to heroin, a
question came to mind:

If you have been given opioids for pain, did they work? I ask because for me
they don’t. I get buzzed, euphoric, but they don’t do squat for pain for me.
Same with marijuana. No effect on my pain at all.

In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical
discomfort. Am I just an oddball?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "In fact, for me, marijuana makes me even more accutely aware of physical
discomfort. Am I just an oddball?"

Nope. It's the same for me. What I eventually worked out (I'm not 100% sure of
this but I'm pretty certain) is that the strain of marijuana is important.
Unfortunately I don't get to choose in my country :) But if it's a strain that
gives a body high I become more aware of the pain, if it's not I become less
aware.

Edit: If someone with knowledge on this matter can confirm (or refute) my
assumption I'd appreciate it.

~~~
pm90
Here is another reason for the decriminalization of Marijuana: I'm pretty sure
there would be a lot more research into genuine medical benefits of marijuana
if it wasn't dissociated with breaking the law.

I'm curios if Federal research grants can be allowed to study the medical
benefits of Marijuana? I know states have made medical marijuana legal but
most funding in research comes from Federal agencies.

------
bogomipz
Firstly what has happened with the quality of journalism in Esquire, you can
not call this serious journalism when the author writes:

"You can't make this shit up ...",

"The story's goes ..."

"The Mexican authorities had a line on the little bastard."

This is like listening to a person in a bar recounting a story.

Second, the increasing legalization marijuana in the US and the current flow
of heroin into the US are orthogonal. Legalization of marijuana is not the
cause of an influx of heroin. Mexican marijuana has always been considered
cheap and inferior quality. The fact is that US has developed a taste for
highly cultivated quality weed, the same as the US has with coffee and craft
beer. Its "conspicuous consumption", quality weed, is a status symbol - a sign
of discerning taste. The people that were hurt by the legalization of
marijuana were the small time neighborhood dealers not the Mexican cartels.
Mexican cartels most significant revenues have always been Cocaine which needs
to transit Mexico to get to the US. While Cocaine production is still centered
in South American the trafficking and logistics were taken over from the
Colombian Cartels by the Mexican Cartels after the demise of the Medellín
Cartel in Colombia.

The real reason the US is seeing an uptick in Mexican heroin is because there
has been a market created for it by those who have become hooked on
prescription opioids. When they run out or can no longer obtain their
Oxycodone or Hydrocodone they satisfy their withdrawal with street dope.

~~~
John23832
I think that's what they were going for... They're following the "Vice" model
(which I actually like). News the averge modern person can relate to. Walter
Cronkite is dead and gone man.

~~~
bogomipz
That would be the Vice of 15 years ago then. Vice the news channel(HBO) is
respectable journalism. Shane Smith had the good foresight to see that they
could grow with their audience. It doesn't have to Cronkite but it doesn't
have to be "brah" either.

------
nobleach
The opener really frustrates me. It's basically saying that if these folks
have no choice but to engage in illegal activity. If their product somehow
becomes legal, well.... we shouldn't have done that... because now they have
to sell something worse.

OR, OR, they could stop manufacturing poison and perhaps get a legitimate job
and stop making money off of people with serious problems.

Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill. I guess I can't lay the
blame totally on the manufacturers, but my god.... quit acting like their
careers somehow deserve to exist one way or another and it's the USA's fault.

~~~
tmp-20150107
> Weed doesn't kill.... heroin does nothing but kill

Not at all. There are plenty of people using heroin that are not your typical
junkie, just like there are many recreatioal weed users that aren't unemployed
stoners. Take me - I've been working in IT for twenty years, and have been a
heroin addict for just about the same length of time. My career is going
pretty well, I'm in charge of a team of engineers, I speak about my particular
subject at conferences around the world regularly, I have plenty of work up on
GitHub that people use.

What _does_ kill people is stigmatizing addicts, and preventing them from
getting the help they need to allow them to live a normal life and become
usefully employed. Instead, attitudes like yours mean they are forced to
become criminals and marginalized.

------
rwallace
Okay, here's a warning if you haven't read this article yet. Up near the
beginning, there's a really, really unfortunate line about pot legalization
being the cause of this and that. I'm sure it's tongue in cheek, but that
doesn't come across in text, and people are tripping over it. Just skip over
that line and keep reading. The rest of the article is excellent.

~~~
burnitdown
It's not tounge in cheek. Pot sales dropped by 40% so they pivoted to heroin.

------
joering2
I stopped reading after the lead:

> If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills
> two hundred people a week

About 3,000 people died today and about 60,000 got seriously injured in car
accidents TODAY, according to ASIRT. I think the word "grips" is a bit of
stretch here, no?

> take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of
> the Mexican cartels.

How is that legalizing sales of Apples will somehow made Oranges' lovers to
switch? Hard to believe. Any proof of that??

~~~
thenewwazoo
> I think the word "grips" is a bit of stretch here, no?

No, because there isn't a $50bn domestic and >$10bn international market in
car deaths. There isn't a massive machine that perpetuates car deaths; indeed,
quite the opposite.

> Hard to believe. Any proof of that??

Yes: a 40% drop in profits from marijuana, and a corresponding spike in the
rate of production (and because supply/demand, a drop in the price) of heroin
in (and from) Mexico.

You really should have kept reading.

------
graycat
Deleted.

~~~
jjulius
You're using a browser version from January 2015 (it's currently at 48.0 as of
8/2/16), and your OS has not had support from Microsoft since 4/8/14\. Your
system is in desperate need of an upgrade, which could help prevent viruses.
The longer you operate an outdated system, the likelier you are to encounter a
virus.

~~~
graycat
Deleted.

~~~
gruturo
While I agree with you on Windows versions later than XP being markedly worse
from a technical guy's usability perspective (actually Windows Server 2003 +
nlite/ xplite was the best client OS setup I ever used ), you are denying
yourself a very significant amount of security patches and I would define this
behaviour as a bit irresponsible of your PC only contains your own data, and
possibly illegal if you have any customer personal data or payment
information. I hate the newer Microsoft OSes as much as you but run Windows 10
(plus a healthy amount of Non-Microsoft OSes). At least upgrade your browser
because that's the main entry vector for malware nowadays, you will find that
recent versions of Firefox are quite enjoyable - latest one even started
running some tasks in dedicated processes (just experimentally for now)
resulting in a more responsive interface.

~~~
graycat
I have no solid information at all that indicates that any Microsoft operating
system is more secure than Windows XP SP3 with the latest Microsoft patches.
None. No such information at all.

For all I know, all Microsoft patches for later Microsoft operating systems
are only for bugs in those operating systems and not for bugs in the XP
version I am running.

I have no even reasonable information that there are any security bugs in the
XP installation I have.

I have no reason to believe that Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 is more secure than
XP; as far as I know, XP is more secure than those operating systems.

And similarly for Windows Server.

How the heck Flash could give malware to my XP system is beyond me, and I've
seen no explanation.

XP should be able to run any user mode software at all safely. I have heard no
claims that it can. It it cannot, then I very much want to know why not. For
decades several time sharing systems apparently could run any software at all,
including operating systems, safely.

These systems are essentially all multiple virtual memory systems built on the
Intel x86 architecture with hierarchical file systems with capabilities and
access control lists. If there are security holes, I sure as heck want to know
why; but apparently there have been security holes, and I never got even
reasonably good information on why.

A few years ago, I saw that Microsoft had patched a security hole caused by a
buffer overflow bug. Outrageous that Microsoft should still have buffer
overflow bugs.

I intend to bring up an instance of a recent version of Windows Server, but I
have no solid information or even an idea, none, not even zip, zilch, or zero,
what the situation is on bugs or security.

I would have no idea at all on how to run a _secure_ Windows system attached
to the Internet.

Looking around at my XP system, I was just outraged to the point of screaming
to discover that Microsoft had started some _message service_ that was later
seen to be a security risk. I didn't ask for that message service. I wasn't
informed that it was running. I wasn't using that message service. I had no
intention of using that message service. What the heck other obscure, hidden,
secret software is Microsoft starting, not telling me about, and that could
infect my system? I'm torqued. But there isn't much I can do about it.

To me, that moving to Windows 10, that apparently keeps _phoning home_ , would
solve security problems instead of causing them is a really bad joke. Windows
10 apparently has a lot of new software that likely has bugs. That new
Microsoft software, I want nothing to do with it.

Also I have long been totally torqued off, even screaming, as I clicked and
clicked and clicked and said over and over and over, for years, to NOT, under
any circumstances at all, NEVER but NEVER, ever, read any removable media
unless and until so instructed. Don't look at it. Don't check it. Don't permit
even a single bit to be read at all. Of course, if you automatically read and
execute software from removable media, you should be dragged by two horses in
opposite directions. But such screaming didn't work.

Yup, USB thumb drives are a special case.

Instead, of course, I want IP port by port, program by program, each DLL one
at a time, and anything and everything else, what the heck is running on my
system, why, and what the heck the risks are. But I have no reasonable way to
get such information.

For my startup and its Web server, for now it will store nothing or next to
nothing on users -- no cookies, user IDs, user passwords, etc. My site makes
no use of cookies. Users don't login or give passwords. Users don't give
e-mail addresses. Yes, the Web site log file likely has the user's IP address,
but actually that does not much identify a user.

Maybe at a high end site, are supposed to put outside of a computer running
Windows some special boxes. All IP, maybe even all Ethernet, traffic flows
through these boxes, and they check, track, and analyze the heck out of every
packet, every bit, that flows through. That data plus some more such tracking
on Windows may be enough. But I have no idea what such boxes or associated
Windows programs might be.

Of course, the server should make no use of wireless. That a server could get
malware from a USB drive is outrageous.

------
delbel
We need a stronger border to prevent heroin from entering our country.

~~~
justinhensley
There is no evidence to suggest that would be successful.

A "stronger border" and "higher walls" are nothing but campaign slogans.

~~~
devopsproject
Bullshit:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5323928)

~~~
jjulius
OP's comment was about the smuggling of drugs, specifically heroin, into the
country. You said "bullshit" and then cited that NPR article as your source.
The article discusses a decrease in apprehensions, but it clearly states the
following:

> This is still an active smuggling route, especially for drugs.

I'm a little confused as to how this article supports the argument that
building a wall helps limit drug smuggling. Care to explain?

~~~
burnitdown
Not the op, but it seems to me that stopping huge numbers of bodies crossing
the borders illegally would free up resources to focus on the smaller amount
getting through and the drugs in particular.

