Federal drug prosecutions fall to lowest level in decades as Trump shifts focus to deportations

essentialsaltes said:

Exclusive: US scraps Justice Department task force that took on cartels, documents show​

The U.S. Justice Department is closing a task force that took on drug cartels and an office that aimed to ease racial tensions, in a reorganization that drops a plan to merge the nation's top drug and gun law enforcement agencies, documents seen by Reuters show.

The plan approves closing the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, a prosecutor-led inter-agency office created in the 1980s during Ronald Reagan's presidency to tackle major drug cartels.

Stacey Young, a former department attorney who founded the non-profit advocacy group Justice Connection, says the changes could impede the department's law-enforcement mission, including drug prosecutions.

"Americans will feel the harm of this administration's slash-and-burn approach to governing," she said. "This isn't a reorganization -- it's a decimation of some of DOJ's most vital work."

The effort to close the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces surprised current and former officials, since the types of cases it oversees fall in line with the Trump administration's priorities to pursue major drug-trafficking organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel, according to sources familiar with the matter.

A Justice Department official noted that the task force's ongoing criminal cases have since been transferred to a newly created Homeland Security Task Force,

Click to expand...

Sounds like the Pentagon is picking up that slack.

BPPLEE said:

Blowing up the shipments on the way to the US may prove to be more effective

Click to expand...

Even taking the administrations claims to blow up "drug cartel" boats at their word (I don't), it has very limited effects. The long term effects are minimal. Eliminating part of the supply tends to increase the street value of the drugs.

BPPLEE said:

You want to legalize fentanyl?

Click to expand...

Fentanyl is just another kind of opioid that from a user point of view, is more or less interchangeable, and one that's highly profitable for cartels because legal opioids became harder to obtain.

Better strategies would be addressing systemic reasons why so many people are addicted to opioids in the first place, like lack of treatment for opoid addiction, lack of mental healthcare, and the disintegration of community institutions and jobs.

FireDragon76 said:

Even taking the administrations claims to blow up "drug cartel" boats at their word (I don't), it has very limited effects. The long term effects are minimal. Eliminating part of the supply tends to increase the street value of the drugs.

Click to expand...

I would say eliminating part of the supply does just that, eliminates part of the supply...which is a net good. The impacts on street price is irrelevant.

If we're talking about laced cocaine...

I'd rather have only 4 people doing it (and overpaying for it) than 10 people doing it because its cheaper and more easily available.

FireDragon76 said:

Fentanyl is just another kind of opioid that from a user point of view, is more or less interchangeable, and one that's highly profitable for cartels because legal opioids became harder to obtain.

Better strategies would be addressing systemic reasons why so many people are addicted to opioids in the first place

Click to expand...

That's a logic flaw... fentanyl is uniquely dangerous due to the concentration and lethal effects in minimal doses.

We already know the systemic reasons for why there was an explosion of people hooked on opioids, and it had nothing to do with race/poverty/class/etc...

It's because people blindly trusted establishment medical institutions and entities... and when it turned out those entities were wrong, they cut them off cold turkey with zero regard for how brutal withdrawal is from that particular class of drug.

"Follow the science ™" is the reason why people got hooked on those.

A powerful drug company made a powerful drug, the regulatory agencies signed off on it and told everyone it was safe, and made a concerted effort to downplay concerns...and when the problem was bad enough that it could no longer be denied, in their infinite wisdom, they passed prescribing regulations that resulted in people getting cut off with zero acknowledgment for the need for tapering down.

FireDragon76 said:

Even taking the administrations claims to blow up "drug cartel" boats at their word (I don't), it has very limited effects. The long term effects are minimal. Eliminating part of the supply tends to increase the street value of the drugs.



Fentanyl is just another kind of opioid that from a user point of view, is more or less interchangeable, and one that's highly profitable for cartels because legal opioids became harder to obtain.

Better strategies would be addressing systemic reasons why so many people are addicted to opioids in the first place, like lack of treatment for opoid addiction, lack of mental healthcare, and the disintegration of community institutions and jobs.

Click to expand...

When I first got in law enforcement an older officer told me this about drugs. He said “If you really want to stop it, put out the word to everyone that there’s some bad stuff out there and if you take it you will die. Then poison the drugs and flood the market with them. Addicts will die off and the rest of the people will be afraid to do drugs”
I know that’s cynical but fentanyl is making it a reality.