El Presidente?

[Steezie]

You are the president of a small and poor country with a large narcoterrorism problem

The drug lords have large groups of armed soldiers that are well equipped and extremely violent. They have showed no remorse in killing entire bus-loads of people to eliminate one person. The violence is tearing the country apart and you must act or risk your country dissolving into total anarchy.

Foreign aide is avalible, but only when you demonstrate progress in dealing with the problem. No one wants to pour money into what they see as a monetary black hole.

You have a few options.

First, you can attempt to legally pursue the drug lords and their organization. If you imprison the leadership and the lieutenants, maybe the organization will crumble. However this will put a great many civilians at risk, lawyers, judges, jurors, and will take a great deal of time.

Second, you can attempt to fund your secret service better, with better equipment and training, maybe they can take out the leaders of the organizations and cause them to crumble from the inside out. However this will be expensive and corruption is already a problem, also once the organizations are disbanded, you still have large groups of armed men in your country.

Third, there are right-wing guerrillas hiding out in the mountains. Your government has declared them out-laws, but you can exchange their services for a full pardon in fighting against the drug cartels. You will effectively gain a cheap and well-trained army. However the guerrillas are dangerous, un-predictable, and largely un-controllable. The possibility of the guerrillas turning on you once the cartels have fallen is not out of the question.

Fourth, you can negotiate with the cartels. Maybe if you offer to pardon them, or threaten them with the intervention of foreign armed forces if they do not desist. You could offer the drug lords legitimate government or business positions if they give up their narcoterroristic activities. However this has little chance of actually working, threatening people who make thier living killing innocent people probably wont have much of an effect and they already make hundreds of millions in drug income, far more than they could dream of earning legitimately.

So, what do you do? How do you end this violence in your country and save innocent people from dying? If you have an idea not on the list, feel free to present it

 

[Renton405]

Drugs will always be a part of the social economy, both legally and illegally. It is impossible to get rid of drugs. The drug war is alot of wasted money. As long as seeds can grow, there will be drugs

The big problem is violence from rival cartels. So some type of buffer would need to be implemented between the 2.

Secondly , I would get more addiction programs. Centers for drugs addicts. Available methadone programs, etc. more free care.

Personally it would be better to work with the cartels rather than go to war with them. keep the cartels on a more regulated level. Give them incentives for less drugs being imported. Have a tax that they make go to the government(for instance a percentage of tax go to the government for every acre of coca or poppy grown). but my main concern would be to keeping rival warfare down the lowest, because this is what causes the most deaths

 

[talkingmonkey]

If I were president, I would take my cut...like Noriega

 

[Deadbolt]

Simple, legalize all drugs and saturate the market with them, this will effectively remove the cartel's power and funding, then in the resulting confusion, stage a massive sting operation against their leadership and lock 'em up.

 

[sbvera13]

Easy. Legalize drugs. This will remove or reduce their source of funding, take away the need for violence, and create incentive to act nonviolently (if drugs were a respectable business why would you risk imporsonment by killing people?).

But no, legalized drugs are far more evil than the illegal ones that people can get anyway and fund criminals and violence at the same time.\

Edit: Realziing of course, that it's the illegality of the drugs in OTHER coutnires that the cartels sell to that are the problem, implementing this solution is rather difficult, but still the best option.