this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
52 points (94.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

43537 readers
582 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
52
Do drug cartels let the US and other countries "catch" their shipments? Like the US caught 1 billion of drugs over here while we ship 6 billion worth of drugs over there? (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 hours ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] DreamAccountant@lemmy.world 12 points 6 hours ago

The "War on Drugs" was lost the day it was started. Since then, it's just bullshit used to make the population feel as if drugs aren't freely available to the general population that can afford them.

It's also used to militarize the police. It's also used by the government to fund covert, illegal operations. It's used by the government to punish communities of minories by introducing cheap, addictive drugs to desperate people.

Payoffs? Yep. Of course. Non-stop.

Fake "real" busts? Yes. Of course. Just for the cameras, it's called "Copaganda".

[–] __siru__@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 hours ago

I feel obligied to make the stupid comment that of course drug cartels ship drugs into the US. In fact it is done completely legally, by US pharmaceutical corporations. Isn't this why we had the whole opioid crisis?

[–] bacon_pdp@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago

Well the smart cartels just pay a handful of people and the Trump administration uses military planes to transport the drugs into the country and then forgets all about it and funnels the money into the right pockets.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 36 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

There's some info on this from Belgium. The Antwerp harbour is known to be one of the major drug ports of EU. A couple of gangs operating through it used a breached "secure" messaging service called Sky-ECC.

The messages show that there were severe punishments whenever a shipment got caught in the harbor. Like kidnapping and torture of those "responsible". With the henchmen providing video proof to the gang leaders, often hiding in Dubai and other countries with lesser diplomatic ties.

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 13 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

My father worked in something similar, heading operations of a prominent logistical hub. There was a lot of gang interferences and different gangs trying to take control. If they controlled the hub, it was easy to use it for trafficking and boost profits. He had arrangements with one crime group that were "the good guys"—as good as you can get—that in turn axted as muscle to keep other groups out.

They didn't extort, but they did ask to essentially look the other way and in turn they will handle any hostilities of other groups.

Just before he retired, a group went for a bit push. The federal authorities were useless at handling it effectively, and the main group sorted it all out. He had his car torched out the front of his house, and the other group then had people watching and protecting him and his street 24/7. The authorities knew, but couldn't do as good a job at keeping him safe as the power struggle happened.

I had met some of these men when I was younger. Good, kind, Italian gentlemen that spoke a lot of praise of my father and were like old friends. But he had told me that they are ruthless and that he'd have to be careful around them because they'd just "take out" my father's problems for him even if he had never mentioned them.

It was a very interesting underbelly to see, but it just worked. He'd managed to keep it as peaceful as it could be by understanding, "Yes, this will happen" but politically handling it as "Minimise it as much as possible."

[–] iii@mander.xyz 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They didn't extort, but they did ask to essentially look the other way and in turn they will handle any hostilities of other groups.

Maybe not clear as daylight extortion. But I imagine it's a precarious position nonetheless? Had your father not been as "easy going", he could be the problem they'd take out?

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

Yeah, definitely. He understood well that it was an ecosystem of its own. It was all "business" which I think is why he was very well respected by these people, the workers of the industry, and politicians. The job was to ensure goods flowed in and out so a few million people had food in their cities and towns, and he did that job very well. If he didn't, his career would be over by whoever deemed it.

He told me once, to paraphrase, "It's all chaos and mayhem until you realise it's a school of fish. You just swim with them and it's all good. Do it properly and you can steer all the fish in the right direction so everyone stays safe."

[–] a_good_hunter@lemmy.world 19 points 10 hours ago

99% of the time, it's because someone within the cartel let the authorities know. Or someone from a rival cartel, in exchange for better treatment.

[–] TehBamski@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago

I don't recall where I learned this, but I believe it was from a documentary about the Mexican cartels that I watched years ago.

Simple answer: Yes. It's very much a cat and mouse game, and sometimes they sacrifice the few so that others can successfully smuggle in their load of drugs.

Long answer: They operate in huge numbers of people moving their drugs into the US (and other countries for that matter). They gather information from smugglers, scouts, informants, and even insiders of all sorts. With this kind of info network, they are better able to adjust where and when they send someone over. And if we look at who these people are that smuggle the drugs over, they sadly are those that either don't have better opportunities where they're from, have been kidnapped and forced to smuggle, have been blackmailed, have been extorted with threats of their loved ones being killed, tortured, or kidnapped. So they are often stuck in following through with the demands or face the cartel's consequences. Hence why some will be used as decoys, told to get caught with a small load. This gives the cartels a chance to simultaneously send several others elsewhere, all in the hopes that the bigger loads get through. Which actually was or is (?) a viable strategy. And we haven't even talked about the five ways that they commonly move their drugs into the US. On land, underground, in the air, on the water, and underwater with custom made submarines called a Narco-submarine

[–] zxqwas@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

Why would they? It's not like the customs guy clocks out early because he found one package.