In what will likely be seen as something of a Freudian slip by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said recently in a Mexican news interview that the United States cannot legalize drugs as a means of fighting the black market because “there is just too much money in it.”
If you like spy novels, you will find that the European Union’s presentation of fact to be far more fascinating than fiction. One of the complaints filed in the case describes a rich RJR history of business with Latin American drug cartels, Italian and Russian mafia, and Saddam Hussein’s family to name a few. The Introduction reads as follows:
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31. Many narcotics traffickers who sell drugs in THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY now also purchase and import cigarettes. In particular, as the trade in cigarettes becomes more profitable and carries lesser criminal penalties compared to narcotics trafficking, the “business end” of selling the cigarettes has become at least as attractive and important to the criminal as the narcotics trafficking. Finally, it makes no difference whatsoever to the money laundering system whether the goods are imported and distributed legally or illegally.
There was a similar situation being reported last year on the US/Canada border. Canadian tobacco companies were shipping tobacco into the US where smugglers would sneak it back into Canada.
It will be interesting to see if the gangs get back into the milk business the way Big Al did.
She makes one point I agree with. If you give people welfare/foodstamps for doing nothing and they subsequently use the money we give them to buy drugs we are subsidizing their drug use. Of course my solution to that as some of you might recall would be: viewtopic.php?t=3327&highlight=
If he has to work for his supper what he does with it is not my concern so much.