How drug cartels are like big box stores

I caught part of that program. Something it or another program said that stuck with me is that the cartels saw that prescribed use of opioids was way up in certain parts of the US. The cartels set up supply chains there, because they know the legal use of opioids would lead greater demand of the illegal stuff as people were cut off by their doctors or couldn't get enough legal sourced drugs. Apparently a real heroin epidemic is sweeping the US and Canada.

Meanwhile doctors deny opioids to patients that really are in pain, because of the fear of addiction. Maybe it's better to provide these legal drugs to these people, even if they are addicted. At least they'll be getting drugs of known quality and dosage, way reducing the chance of death, instead of fentanyl laced crap (And there's now some drug that's 100 times more powerful than fentanyl out there) that will kill them. This would be the point of legalizing and strictly regulating opioids.

I rather liked the little tidbit that the Cartels have bales of weed stuck in Tijuana because of the number of States were it's legal now has driven the demand way down and no one is buying.

Funny that, because we've been told on this form that making pot legal would just get the gangs to go into other drugs. Seems pot is still 50% of their income and they're feeling the pinch because of this lost income.

No, the point was that the gangs were already heavily diversified into all kinds of crime. Legalizing pot wouldn't get rid of organized crime at all, which remains the wackiest claim of the pro-legalization side. If you want to legalize then fine. There's about a 90% agreement with that at any given time. Just don't inflate the value of legalization, like saying some kind of crime-free utopia is going to flower after legalization is complete. The criminals are diverse, adaptable, and aren't going anywhere so there was no reason to fib about it.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.