No, siree. Not a chance. Been there; done that.
Today, kids, the focus is on the identity of dynamics between the emergence and development of drug distribution networks and that of insurgent groups and the movements which arise from these. The point of commonality between these two disparate, equally illegal, types of entity is that both are self-organizing, dynamically stable, and far more inherently flexible and adaptive than the social, political, and legal structures which seek to confront and defeat them.
The Geek first noticed the commonalities when he came back to the world after a fun filled multi-year tour in a far away country experiencing armed political turbulence. He had the chance to live for some time in a small city in southern New Mexico which was not only convenient to the international border but possessed a moderately large university with a diverse student body including a number of people from Mideast countries.
As was (and is) so often the case, New Mexico lagged behind the rest of the country in social trends. The Summer of Love had long since come and gone. The "Hashbury" out in San Francisco was overrun by Gray Line buses filled with camera toting tourists, and the hippies had departed for other pastures of plenty. Only then when even Fargo, ND had experienced an influx of drug use did the town where the Geek temporarily lived find the joys of LSD, pot, hash, and other such substances.
Where a demand exists, a supply will surely follow. Adam Smith's "hidden hand" exists to assure that. The Geek watched as the HH went to work.
Several distribution networks emerged in the Fall and Winter of 1968. Of the "big five", three developed among locals, two of these were of middle class Anglo nature with one forming in the Mexican-American contingent. The other two emerged from out-of-state students at the university.
Importantly, all of the "big five" self-organized within social groups comprising people who either had or wished to have psychedelic experiences. The first stage of self-organizing was simply the sharing of stashes and expressing a desire for more of whatever, usually pot, 'shroom, LSD, or, less frequently, speed.
Within each group--groups which were united primarily by a taste for drug use and place of primary residence and little else--one or more individuals showed themselves willing to acquire more for the benefit of the group. It was really rather like the tune done by New Riders of the Purple Sage--the one where Henry goes down south of the border to meet the man "who has it growing from the ground."
After the preliminary couple of trips down south or out to Los Angeles, the intrepid specialists in procurement self-organized into a loosely coordinated "importers association." This allowed for both economies of scale and specialization in procurement. For example, one person ran the speed connection out of LA. Another was oriented toward the acquisition of hash from North Africa coming through Lebanon. Yet others worked the rat line into the interior of Mexico for both weed and 'shroom. Yet another couple of individuals had firm contacts for acid made in labs both in Arizona and California. (For the sake of being complete, peyote was available locally. All one had to do was go out in the desert southwest of the valley and take a look--and harvest.)
The import association assured there was little chance of the "whole town is dry." It also made certain that profits were equitable and greed was restrained for mutual advantage.
Importantly there were no guns involved. (OK, one dude liked to go around strapped, because he had a real macho thing, but his piece was always unloaded.) Neither was there any aggressive marketing. No one hung around the local high schools or middle schools saying, "the first one is free. Heh, Heh. Prices on the street were low, lower than in larger cities such as Albuquerque, Tucson, or El Paso.
The reason for the low prices was quite simply the lack of risk. The movers and shakers of this town had no clue that there was an emergent system in their midst. The low profile, self-organizing nature of the drug distribution network coupled with the absence of violence or spikes in crimes against property as well as the lack of aggressive marketing assured that the emergent system flew below the local radar.
Law enforcement had no priority on counter-drug efforts. The city, for example, had but one drug cop. This man was unambitious and liked to sit in his unmarked car eating Cracker Jacks to an extent that the back seat was so overflowing with the empties that it would have been impossible to put a prisoner in it. Anyway, everyone knew who he was, where he was, and saw no reason to worry.
After a year of development, the multi-group, two tiered network was well developed. Everyone involved seemed quite happy with the arrangement. Well, they went around with quiet, knowing, and pleased smiles on their faces. It looked as if a satisfactory stasis had been achieved.
To the Geek it was all quite similar to the opening phases of the multi-stage process by which latent political discontent slowly evolved toward a political movement with vague goals and hazy leadership. In the area of political discontent and the progress of self-organization toward insurgency, the initiative always rests with the status quo. The Geek suspected it was the same in the evolution of drug distribution networks.
So events of Spring 1969 proved. The precipitating incident was small, even trivial. The results were totally non-linear. That is the output was disproportionate and unpredictable on the basis of the input.
The precipitating event was the discovery by a parent of some pot in the possession of her high school age son. The kid had taken some from the stash of his elder sister as he admitted to dear old mom.
Mom was an activist in the local Democratic Party. She went to a man who was not only a state senator but the president of the biggest bank in town and a genuine heavy hitter in state Democratic circles.
This man saw an opportunity. And he took it. The banker was one of those people who wondered often, loudly, and boorishly about "what the hell is wrong with the kids these days?" Tossing his considerable political weight around, the banker forced the formation of a multi-agency task force to end the drug menace in the county.
The country sheriff as well as the county district attorney was a man with lofty political ambitions. Both had watched enough TV to know that an anti-drug crusade would be beaucoup important to their futures. So they joined the banker with a will, a whoop, and a holler.
Because the banker was head of the relevant Senate committee, the state police joined the effort. Not to be outdone and suspecting an "international" connection, both the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (as DEA was known back then) and the Border Patrol/ Customs joined the wolf pack.
In no time at all an inter-agency task group deployed a flood of undercover officers and sought to recruit informers by the bus load. The banker was pleased. His efforts had created a coalition of city, country, state, and federal lawmen which had a total roster of over sixty sworn personnel and, ultimately, over seventy-five informants. The law enforcers outnumbered the aggregate import association and local dealer assemblage by nearly ten to one.
The high point of the state's reaction to the self-organizing system was a pre-dawn raid conducted by more than two hundred badge wearing men. Over a dozen (fourteen to be precise) dangerous drug dealers and narco-traffickers were arrested. The front page of the local newspaper was filled with pictures under the screaming end-of-the-world size type headline "Handcuffed and Waiting!"
The status quo's exercise in coercion resulted finally in either acquittal or overturning on appeal of all but two of those arrested. More embarrassing to the status quo was the simple fact that virtually all of those arrested were good products of good homes of a solidly middle class and primarily Democratic families. None were the scourge of humanity criminals TV convinced many were at the root of America's drug crisis.
It deserves mentioning that the state's mis-fired attempt to end the drug "menace" only had an impact on two of the "big five" groups and then only in part. The day after the big raid, those who wished to purchase a no-no substance had no difficulty doing so.
In the years following the Great Drug Bust the nature of the drug distribution networks changed. Prices went up. Aggressive marketing tactics were employed. Turf battles occurred. Opiates and cocaine replaced lower profit items. Guns were carried. And used. The new self-organizing systems became more structured, more hierarchical, more, in a real sense, professional, more businesslike, more Mafia like.
Over the next thirty years or so the Geek spent a fair amount of spare time beavering away in archives, old police records, and other documentary sources to get a handle on whether or not what he had observed in the small New Mexico city was standard. He found out that it was.
Starting in the Fifties and ranging forward in time to the Nineties, the pattern was repeated in town after town, city after city, even those cities with pre-existing criminal syndicates. The pattern was simple.
All drug distribution networks are self-organizing. All start at the bottom and organize upwards. Where law enforcement is lax, prices are low, violence is absent, secondary crime (crime committed to obtain habit maintenance resources) low, aggressive marketing nonexistent, as are turf battles. Enhanced law enforcement measures drive evolution of the networks in the direction of greater structure, more aggressive recruitment of new customers, more violence, and all the the other high profile consequences.
At the same time, the enhanced law enforcement is ineffective because the networks never lose the self-organizing capacity with its inherent flexibility. At bottom, enhanced law enforcement is an evolutionary challenge. The new stresses, the increased risks, drive a process of adaptation in which the initially self-organizing dynamic of the network gives it an advantage so that the law enforcers can never, have never, gained and retained the initiative.
In a race between the ponderous structures of the state and the bottom up, self-organized networks, the latter always have the advantage. Indeed, the record suggest that the networks have such an inherent advantage that while some are caught, some are killed, the network will continue--and expand. The proof of this contention rests in the constant dollar cost of an effective dose of whatever illegal drug. Because of improvements in technology which have resulted in ever increasing potency and purity, the average cost of a user's "effective" dose of drugs as disparate as pot and smack have dropped consistently over time.
It is fair to conclude that the state's attempts at coercion have not only failed, they have been counterproductive. As the price of drugs has dropped and availability increased, the consequences of increased pressures such as greater violence and more aggressive recruitment of new customers have grown. From the perspective of the law enforcers it has been a lose-lose situation--for them.
The Mexican government has been learning this lesson in a particularly bloody way in the past two years. So are others albeit in less sanguinary fashion.
Now, bucko, you might have the question, "What has this got to do with insurgency?"
Well, the Geek suggests that you look in tomorrow or the next day. Thunderstorms make the Geek's postings a bit unpredictable right now.
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