As I have described in other posts, it is impossible for anyone with direct knowledge of the situation not to realize that today, with the current rules of the game, the fight against drugs is an impossible undertaking regardless of the real “political will” and the amount of resources made available.
This is not merely a personal point of view; it is simply something uncomfortable and unpopular to say, but it is the plain truth, and there is no shortage of brave people who not only say it but write it: for example, regardless of sympathy or antipathy for the person, journalist Roberto Saviano is recognized as a reference point in knowledge of the “Dark World” both in Italy and abroad, and he himself writes, in his book “Zero Zero Zero” (and probably not by chance in the last pages), that we need to think of other solutions beyond simple judicial repression.
There are, in fact, sums of money far too large at stake, and we all know that money is a powerful weapon, perhaps the only real weapon that matters in a war.
With money you can set entire armies of dealers/wholesalers in motion, you can create efficient logistics and distribution chains, you can pay handsomely hordes of brilliant lawyers, you can even develop ad hoc technologies for your own purposes (I read that recently even the mafias straddling Italy and Albania have equipped themselves with mini-submarines, something long common for South American narcos).
With money you can corrupt systematically and pervasively both at low and high levels, assuming the term “corruption” still makes sense when you have literally bought the politician, when he is essentially an integral part of your intangible assets.
If even a simple reader informed by newspapers and books realizes the situation, one can well imagine how clear this bitter reality is to those on the front line, to those who clash with it daily.
So the question to ask is more or less the following: What psychological and behavioral effects does the objective impossibility of winning a war have on the “losing” army?
I believe that, if one honestly asks this question, any sensible person will reach the same conclusions. Below I make some more detailed considerations based both on facts in the public domain and on my direct experience/testimony.