Speaking exclusively to Dome Politics, Representative Rich McCormick (R) discussed the need to confront the cartels and gave his unique solution to disempowering them. He likes the idea of direct confrontation, but doesn’t see the practicality of it and suggests removing the demand for drugs instead.
Rep. McCormick was first asked about the recent military strike against a drug boat allegedly tied to the Tren de Aragua cartel and responded enthusiastically. He stated, “Long overdue! We should never have free rein of drug cartels, and unfortunately, we fund that by the way. Realize the United States funds drug cartels around the world.”
By funding drug cartels, McCormick means that Americans are purchasing drugs at such a high rate that they are essentially funding cartel operations. He then pointed to how the cigarette demand fell over time and argued that the same approach must be applied to drugs.
He explained, “If you want to get kids and adults to stop buying drugs, you educate them that every time they buy drugs, they support murderers, child traffickers, human traffickers, and thugs who would overthrow governments and kill members of your family for a penny. That’s what you do.”
McCormick believes that if you teach this to children, they won’t think the high they get from drugs is worth supporting horrible people. For him, teaching about the negative repercussions to health is not enough. You have to go further.
He claims that this is what happened with the demand for cigarettes. Once people were taught about how their families would be affected by the industry, they stopped buying them.
When asked about directly targeting cartels in countries like Mexico, McCormick expressed skepticism. He stated, “That’s helpful. It sounds easy. So how do you do that? Everything sounds easy, but once again, the easy solution is to get rid of the demand.”
The Representative didn’t elaborate too much on why directly targeting cartels isn’t as easy as it sounds, but it’s likely he just doesn’t see the practicality of it. He simply reiterated his position that the demand for drugs in the U.S. has to be crushed for the cartels to be weakened.
