International Connections Paper

The past few topics in Life, Society and Drug class we have talked about have been very
interesting and I have learned so much. I now know things that I did not know before I took this
class, even with my pharmacy technician background things have been interesting. For this
International connections paper I have decided to touch on the impact that drug cartels have on
their communities.

You hear about drugs cartels occasionally and never really know more about them other
than the fact that they help deal drugs. And deal drugs in an illegal manner. The impact that drug
cartels have on their community is very large. They affect their communities many ways. They
affect their communities more for the bad then for the good.

Having a drug cartel in a community only helps their community a little bit. The cartels
are able to bring money into their community but not much besides that. They can be very
powerful and make it so that their communities are pretty rough places. Along with being very
powerful they are also very wealthy. With those two things combined it can be a disaster. It can
be bad to have a cartel in a community since they are wealthy they can cause it so there is not a
lot of money going around in the community and mainly just going to the cartel. Drug cartels can
also be very violent. Such as the Los Zetas cartel. The Los Zetas cartel did a lot of harmful and
very bad things. Like the module under cartels on the Los Zetas page says, “Los Zetas engages in
violent tactics such as beheadings, torture, and indiscriminate murder.” Not only the Los Zetas
cartel but many others are very powerful and do very drastic hurtful things too many people like
torturing individuals and worse things like murdering people. On the same page of the cartel
module it says, “Los Zetas also operate through protection rackets, assassinations, extortion,
kidnappings and other activities.” Cartels are very scary in lots of ways like what is stated above.
They have a lot of power, they kidnap and even do things worse than that like assassinations and
not just doing this to a few people but many. Drug cartels can also impact their community by
having it be so bad that no one really wants to live their anymore or even move to the areas that
have drug cartels in them.

Works Cited
(Cartel Module 1, Smith)