Two federal agents tampered with important evidence, likely fabricated the entire “murder for hire” fiction, abused their law enforcement positions to steal millions of dollars worth of bitcoins, and carefully framed other people.
The literally corrupt federal agents got a slap on the wrist. They’ll both be out of prison soon.
But the young man who built a website for weed is to remain in prison for life.
What a sad, miscarriage of justice.
Yes, major corruption on the federal side. But not much sympathy for the crime here, esp. as it was so intentional and lucrative.
It's not hard to find a zero day in software used for parts of our critical infrastructure. It's not hard to create potent drugs from small amounts of precursors. It's not hard to build a gun or a bomb in a machine shop.
But the thing is, most people that have those skills are not malicious. At worst, they're money-motivated and will sell these types of society damaging substances or objects, but with the long arm of the law and a credible threat of jail time most of the people that would try to make a quick buck are dissuaded from doing so, or at least slowed by the resultant paranoia.
I know it's not perfect. I know many illegal drugs should be legal and I know that people outside of the western world smuggle in or transmit these things that damage our society, but that doesn't invalidate our struggle. We cannot live in a lawless society and though I think that it is better to cut the root causes of things like drug abuse, we still need to keep dangerous drugs to a minimum.
If this were the actually the case and people with those skills weren't malicious and were dissuaded by the law then the only way to obtain those substances would be to manufacture them yourself. As it stands you can find sellers on Instagram so that's clearly wrong.
It's not hard to manufacture most things and people
always will find ways to do it.
Manufacturing drugs isn't difficult on the order of refining uranium or something, but it's not trivial. You need knowledge, gear, raw materials that are not all trivial to obtain, and a location where you pull off some kind of small-scale chemical manufacturing operation without getting caught.
If we want to use legislation to help people then we should
do that but using violence and prisons probably isn't
helping anyone.
Suppliers and manufacturers of deadly drugs are another story.
The whole "XYZ material shouldn't exist in the world" thing
seems so naive.
Recreational drugs run the gamut from nearly harmless (marijuana, etc) to absolutely deadly (heroin, fentanyl, etc). In a just and logical world, they would never even be a part of the same discussion.
At the deadly end of the spectrum, yes, I certainly do feel confident in saying that some drugs have absolutely no place in society. I have seen what they do. I have been to the funerals for friends, loved ones, and family members. There is no safe way to use heroin. Drugs like meth, heroin, and crack destroy lives and towns.
It is the laziest and most naive possible libertarian dream to think that people should be allowed to supply deadlier drugs to people because of one's lasses-faire fever dreams. It's the kind of isolated, privileged fantasy that evaporates quickly when you have to identify your son in a morgue.
Shake and bake meth is hardly uncommon.
Decriminalization of all drugs does seem to be something being taken very seriously. Reduces abuse, harm, and violent crime.
Jesus this mentality is so stuck in the stone age and what enables the vile & pernicious war on drugs to continue.
Superstitious puritanical attitudes like that are why the site existed in the firstplace.
So, I have zero sympathy for him. Life is an appropriate sentence. Other DNM owners who don't try to kill people, on the other hand, I definitely tend to sympathize with (though if they allow sale of fentanyl or poisons/weapons, that complicates things).
Victimless crime in general is miscarriage of justice, imho.