Colombia is considering legalizing its cocaine industry
vice.com
vice.com
In the Netherlands we have really good experience with legalisation. Cannabis is legal and hard drugs (or substitutes) are provided to long-term addicts only. It drives prices down, reducing black market profits and thus the power of cartels. Promotes legal vendors to abide by rules (or they'll lose their license) and makes it possible to have checks on the products to make sure they're safe, not mixed with real toxins. And the lower street price reduces crime around drugs (like theft, addicts stealing to pay for their hit)
Banning drug use by force is a US pipe dream. It's impossible. All it provides is a pork barrel for drug agencies, weapons manufacturers etc. It escalates the price. They haven't made a dent in the 40 years of the war on drugs. When the demand doesn't cease, all you do is make the product more expensive and the ones that provide it more powerful.
PS: I never used drugs of any kind (except alcohol ;) )
Not only is cannabis not legal in the Netherlands (it's "illegal but tolerated"), but in recent years the conservative Dutch government has been successful in closing down a lot of coffeshops (ie. shops that sell cannabis).
The Dutch used to be a lot more tolerant in the past.
I was under the impression: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, and if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but if you get stopped by the cops in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you.
Am I just misled for the last 25 years?
Last time my wife went to watch a movie (before covid) she ordered a margarita.
https://www.government.nl/topics/drugs/toleration-policy-reg...
Oregon also just decriminalized possession of all drugs, for personal-use quantities.
Seems to say it's illegal but tolerated as long as you don't cause a fuss.
And before that a lot less tolerant. And before THAT, a lot more tolerant. And back and forward, for many many years. Amsterdam has a rich history of going between liberal and more close minded, and will probably continue doing so.
They also banned psilocybin mushrooms (the fruiting body) vs. the mushroom body for some reason (legal as "truffles").
As a former Amsterdam resident, another thing that has increased a lot is drugs-tourism. It's a class of tourism no Amsterdammer is happy about (except the coffeeshopowners). The Amsterdam center is basically a no-go zone for many residents, it suffers from the usual European inner-city-tourism-blight, with a significant share of drunk and high tourists sprinkled on top. The city of Amsterdam already stopped their advertising campaign last year and wanted to improve the 'quality' of the tourists it is attracting: less poor backpacking weed-seekers, and more middle-class and rich-class art-seekers.
One vivid example from one of these articles that's stuck in my mind was an account of some drunk German tourists vomiting in some Dutch person's flower pot. I've also heard talk of drug tourists falling in to the canals, and some of them have been violent. Of course, many of the violent ones tend to be drunk on alcohol, but I don't hear many calls for Amsterdam's bars to close.
An uptick in crime was also blamed on organized crime being involved in the drug trade, though why the response to that wasn't to just legalize it completely, I don't know.
Mandating that coffeshops be no closer than 250 meters (820 feet) to a school to presumably keep teenagers from using cannabis was also a factor.
Traffic in Dutch cities was up, and that was also blamed on foreign drug tourists.
Blaming foreigners seems to be rather fashionable these days, and the oh-so-tolerant Netherlands is apparently not above doing so itself.
Here are some articles about coffeshop closings: [1], [2], [3], [4]
It's also important to keep in mind that there are the stated reasons for doing something, and then there are the real reasons. In the USA, for instance, the drug war had roots in racism and a backlash against the counterculture and anti-war movement, with which drugs were associated, but the stated reasons for making drugs illegal have to do with health. As has become clear to most people in respect to cannabis, the stated health reasons for making cannabis illegal were complete and utter BS.
I've heard that in recent decades the Netherlands has been ruled by (relatively) conservative Christians, so the real reason might have to do with a Christian moral disapproval of drugs, though of course in a country like the Netherlands which sees itself as very modern, enlightened, tolerant and cosmopolitan such archaic prohibitions could never be stated out in the open.
Another reason I've heard for cracking down on drugs is France supposedly putting pressure on the Netherlands after it joined the EU, and just the pressure to harmonize Netherlands' laws with the rest of Europe. Of course, such pressure has always been there, and the Netherlands has so far resisted to some extent, but maybe their resistance is flagging.
[1] - https://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/548-amsterdam-closing-coffeesh...
[2] - https://cannabisnow.com/closing-time-amsterdams-famous-coffe...
[3] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/nethe...
[4] - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/01/10/...
The fact that they're is legal shops selling it suggests there is more nuance than your comment is providing.
Maybe this is overlooked because urban users are far from the illegal labs and most killings, but things are nowhere near a 'good experience'. Legalisation of weed has only attracted the worst of the worst and police and 'opsporingsdiensten' don't have the resources to stop the trade, pollution or shootings.
Check any reputable publication for articles, e.g. 1. https://www.groene.nl/artikel/een-industrie-die-over-lijken-... 2. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/12/17/italiaanse-maffia-exper... 3. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/ondermijning/onderm... 4. https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/albanezen-verdringen-mocromaffi... 5. https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/125305/nederland-narcostaat
Growing marujuana, as a business, is fundamentally almost exactly the same as growing any crop.
The problem isn't marijuana, the problem is the types that are sourcing it here for export, and the enormous scale of domestic synthetics production (of which also most is exported). You can't have expect to have normal friendly businessmen trade in drugs which are forbidden in the rest of the world.
Shops have to be super secret mysterious and shady about how they actually source their weed. Once you start asking about crops or where it's from, they become incredibly evasive -- I don't blame them, but it's just silly, this is a thing I can buy legally and I'm "not supposed to" ask where it's from?
[edited to add:]
Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread -- the Dutch government has been taking a certain kinda turn.
I'm also asking as someone whose family has been affected by the opiate epidemic in the US. I'm someone who's concerned about drug policy, first domestically but also globally. I want harm reduction. I'm in the middle of a career change and may be focusing on this going forward (if I can find out how).
So I promise you, I'm not trying to beg-the-question, I'm legitimately curious about your comment and just trying to deal with the language barrier.
You can also checkout where journalistic prizes go.
Keywords are ondermijnende of ontwrichtende criminaliteit.
> You can also checkout where journalistic prizes go.
I had never thought of this. It seems like a great technique for international/interlingual research, in general. Thanks for suggesting it!
I know you just linked them for examples, but holy crap that paper is a damn piece of trash.
Using a racial slur in the title ("mocro mafia") is not okay just because you're talking about criminals. Nor is it okay to constantly refer to their nationalities in such a broad sense, it says several times "the Moroccans" are doing this or that. They KNOW perfectly well how their target audience is going to read that, they're not going to think about actual organised crime, but just eye their Moroccan-born neighbour more suspiciously.
While criminalising hard drugs is not ideal, legalising them and thereby making them more easily available will have a devastating impact and destroy too many lifes.
You have the people's lives it wrecks as users (probably not all that diminished when illegalized), and then you can add to it the people's lives wrecked as a result of the criminalized industry.
But that's why they made alcohol illegal in the US for a bit in the early 20th century, because they worried it was wrecking people's lives. (And it surely was wrecking some people's lives, as it still is).
As a counter example there are plenty of countries where alcohol has been prohibited for a much longer time and they certainly have a lot less people with alcohol problems than the US.
What alcohol does have is widespread social understanding, it's deep in our culture. Your grandmother had a pretty decent idea of how this could go wrong, and of what non-dangerous use looks like. So does your priest. And your mother in law. And Shakespeare. Not a perfect defence mechanism, obviously, but not nothing.
Whereas for cocaine, almost nobody has a clue.
When America experimented with banning alcohol, beer and wine became scarce. Instead, our markets were flooded with high-octane spirits, of dubious purity.
I have never used purified cocaine, and don't intend to start. Back in the early Noughts, coca tea bags were available for purchase on Amazon (yes, really) imported from Bolivia; this was illegal, but tolerated.
They were lovely! I would enjoy a glass in the early evening when I was going out, it gave me a nice, pro-social boost that wears off faster than caffeine, letting me sleep at night.
Of all the many drugs I've tasted over the years, coca tea might be the least harmful. Chewing coca is manifestly not a problem either, Bolivian and Peruvian indigenous society is in no danger from this habit, though I don't doubt they get grumpy if they can't get their leaf (I don't think I would commit actual murder to obtain coffee but I never want to find out).
Here's the kicker: At point I had probably three ounces of cocaine-bearing material in my cupboard, next to the Earl Grey. If I had suffered some bad luck, and my white-privilege shield broke down, that's in the ten-year mandatory minimum category of felony.
So, if cocaine is illegal, the vast majority of users are going to rail lines of it, as pure as they can get, or smoke the carbonate salt.
I hope I've explained why that's a bad idea?
But I don't see an argument for prohibition there. Anyone who wants to get cocaine, will get cocaine. Enforcing a ban requires resources that are almost always more efficiently spent elsewhere.
The law should be to protect people from having their lives destroyed by others. On that front the score is clear, the effect of prohibition to peoples lives is FAR FAR FAR FAR more damaging to the general public than the use of the drug is.
Prohibition creates criminal gangs, street violence, increased overdose, increases load on health systems, erodes personal liberty as the government clamps down harder and harder on drug use, rips apart families with life line consequences of criminal charges, and 100's of other negative effects on general society far and beyond someone personally wrecking their own life by using drugs.
The problem is with demand creation driven by the process, not with the supply part of it.
The whole opioid epidemic is a classic example of accidental demand creation for the drugs and trying to fix it in steps by crushing the supply. But the actual medical use prevents the supply from being completely locked down.
In the US, I'm waiting to see what the Oregon experiment looks like - where they're trying to tackle the existing demand instead of worrying about demand growth (i.e help existing addicts, instead just of preventing new addicts).
Cocaine is an extract from the coca plant. Historically, Indigenous peoples chewed the leaves to get moderately high and also used it for medicinal purposes. The coca plant does good things for the lungs and gut. Among other things, it was used to help them be productive at altitude due to its impact on lung function.
What most of the modern world knows as "cocaine" is a highly concentrated form of what is found in the coca plant. A little googling suggests that when you similarly concentrate THC, you start seeing similar problems:
THC concentrates stimulate the same areas within the brain which heroin, cocaine and alcohol reaches. The effects of standard marijuana vary from those related to using THC concentrates.
While this may seem like no big deal, using THC concentrates can produce additional physical and psychological effects. According to the NIH
These include:
• Paranoia • Delirium • Anxiety • Panic/Fear • Delusions/ Hallucinations • Increase in blood pressure • Blood shot eyes • Weight gain • Lung and/or throat infections
In addition to the above, there is new evidence which shows that people who have a history of schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, bipolar disorder or psychosis may be at a greater risk of experiencing a breakdown or mental health episode.
The evidence does not bear this out.
https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portuga...
So unless Colombia's military can get a lot stronger over night and a lot less corrupt, this problem will continue to exist. They've been trying to fight with force for the last 50 years while the cartels have only grown stronger (by a lot actually). So maybe it is time to change strategies and rethink the problem. Because clearly this one hasn't been helping (and many think it has made it worse).
Edit: I'm not saying the cartels are more powerful. I said the government is ineffective at fighting them. Guerrilla warfare is difficult.
Also tricky, quaaludes are the only drug I can think of that actually got banned successfully.
Not claiming it's a solution of any kind, but it is interesting to get some insight from a country that actually tried to legalize everything.
However, I noted that Columbia's already legalized personal consumption of cocaine, so in terms of personal danger I don't think the proposed law changes anything. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the effect hasn't been problematic. If anyone has any good studies at their fingertips I'd be curious.
You mean your friends live in a country where cocaine is legal? o.O Would love to know more about that!
Or is it that you just didn't understand the arguments in favour of drug legalization and decriminalization?
I haven't looked at the stats but I'm assuming alcohol has way more addiction than any other drug.
I think the original posters point was that people are doing the drugs anyway, making it illegal may put a slight dent in usage, but it doesn't stop people from doing the drugs.
And the number of lives ruined, the cartels, the massive police required, and the side effects from the war of drugs are much worse than if all drugs were decriminalized.
The cartels are destabilizing entire governments in Latin America murdering police and journalists making entire regions inaccessible.
It's real bad.
It's the harsh penalties that attract the worst people because those are the only ones willing to risk them. It hardens the entire trade.
The harmful side-effect of a state-legal cannabis industry but denied access to banking can lead to holding too much cash on hand and robberies like : https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/11/04/person-shot-by-police...
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlan...
It's technically illegal by law, it's just condoned/tolerated under certain regulations. There have been plans to make it fully legal, but it's not really going anywhere if I'm not mistaken.
https://www.mpp.org/states/ for a state-level overview, it changes quite a bit every year
Given what I've seen in the US, I would think legalizing/decriminalizing psilocybin (truffles in NL) to be way more beneficial for Society as a whole. At least offer it as a service for mental health issues rather than drown people in SSRIs and every anti-depressent known to man.
Denver, Oakland, and Oregon now are the only ones where its not met with extremely harsh punishments. And taxes from Cannabis is actually helping create the infrastructure for drug abuse treatment and mental illness in OR, something that Portugal had done much earlier when it decriminalized all drugs.
That being said I am in the camp of legalising it all. Not to fight drug dealers. But because how can people be trusted to vote and decide on the future of the country but not trusted to decide on the future of their own life. I don’t believe in nanny states that tell you how to live your life. If people aspire to become a junkie, it’s their life, they only have one, they do whatever they want with it as long as they don’t bother anyone else.
How do we combat the real toll of drugs on people's personal well-being then? A lot of them lead to broken lives. You could ban use, but that's hard to enforce and infringes on liberty. Instead, I would like to see a policy where your access to social safety nets is taken away when you're a user. You want to risk it all to get high? Go for it but don't leave us with the bill and having to wring our hands that you ended up homeless.
I understand the appeal of this posture; it appears to maximize individual liberty while avoiding the moral hazard that comes with a collective safety net. And it kind of works for celebrities and the rich, who can fall back on personal saving, (medical) professionals, and treatment centers when they enter a death spiral. But it is definitely not a solution for the vast majority of our economically fragile citizens, who make such poor long-term financial decisions that we had to institute all sorts of mandatory retirement contributions and taxes to keep people out of the poor houses. At that's not even considering how addiction disrupts long-term decision-making ability.
TL;DR: Most people are bad at long-term planning, and are even worse when addicted, so the solution cannot involve only long-term consequences.
After many years on this planet, I've reached the conclusion that when bodies of people decide over other bodies of people, they don't always have their best intention for them, even if they tell you so.
The War on Drugs has not been good for anyone except for the people who been waging it. If you're in the business of making weapons, you need a threat. If there is none, you need to make up one. If you're low on criminals, make more stuff illegal. Bam, now you have a lot of criminals, and some of them armed, even better.
The dream of "War on Drugs" is not to stop drugs. It's to make money will proclaiming you're against drugs.
This is pretty much impossible unless you're a government or a corporate with government-sized revenue and tendrils into government.
Wasn't the Iran-contra thing funded by selling crack to poor, predominantly African-American neighbourhoods in the US? Selling out their own citizens for foreign policy, or is that conspiracy theory?
That doesn't take away the fact that they sold weapons to an embargoed country in order to fund right-wing paramilitaries, which is horrible in it's own, but drugs doesn't seem to have been involved as we're seeing with The War on Drugs.
Understandably, that's probably a transitional pain, and may be more of a bureaucratic hurdle than something germane to cannabis. But all this to say that changing these kinds of things takes a lot of careful planning; you can't just flip a switch to solve the problems of prohibition.
Disastrous how?
There's also been some weird ownership questions with former Toronto Police chief Julian Fantino who spend a decades-long career busting people for pot and opposing legalization only to have a come-to-Jesus moment about its medical benefits just in time to start a business around it and cash in.
[1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cannabis/article-mapped-onta...
[2]: https://www.retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2020/06/canada...
Cannabis in the Netherlands is illegal, but is decriminalised for personal use. Recreational consumption of the drug is tolerated, and it is available in coffee shops.
Much better compared to pretty much useless decriminalization-only approach some trump as holy grail - while miles better than punitive imprisonment of consumers like in US (or half the world), it still keeps all money flowing through drug cartels and very bad quality of potentially lethal substances.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_the_Netherlands
I'm pretty sure it would have been fully legal if other states (Belgium, Germany) hadn't objected to their citizens crossing the border to get their drugs.
But the coffee shops operate legally, their supply chain does not. It still means you can check for quality at the shops (and there have been no real issues there). As it's a commodity it drives down the price and thus the profits of the cartels.
Some municipalities were even considering growing their own, using unemployed people working there on employment schemes. But it was shut down by the current government I believe.
Yes, but those cartels can still offer more than the government is offering (or use other, nastier means of persuasion) and their primary market doesn't live in Columbia. Not sure this will help all that much.
Is it though? If harder drugs were legal, wouldn't harder drug use be much more common? Cannabis is one thing, the perceived impact to oneself is relatively low. Meth, a hard, illegal drug - is growing in some areas radically; so are some prescription drug use.
There is a large group of citizens who don't try things because they are illegal (because they don't want to bring legal trouble) rather than not trying those things because they are bad for health. (Humans are fairly bad at rejecting things that are bad for them - but good at numbing them). eg: Alcohol, smoke, caffeine, soda, refined sugar.
Addicts less likely to seek help, more likely to be arrested, loose their job, steal for money to pay exorbitant prices due to its illegal nature, develop health issues that are a drain on resources, relapse due to bad social situations from the above and overuse because of poor quality control.
I have a dream of a regulated, taxed and controlled industry from which the profits are used to fund rehab, drug education and social programs to help communities. Is it aggressively progressive? Yes! Is it a bit a scary? Yes! Is it potentially better than the current situation? I think so.
I’ve never used drugs. I don’t drink alcohol and haven’t for over a decade (never had a problem, just choose not to) and I don’t drink caffeine - I don’t say this to make myself out to be a saint (my wife can provide a detailed list of my flaws) but I don’t see the system that we currently have as optimal and think we should try something new.
Let the down votes commence.
That being said, I think you over estimate the number of people who don't use hard drugs simply because its illegal. There is also a stigma, financial cost, health conscious reasons, or just don't like the effects or side effects.
Other countries practice "harm reduction" while the US is still trying to punish people for their "moral failings".
The issue with alcohol, smoke, caffeine, soda, refined sugar, is that they are not very harmful so people can say "my grandfather used to drink every day and lived to 95". The hard drugs have much more visible effects so people are better at rejecting them.
I'm not so sure Amsterdam is an accurate reference point.
1) Size. Was Amsterdam spending $1B fighting drugs?
2) We're not talking about cocaine being legalized, we're talking about the gov getting in the coke biz. The latter is a significant change in paradigm.
3) What are the unintended consequences? When that $1B spent on "fighting it" stops, what happens? Jobs lost? Etc.?
Note: I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea per se, only that it's more complicated than "X works in Country Y."
I am all for changing the law. This particular argument is however weak. Bunning murders is just as impossible. We are not going to legalize murder however, are we? The law should be changed because of other reasons, not because of inability to enforce it 100%.
Fine, but I have yet to see decriminalization policies (in the US) actually result in less usage, only less incarceration.
You have to actually implement policies that solve the drug problem rather than ignore it. Many drugs are understandably bad ideas to opt-in for. If people are still using them, then they don't truly believe this. If you simply decriminalize drugs without also implementing measures to educate on this point, you're going to have a greater number of people who believe that using these drugs are a good idea.
When you have a nation of junkies, there are immeasurable costs and other consequences. And these consequences have further reach than the cartels.
We "allow" policy and action by other sovereigns to the extent that we have the ability to enforce our will upon them. Just because we have had this ability to varying extents over the last 50 -70 years, does not mean we have the exact same capabilities right now.
US GDP is declining as a share of world GDP. US in no longer the biggest importer of commodities like we were for most of the time that we were "allowing" policies in other countries, and our international alliances are substantially more fractured then they were over most of that period.
The fact that the US has had an outlier position in terms of Geopolitical influence for the last half century is not a guarantee of this being true in the future.
In fact, we should absolutely look at this as a historical fluke. We were the only major world power that didn't have significant WWII battles in our own territory destroying our industrial infrastructure. From 1945 on, we were #1 primarily because most of the European and Asian powers had been destroyed by the war. That effect doesn't last forever.
The US does have a lot going for it. We have very ample natural resources, natural borders that are cheaper to enforce, and a large mostly culturally unified population. But that default presumption that US is #1 at all things is naturally fading as WWII recedes into the past.
[0] This surprisingly panned out decently well, considering we haven't had a war between major countries in a long time.
The 45 years before that the world had two super powers, fighting in various cold and hot wars.
And to clarify more, there still is no singular super power. Russia is still a super power and China is a super power. We are still in a cold war, but things have changed dramatically in how it is being fought and with who.
We did eventually legalize it, but not until after some of your own states did.
That's pretty much because of china. Take china out of the equation and everything looks "normal".
> The fact that the US has had an outlier position in terms of Geopolitical influence for the last half century is not a guarantee of this being true in the future.
That's true. But we will be calling the shots in the western hemisphere for a very very long time. Monroe Doctrine was established 200 years ago. It's a safe bet that it'll be going strong in 2120. Maybe our influence in east asia will wane as china rises, but definitely not in the western hemisphere and europe. China's rise may even make our influence grow in europe, south america, etc. Who else do they have to turn to?
Trust has already been eroding since 9/11, it was accelerated under Trump, the next couple of decades might decide if the US can regain some influence or if it will be treated as a untrustworthy ally. It's been really hard to justify supporting the US lately.
Also, a fun fact I just learned: apparently, the majority of dollars in paper form is held by people outside the US.
Yeah, I don't know how long that'll stay true when you have a guaranteed buyer for a product...
Example: Some measures taken in the 60s and 70s to increase grain production caused groundwater levels in some states to deplete alarmingly a few decades later. To protect the groundwater levels, a law was passed in 2009 that now, along with the original measures, causes the pollution level of the national capital shoot through the roof (pm 2.5 > 500) every winter.
> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
These should make people think carefully about the metrics and targets used, but that seldom seems to happen.
They'll be printing money.
"U.S. bilateral foreign assistance of $391 million - a part of the Administrations's $450 million whole of government request to support Colombia"
https://foreignassistance.gov/explore/country/Colombia
All agency US aid: 800million
https://explorer.usaid.gov/cd/COL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia
"The official objectives of Plan Colombia were to end the Colombian armed conflict by increasing funding and training of Colombian military and para-military forces and creating an anti-cocaine strategy to eradicate coca cultivation. Partly as a result of the plan, FARC lost much of its power against the Colombian government, and cocaine production in Colombia dropped 72% from 2001 to 2012."
If this measure helps to get to a lasting peace in the country by allowing the FARC and remnants to cultivate and have a living, then you also need to factor in the costs of the long running internal conflict and all the military spending and lack of growth due to insecurity that the country has suffered.
The Drug War has had massive collateral damage on the country, and in purely economic terms there is much to gain from ending it.
As a Brazilian I will forever resent all the pain and suffering caused by a misguided (and malicious) notion of how all of this should work. It was pushed by a Puritan view of the world coming out of the US in the 60s onwards, and even worse: this was pushed down the throats of other nations due to internal US affairs, the counterculture movement and so on.
It's extremely dirty and spread so much suffering across the world that I hope it will be seen as it is: a tyrannical and oppressive decision peddled by conservative inhumane and non-scientific people, steering whole generations of the world into despair and suffering to play politics. It is a protogenocide of mental health sufferers, worse that it's been layered into these policies trying to be sold as solutions.
How do you expect the US to force Colombian domestic policy otherwise?
Also next time you suggest/imply that U.S. has control over another nation's domestic policy, at least spell the country's name correctly.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45578492
That $800 million's a drop in the bucket by comparison.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/1.3_The_globa_c...
which in 2008 was worth $55 billion. Legalizing cocaine production, and becoming the defacto global supplier of that market which is exactly what would happen-- the gray market export of Cocaine would become utterly enormous.
I personally think this would probably be closer to a $50bn+ a year boost to their economy-- maybe more. The street value being 2x-3x more than the add to GDP, but most of that additional value will probably be consumed by cartels importing the drug to larger markets.
Isn't Columbia already the de facto global supplier of cocaine? Not of just the American market, but the... global ~~supplier~~ market.
For example, with it legal the local police and/or military would protect your shipments within Colombia's borders instead of seizing or destroy them... for free!
I've heard something like 50% of illegal drug shipments are lost/stolen/seized by the time they get to their destination market... and it's still wildly fucking profitable to produce. Imagine being able to produce it cheaper, safer, and faster-- then cocaine becomes the rest of the world's problem. It'll push the violence out of Colombia and into the markets where it's being bought and financed... inverting the grip of terror. I hope they do it and I hope it's glorious for 'em.
The rest of the world needs to learn drugs are a health issue at most and never a criminal one. The only criminals are the ones we make...
I'm not a drug expert, but I seem to recall island nations of S. East Asia being a large exporter of cocaine, too. It was on one of those drug Vice series.
Specifically coming from the 'golden triangle.' I'm not savvy enough to know if it was all just synthetic versions of it or simply product from Columbia that is re-packaged/cut for the Asian Market.
Personally speaking, I dislike all amphetamines but some people are equally as addicted to caffeine as they are to cocaine, I've worked in 2 Industries where both are consumed in large quantities on a daily basis. Which is why I personally want nothing to do with them, but if consenting adults are willing to take on the responsibility and we get one step closer to ending all of the cronyist BS that comes from the drug war than I hope it happens.
Especially if it gives subsistence farmers in Columbia a cash crop they can increase their standard of living from and sell in open market trades rather than in some clandestine cartel operation.
IIRC, neither cocaine or caffeine or amphetamines, they are stimulants, but do not fall under the amphetamine class. :) I could be wrong.
This is why I find it bizarre that <$1 billion in aid is reducing the financial opportunity of the country where a majority of the supply comes from. This is a devil's deal. I don't understand how the leaders of a country are so corruptible.
That is not the industry literally inside columbia, rather the value of cocaine as exported from columbia. Legalizing cocaine in-country would not legalize the international smuggling network. For the columbian government to sell all that cocaine they would still have to smuggle it out to customers. The americans/UK/Canada/europe/russia/china would not accept such international behavior.
A LOT of that £2.7bn is in smuggling costs.
Lol. Take that money I mentioned above, all that military aid. If the Columbian government starts selling cocaine that money will fund the US military invasion of columbia. The US might be on the brink of legalizing weed, but it is a long long way from accepting colombia as an official narco state.
Colombia is a small country, at 50M inhabitants, but not that small. Drug fighting and the divisiveness it causes are some of the largest issues of the country.
The leading example of this is the "False positives" scandal [1], which consisted in the kidnap and assassination of thousands of innocent civilians from the poor suburbs of many cities, to add them to the lists of guerilla killed and inflate their rewards. this was made by the very same Colombian army meant to protect the civilian.
Just think about it, the army massacring innocent people to claim rewards, being paid by the taxes of these same people. We're literally paying to be killed. All of this was orchestrated by the president at that time. Alvaro Uribe Velez, which unsurprisingly, has been found related to a lot of drug trafficking and violence.
All of this was greatly reduced when the peace accord was restarted about 8 years ago. When Uribe's successor was elected president. He started proposing legalizing drugs, and signing peace, which Uribe didn't like, so he started picturing him as a traitor (much in the way that Trump manipulates people).
Still, Uribe's influence is so great (as he has a lot of power from drugs and from having it's own paramilitary, all of this is a widely known "secret") that he got to set another president (as he also has his very own political party). This extremely right wing politics has resulted in spikes in violence and violations of the peace agreement from the side of the government.
Just to synthesize, these $800 million have been deceptively spent in killing innocents, claiming bonuses, and covering up that the Colombian right wing politics are grossly involved in trafficking and violence.
If you want a name, is Alvaro Uribe Velez the person who twisted media, politics, war and trafficking, and set himself as the hero, in the deadliest chapter of this country so far.
If you consume cocaine occasionally, I invite you to stop, not because of health issues or whatsoever. It is because in being a consumer you're contributing to this giant violence network, which kills social leaders and kicks out innocent farmers from their lands.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22False_positives%22_scandal
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2018/September/coca...
$800 million from the US (with the problems that come with it: you're doing a pact with the devil) against potential billions from cocaine and freedom from US foreign meddling?
That sounds unlikely
Colombia can call our bluff, and the aid will continue anyways because we don't want to loose leverage in other matters.
It’s premised on not going full Communist. Everything else is just window dressing and everyone knows it.
Flip it around, imagine Columbia was Communist and drug-funded guerrillas were fighting the government. Who would the US be backing? Clue: the US happily backed a bunch of poppy farmers against the Soviets...
Prices from: https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/how-much-do-drugs-cost...
Production capacity from: https://apnews.com/article/0aa6474b944f4ff8eb9e7e9cffffce87
Given the range cited in the article (US prices of $25/g-$200/g, with an average of $112/g), I would assume that there is enormous variation by locality, over time, and by other factors, and that people that aren't specifically involved in analyzing it nationally are at best going to have experience that is narrow and/or intermittent and usually decidedly nonrepresentative for that reason.
But even if the price was $50/g, that only means it goes from 0.5% to 1% of the street value of the potential output that needs to be captured by Colombia to fully replace the value of US aid. (And only part of that needs to be recovered in actual tax revenue from cocaine itself, some of it can be recovered in additional tax revenue from other businesses that stop being inhibited by cartel vs. government violence, and some of it can be recovered by reduced government suppression expenditures.)
Cocaine should be legal everywhere. It's not, though, so this is a stupid idea. A giant unsustainable agricultural subsidy isn't going to reduce domestic production when the entire market is international. On the contrary, it will only increase the size of the market and the amount of violent criminal behavior associated with it. By all means decriminalize consumption (which they've already done), but until there's a legal international market, don't subsidize it.
There are potential upsides to this. A functioning government has some level of citizen representation and a justice system with some level of accountability. Drug cartels do not.
So, if you assume for the moment that coca farmers and others in the cocaine supply chain will be doing that work regardless, the question is mostly: do you want them to live within the bounds of the law and have the government be the power structure that dictates their lives, or do you want drug cartels? The former has plenty of problems and corruption. But the latter is an outright authoritarian power-by-violence regime.
Allowing people in the cocaine industry to be law-abiding citizens is probably a good thing.
Then there is the longer-term question of what incentives this change would place on society and how it would affect the scale of cocaine production. Anyone can see there's ample risk of a cobra effect here. Whether that outweighs the benefits of removing money from violent cartels is a hard question to answer.
Export markets can be "less illegal" if they merely need to hide as domestic consumption, not be completely hidden. This will tame, if not eradicate, the Cartels.
You can call it ridiculous and stupid all you want but, looking at this thread, it obviously is working.
A lot of the domestic pressure within Colombia, MX etc. comes FROM international partners, like the US - Colombia gets a ton [~500M USD] of defense and security related funding for it [1], and we send military partner forces there to train their military and security forces.
All of that would need to be unwound as matter of course, regardless of whether or not the plan makes sense.
I have to disagree.
I don't know if it's part of the plan, but if cocaine were to become legal in Colombia, then Colombia could become a destination for cocaine tourism, just as the Netherlands became a destination for marijuana tourism.
That could result in a lot of tourism revenue (as has been the case for the Netherlands and other countries which legalized drugs).
In addition, legalizing cocaine would end organized crime's involvement in cocaine production in Colombia, which would be a huge improvement for the lives of Colombians and for their government and legal system, which are all currently detrimentally impacted by said organized crime and the horrific and widespread violence and corruption that it causes.
The increased safety of Colombia, once organized crime is reduced would make it even more desirable as a tourist destination, which would bring in even more tourism revenue.
Add to that all the tax revenue that would come from taxing legal cocaine, and the financial incentives for legalizing cocaine become even greater.
This sounds like very far from a bad idea, and is in fact the exact same reasoning that was used to legalize drugs in other places all over the world and, to my knowledge, in all cases where this has happened it's been a net positive.
Of course there will always be people who do too much, or become addicted, but that’s the same as alcohol, cigarettes, food, etc. It should then be a public health issue, not a crime issue.
Prohibition has not worked, it seems like it never works. Drug use has grown exponentially since the War on Drugs started, the costs of policing it are astronomical, and the harm to communities in the supply chain is enormous.
Downstream the users are criminalised and are putting themselves at risk because the product they’re consuming doesn’t have any mandated quality control.
Everybody loses when prohibition is a strategy. Well, except the cartel bosses and the organisations paid to enforce these unenforceable laws.
Legalisation has a cost too: public healthcare and individuals who may die or suffer because of addiction. But those people exist now, there isn’t a barrier to entry here, drugs are not hard to get hold of.
My personal opinion is that prohibition is immoral. Legalisation combined with good public education and rehabilitation schemes would help the world to get out of this cycle of death and criminality.
I would like to see the statistics on how easily people overdose on alcohol vs cocaine + the magnitude of damage each of them causes on an increasing scale. You can't overdose on cigarettes or food, so I always thought that anything you can overdose on can be classified as hard drug, but don't quote me on that.
Talking about the known dangers is easy, but what about the unknown unknowns? Also, how would it impact society if cocaine became too popular among youth? ( because it is glamorised in movies & music )
Being skeptical and asking questions on drugs and their potential negative consequences gets one downvoted nowadays... smh
You can overdose and die from drinking too much water, or consuming too much table salt.
You can overdose from many perfectly legal, over-the-counter drugs, like over-the-counter pain killers, and many, many prescription drugs.
By your definition they'd all be "hard drugs".
Why would they overdose if cocaine is legal?
Overdosing on illegal drugs is primarily caused by people taking too much of a drug due to a misjudgment of its purity or contents.
So that (for example) when someone thinks they're taking 1x of a particular illegal drug, they could actually be taking 2x of it (and that 2x is lethal, whereas 1x would have been just fine).
Alternatively, someone might think they're getting 1x of drug X, whereas they might really be getting 10x of drug Y or some unknown mix of drug X and Y, and the quantity of drug Y is lethal.
Such misjudgement, in turn, is caused by it being difficult or impossible to judge the purity or contents of drugs you buy on the street.
When drugs become legal they are labeled as to dosage and constituency, so their users will know exactly what they're getting, and overdoses will be minimized because non-suicidal users will simply choose to take non-lethal amounts.
Quality controls of the legal drug manufacturing process will further minimize adverse effects, compared to black market manufacturing which is a free-for-all in terms of quality (or lack thereof).
Users could, of course, still overdose if they mix cocaine with other drugs, but education campaigns should hopefully mitigate that risk, and in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances.
As for cocaine use causing violence, from my understanding it's alcohol that is most likely of all drugs to cause violent behavior, yet most people are not seriously calling for it to be made illegal because of that fact.
The violence associated with cocaine is mostly caused not by the drug itself but by organized crime syndicates warring with each other over control of the illegal cocaine market. This source of violence, of course, would be completely eliminated were cocaine to be legalized, as the market would be completely controlled by legal entities, and legal entities (like Pfizer and Merk) don't tend to war violently with one another over turf.
I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns.
> in any case it won't be any worse than what happens when those same people mix effectively unknown illegal substances.
That's a bold claim which I would like to see substantiated with evidence. How could one possibly foresee the potential damage that could be caused by cocaine going mainstream once it is legalised. I'm just here to have a conversation and ask questions, just so the downvote trigger people don't lose their minds in anger because someone dares to question their narrative.
Oh, come on!
You're telling me that if some random stranger offered to sell you a few grams of mystery powder and you have no idea what's in it -- could be fatal, could be not... you'd rather take it, roll the dice, risk your life, and play russian roulette than go to a pharmacy to take a known quantity of pure cocaine -- a quantity you know won't be lethal and would probably make you fell really good instead?
Color me more than skeptical.
I doubt anyone would choose the russian roulette option than take a legal, regulated, pure, professionally measured and reliably labeled drug that they know won't kill them.
If a study was ever conducted on this, it would probably earn an Ig Nobel Prize.
"I highly doubt that young people who take cocaine to party will be type of people who will listen or dedicate their time to education campaigns."
This is in fact the strategy of harm reduction, and more recently of benefit enhancement. I recommend listening to interviews with Emanuel Sferios, the founder of DanceSafe (probably the most well known harm reduction organization, which does things like provide free drug testing and water at festivals).
Sferios gave a good talk, the first part of which (titled "Pleasurable Drug Use is Safer Drug Use") is here: [1] (though I recommend listening to all parts of it)
He focuses specifically on MDMA, but the harm reduction principles he talks about are applicable to all substances.
I know I sipped some alcohol before I turned 21, what if I tried shooting up on heroin or sniffing coke? I think the story here is much more complicated then "legalize" it.
Certainly the drug war was a huge mistake but completely legalizing drugs isn't exactly the right solution either.
The current opioid epidemic is the result of legalization through medical usage.
I'm also willing to bet that people who support complete legalization are users either casual or frequent (not necessarily addicts) so there's a personal agenda going on here as well.
Is there anyone who is completely drug free who supports total legalization?
But really, whoever wants to do these drugs is doing it already. Legalising is not suddenly going to make people want to use them. In the Netherlands cannabis is legal but it's a really uncool thing to do. Nobody wants to be a stoney. Most people try it once or twice and move on. Others get addicted yes, but really they're going to get it one way or another.
There's also a big range between legalising or promoting something. It can stay forbidden but just remove the huge penalties. Because that's what drives those prices up: It attracts the most unsavory types that are willing to take the heavy risk. It drives the huge profits they make and the violence.
And yes I've never used any drugs outside of alcohol (which I use infrequently). Not even weed.
People with chronic pain?
> Coke is a bit more common in certain scenes like big business.
It's really common in many other circles as well, I think you might be surprised.
> Legalising is not suddenly going to make people want to use them.
Pretty much yes. It's in fact the opposite in many cases. I remember being really interested in drugs (especially psychedelics) in my teenage years precisely because of the associated seemingly neurotic stigma there was (and to a wide extent still is) around the subject of drugs. If there hadn't been any "drugs are bad" campaigns (in school or otherwise) it probably wouldn't have caught my interest in the same way. I knew there was something to it, and I certainly wasn't gonna let laws stop me from finding out what, and I was right.
There are lots you can learn about yourself and the mind with various substances. Individuals experimenting with self-discovery shouldn't be illegal. Criminal cartels on the other hand are a whole other topic of discussion.
I don't think legalization has affected usage much in the US either, it seems you're right that it's determined by other cultural factors rather than laws.
Last I heard, heroin induces pleasure and euphoria. People do use it willingly.
this is kinda unfair and also close to an ad hominem argument. people don't generally advocate for anything unless they have some sort of personal stake. I don't currently consume anything that isn't legally available, though college was a different story. I support legalization because several of my friends have already died from tainted drugs, not because my habits would change if more drugs were legal.
in practice, I find the "think of the children" argument quite weak here. when I was in high school, alcohol and cigarettes were far harder to obtain than almost anything illicit.
edit, just noticed this:
> The current opioid epidemic is the result of legalization through medical usage.
how can you even compare abusing the trust people have in their physicians to push drugs whose risk profile the manufacturer lied about to legalizing them for recreational use?
I can do a comparison because it's factually correct. I am not talking about physicians lying I'm talking about easier access.
The epidemic in the US is caused by endorsement AND easier access, but I'm not comparing the endorsement part, just the easier access. The endorsement is indeed a separate phenomenon.
Weed is decriminalized to the point that it allmost does not matter. And this is the only drug I do occasionally. (and not at all since some time)
And I do support total legalization.
Out of the philosophical point of view, that adult people should own their own body and life. And what I do with my body, is my buisness and not anyone else.
How can I think of myself as free, when other people regulate what I am allowed to consume?
And from movies, literature and some people in real life, I know what coke and heroin does to people, so I have no intentions of consuming them. Same with alcohol btw.
But if other people think its beneficial to them - I would try to convince of the big risks not worth the effort. But ultimately I would (and did) it accept as their choice. Even if that means they destroy their life. It is their life, after all. This usually does mean tragedy, I am painfully aware of that - but with the criminalization it means even bigger tragedy.
Additionally specifically for the drug thing we already draw lines in legality even for people like you who promote total freedom. Should a 5 year old be allowed to sniff coke and shoot up on heroin just for his freedom? Well he's a kid... and doesn't know any better so he needs to be controlled.
Does that same logic apply to adults who don't know any better who walk around without masks? Where is the line drawn? Why do kids have to be restricted but not adults that don't know any better, what affords the child the "privilege" of more restriction?
If you legalize heroin and coke you are definitely going to reduce drug related violence and the lacing drugs with impurities but you will increase the amount of addicts and regular users including users who start using at childhood.
Maturity. But I also want to restrict children as little as possible, so they can learn to deal with freedom and self responsibility as soon as possible.
Up to the point, that they fully take responsibility over their body and life. I don't think that this automatically happens at 18 or 21. Some are ready at 14. Some never will.
"but you will increase the amount of addicts and regular users including users who start using at childhood. "
And this is not a fact and not covered by statistics of ares that did legalisation/decriminalisation.
Because avaiability is very high today already with the illegal status. Take away the temptation of the taboo for rebelling teens and you get even lower numbers. And you can more easily help those who still fall for it.
See maturity is a vague term this is where the controversy lies because adults can be immature too. What is the logic that gives immature kids this "privilege" over an immature adult.
>Because avaiability is very high today already with the illegal status. Take away the temptation of the taboo for rebelling teens and you get even lower numbers. And you can more easily help those who still fall for it.
This is not a fact either. In fact it's very convoluted logic. Something that is illegal is used more over something that is legal because of rebellion? It's so against common sense.
I decriminalize murder, murder goes down. I decriminalize theft, theft goes down. I decriminalize corruption, corruption goes down.
None of those statements make sense.
But suddenly this one does:
I decriminalize drugs, drug use goes down.
Seems not just illogical but delusional. A convenient excuse to promote a personal agenda.
Portugal is an interesting one. But you pain a one sided story.
So basically problematic usage has gone down. But regular legalized decriminalized recreational usage has gone up. So I picture it like coffee. More addicts everywhere but it's legal. Replace coffee with heroin and it's pretty much the same picture.
Is it better to live in a society where everyone does a cup of heroin in the morning and it's totally normal and no one is dysfunctional or is it better to have the heroin relegated to a few violent problematic users?
It makes sense. You decriminalize a crime you get less crimes. Maybe changing perspectives is the solution but then again maybe not.
Dealers are not all fucked up devils trying to lure people into total submission.
This type surely exist, but I never met one. (but I also never was into hard drugs)
The dealer sold meth to somebody who was obviously far, far beyond the point of being able to drive, got their money, and sent them back on the road merrily. This dealer is also selling to somebody who obviously has almost no money (besides the bit scraped together to pay for the drugs), was just released from prison, and is addicted to both hard drugs and alcohol.
Ya, I'd say dealers are pretty much scum of the earth.
I know only weed/psychedelic dealers. That kind that does not try to drain you, but even tell you, if they think you come too often for your own good .. they are definitely not the scum of the earth.
Yeah so instead of hiding it in a locker I leave all over the table and my 9 year old kid comes in and steals it. I'm talking about that ease of access.
These people have multiple generations that have grown up with this industry being a fantastic way to make a living. The cat and mouse game of destroying the growing fields has led to an expanded destruction of Columbia’s rain forrest.
To me this policy seems like a social policy to bring these people on the right side of the law, limit the additives, and most important have a hand in distribution.
Honestly, the point the author makes about protecting the lives of Columbians is included by necessity, but it is argued weakly. It seems that other comments seemed to have latched onto this idea.
To me, this seems like a pretty innovative policy for a Columbia.
Cocaine is a huge industry, and I wonder how much of Colombia is controlled by that industry. If it's a large percentage, then that could be driving this too.
There is a precedent, Afghanistan and opium production. Opium provides about 400,000 jobs in Afghanistan, more than the Afghani National Security Forces.
To be clear, I am not taking a stance on morality of it. I think smaller countries will look to leverage the vices of the larger countries into sources of income, as economies of smaller countries around the world suffer more due to climate change, increased diseases, and resource scarcity.
I simply disbelieve the idea that a random legit businessperson could decide to go into the drugs trade without fearing harassment from the existing players, as well as gain knowledge in the area without having to associate with the formerly criminal.
What are some ways to address this? Any early indications from other places?
One could argue the same about the illegal bootleggers during the prohibition - might have taken a while to get rid of the criminal elements, but it did work out in the end, not?
I haven't done the numbers in this case, but surely there are instances in the world where giving up on the prospect of individual retribution is worth the societal gain?
It will take time yes. But it will happen. Policy should still be very tough on actors using violence, for example those private cartel armies should not be tolerated in the legal model.
But as the price drops due to legalisation they will have no way to pay for all those things anymore.
And yes the US prohibition is a great example as others have mentioned. The alcohol trade went mob-free pretty quickly.
Either way, in the United States, we used to have a prohibition on alcohol. When the prohibition ended, most of the old brewers either went legit, or went into politics. The Kennedys were such former criminals and they actually did a pretty good job as politicians if you ask me.
I would say most of the time, criminals are just people who want to compete with the government, which is the biggest gang. So criminals are not these unambiguously evil troublemakers Ronald Reagan would like us to think they are.
prosperity preaching has no bearing on any reality or factual circumstance and having people trying to link prosperity to morality just slows down market forces unnecessarily for a short time span
they are going to leverage their supply chain and likely have lower overhead costs
Also Colombia won't become a first world country any time soon, the infrastructure is lacking and the country has three different mountain ranges. Furthermore, and I say it as a Spanish national, their culture comes from the latin/Spanish culture and that has a lot of anti-capitalist cultural implications that will nevertheless drag any possible economic growth.
Seems like a short-term and inflammatory gain at best.
Don't underestimate head starts.
I was surprised to learn from wikipedia that Columbia has separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches which is usually designed to create checks and balances that undermine corruption. With that said there is still an inordinate amount of corruption (evidently).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Colombia
P.S. It feels a little lame to be citing wikipedia, but I don't know much about Columbia other than what I know from their drug lore.
Yes, that is basically how you remove the opportunity from an industry.
Columbia could be wealthier than Saudi Arabia with a legal cocaine industry. Trouble with that is it becomes "resource cursed," as the economy won't diversify, the government and military/police can fund itself from the drug proceeds, and there is no incentive for the govt to implement policies to help citizens, whose tax dollars and consent they no longer need. I'm not against the legalization, but it might not solve the problem they believe.
Consider that all the horror and expense of the war on drugs was still preferable to what could have been resolved with an equally brutal but much narrower and shorter war on public corruption.
Maybe, but then the government resources that went into fighting the cartels with the goal of eradication can go into fighting the cartels with the goal of suppressing unauthorized violence, with the financial support (through taxation) of the drug profits from the law abiding competition. (If they aren't amnestied for past violence, that probably happens to the cartels anyway; if they are, they are faced with a choice of peace and trying to monopolize the market from an initially-advantaged position peacefully and waging war on the competition which inevitably becomes a return to war with the government, but now with the competition's profits funding the government effort rather than the competition facing the same suppression and dividing government resources.)
This is problematic for many reasons. By necessity the legal producers will have to sell large quantities to clandestine entities that export unlawfully it out of the county (since nobody would accept a lawful import with all the required customs paperwork). The value chain will push prices down in the supply and manufacture and reward the international smugglers who take the risks and can eliminate competition by forming cartels. So you will have immensely powerful cartels based in Colombia that purchase in bulk on the legal market, that can bribe politicians to maintain a favorable regulatory framework, you get the whole Escobar situation, state capture and narco-state structures.
The next fallout is diplomatic. Countries served by smugglers based in Colombia will ask for cooperation to stop those export routes. You either ignore them and get sanctions or military action, or you put pressure on the legal industry, driving it underground again.
Did cannabis get exported from Colorado? Absolutely. Did it corrupt the legal industry or the Colorado state government? Not to any extent, I'm aware. Like you said, the margin on inter-state smuggling are so large, that there's no reason for exporters to even bother with grey market wholesale sourcing to save a few pennies. Just source retail, then ship overseas.
Back of the envelope math. Let's say cocaine is recreationally legal in Colombia and retailed at $5/gram. (Black market prices inside Colombia are already cheaper than this.) Let's say wholesale production costs $1000/kilo. Current wholesale smuggling prices in the US are $25,000/kilo in the US, and double that in Europe.
The simplest option for any would-be is just to have smurfs continuously accumulate recreational product from Colombian legal retailers. Then package small-scale retail buys into wholesale international shipment. Trying to buy wholesale from produces only increases profit margins by ~20%, and makes your operation a lot more visible and attackable.
Pablo Escobar was a different beast because he had to run an enormous and visible illegal operation inside Colombia. He needed farms, processing facilities and all the logistics that come with that. That required bribing a lot of politicians to protect those operations.
A post-legalization Escobar doesn't need anything more than a warehouse, a small payroll of shoppers, a Silk Road account, and some international postage. This isn't speculation, it's pretty much how the large-scale MDMA traffickers (who are so lightly prosecuted that it might as well be legal) operate in Holland.
For me it’s the incredibly short half life of the drug leading to a massive craving for more only ~20 minutes later. It turns people with addictive tendencies into annoying ass holes as they follow the friend who has more around the room constantly. Seeing how people act when they want to get more should be required media just so they can understand the behavioral changes everyone one misses when they are the one who is high.
The key is, taking that monopoly has side-effects for us like being put on US blacklists which will badly affect our economy in other ways.
We've been talking about this for a long time and have concluded that legalization in the states is the only way [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/ballot-measures-propos...
This just seems like it will produce the same sort of problem, where people selling to the government will be threatened.
THIS IS A GLOBAL WARMING ISSUE and a HUMAN RIGHTS issue!
300,000 hectares of forests destroyed a year is roughly 1100 square miles! Anybody care to do the calculations on the carbon sink on that!?
200,000 families! Not people, FAMILIES! These aren’t nuclear families either. There could be close to a million people (if they each have 3 kids on average) that would not be subject to cartels and forced to live in hiding.
Holy shit this would be a huge win!
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/23/how-organised-c... would end up like this if everything averaged out, but while the USSR was basically turned into neoliberal hell, the trajectory in Colombia is much much more optimistic so I suspect the outcome will be far better.
It's Mexico and Central America I'm more worried about than Colombia.
The law might be stupid but if they're currently illegal they're rather prosecuted, not persecuted. At least technically.
Shouldn't we figure some (genetic?) tests so anyone check if he can safely use or is prone to addiction?
Given the left and right decriminalization and legalization we are seeing these days this would be one of the greatest shifts in our world history
Also my instinctive first thought, but actually I have to wonder why they care so much?
Don’t think anyone’s interested in a strong central government fighting unfair, unjust wars that just victimise their people.
With regards to the war on drugs. That was never started with noble intentions, and has pretty much failed. This is not so much “joining them” as accepting the reality that maybe the whole war was bad idea from the start.
I am no fan of the Trump administration, but honestly they should have tried this while Trump was still in office, they would have had more chance of getting away with it. For whatever reason "drugs" never really became one of Trumps hot button issues (which kind of surprised me; it used to be a right-wing trigger, but apparently is no longer?), and the Trump administration didn't see to care at all about traditional U.S. foreign policy objectives (for good or ill; in this case it would be for good), or anything that wasn't one of his hot-button issues.
Maybe Columbia will legalize but I would tend to think 95% of the rest of the world will say "we're going to make importing it illegal" and after that the Columbian government is going to have a lot of people knocking on their door asking them to help stop Columbians who are exporting to places that don't want it. And when they either can't or won't do that there are going to be consequences.
But who knows. Maybe it'll all work out. I don't think so though and I don't think it's just a matter of U.S. thinking it a bad idea.
The U.S. is historically the actor with the desire and power to enforce this sort of thing on Latin America, with both carrot and stick. Other countries can decide they care and want to try to enforce it (although the U.S. is the powerful country that's closest to Latin America). I'm not sure if I'd expect them to try or not, really.
One example of what the U.S. has done is require toxic spraying of coca crop in Columbia, even though it causes health and pollution problems. In some cases it's even U.S. planes doing it, whether Columbia likes it or not (how would anyone else like it if a foreign country insisted on their right to spray toxic chemicals without permission?) But googling for a cite for that... I see I was wrong about the Trump administration, they actually were trying to force Columbia to start doing the spraying again.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-drugs/colombia-w...
Drugs can be legal in all other countries in America (north and south) and we will still be radicalized about the idea of legalization.