How Do Afghan Drug Lords Spend All That Loot?
trueslant.com
trueslant.com
The FARC sells cocaine. The Afghan warlords sell heroin. There is no constellation of American political interests for which "Legalize cocaine and heroin" is even remotely conceivable as an achievable policy option.
Incidentally, no matter what you legalize, smuggling remains a viable option for whatever it is you don't. FARC could just as easily be the world's largest kiddie porn or sex slave ring. Afghanistan could sell slaves.
(I am not speaking hypothetically. There are nations which do both. A willingness to do evil plus a local monopoly on coercive force makes for a very profitable combination.)
The total addressable market for heroin and cocaine consumption is demonstrably high. Kiddie porn demand will never reach this level, and hiding a sex slave in your house is difficult.
In Japan there's a whole (legal) industry that would be probably classified as "kiddie porn" distribution in US. It's certainly bigger than the local cocaine and heroine market.
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/08/21/un-demands-hentai-b... (possibly NSFW)
Not in the de jure sense, surely?
I wonder what bootleggers started to sell after alcohol was legalized in the US.
Think of a crack resurgence in the inner city powered by a marketing campaign strong enough to make Nike envious, market penetration approaching that of television, and the resulting decision of middle class America to essentially write them off.
See, for example, alcohol on Indian reservations.
And as far as inner city drugs go, they might as well be legal given how easy it is to get them.
Most people wouldn't do drugs even with Nike like advertising and those who do get hooked could get it legally. Wouldn't steal from their own mother to buy it, wouldn't support the Taliban.
If you're going to "imagine" a legal drugs industry, shouldn't it be things that aren't true of the illegal one that we have now?
Illegal drugs are universally available. They are well marketed.
However, the local Coors and Bud distributors rarely shoot at one another. And, when their customers go broke, neither one of them kills said customers.
And to those who say "it's different"...yes, it is....I can list any number incidents involving potential serious societal harm, and some involving actual societal harm, that were totally a result of alcohol. And make no mistake, these people also had access to the full range of commonly available drugs as well, and partaked of them often. But in the aggregate, in my experience, it is rarely the drugs that causes the problem, it is almost always the booze. The argument is that all these social incidents come from booze, but it would be worse if drugs were also available.....well drugs ARE available...if you want drugs, it is only a little bit more difficult to buy than booze.
Although, it seems reasonable to me that if "drugs" are legalized, a larger portion of the public will get involved, but I haven't seen anything to make me think this will make society worse. My best guess would be that it might get people off the booze a bit and chill them out, so they don't start so many fights and other wild adventures that boozed up people get involved in.
It happened during Prohibition, so it's unclear why you think that it's inconceivable.
However, I'm compariing between drugs and booze.
I'm pointing out that the "{something bad} will happen" arguments against legalizing drugs almost always use a "{something bad}" that is happens while they're illegal. In other words, legalization doesn't change whether said something occurs, so said something isn't relevant to the legalization or not discussion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware of the rhetorical/polemic structure of this argument, as well as the simple age of it, I'm just chipping in with what I've considered. I myself have a very liberal approach to drugs, my use of certain drugs (which is moderate even for alcohol) and I have a family involved in Iraq/AfPaq, figured this thread was well suited to my two cents. Just thought I had to defend my comments as something more than simply a "ohhh, terrorist'll get ya" pokey stick.
I agree that there's an attempt to suppress. My point is that this attempt hasn't produced a significant shortage or any of the benefits that we'd supposedly get from making drugs unavailable.
It's sort of like running an air conditioner outdoors. One can feel a temperature differential if one stands in exactly the right place but otherwise it's a complete waste of energy.
> If this pressure were to let up, even in only a few of these countries, this would surely cause an economic vacuum that would be for all intents and purposes like a gold rush(?).
Legalization might change the players, but there's no vacuum.
> Just thought I had to defend my comments as something more than simply a "ohhh, terrorist'll get ya" pokey stick.
Huh?
Ha, I think we're broadly in agreemant but I'm tending toward pessimism, the above is a reference to Alex Jones which I guess helps qualify that!! Was just alluding to the fact I wasn't trying to doomsay and polarise the argument but articulate a genuine concern that there exists far to much potential in a free (a.i.s) drugs trade for corruption and misuse of power. It is not a trade I would like to see legal for fear of a smarmy spin covered consumerism. I manage nicely as it is, but decriminalisation I think is a far better option than legalisation. Speaking conservatively and pessimistically.
Argh! I'm NOT comparing them.
As a libertarian I am very grudgingly in favour of drug legalization, but you can't deny the harm which would probably come from having all these drugs freely and cheaply available. I can't say for sure whether it would be greater or lesser than the current level of harm, but it would certainly be substantial.
The very simple solution is to provide legal drugs for users who are documented addicts (and no-one else) in certified clinics at a very low price.
Since most of the economy of illegal drug-dealing is based on recurring business (addicts), the illegal market for drugs would collapse -- drugs would simply be prohibitively expensive when the majority of clients run off to the much cheaper, cleaner and safer competetition.
Also, the biggest problem with drugs aren't the drugs themselves, it's the crime that follows as users need to get money quick to get their next fix. Burglaries, robberies, muggings etc. -- most are perpetrated by drug addicts. This would be avoided.
I'm pretty sure a secure system for dispensing the drugs in the clinic can be devised. After all, we can distribute large amounts of physical cash with few incidents, drugs shouldn't be much different. Heroin-ATMs, anyone? The addict "withdraws" one dosis pr. 24 hour period, authenticated by a retina-scan.
First, the point of this is the decouple addiction from money, and with that from crimes of enrichment. I'm sure we can agree that addiction is the root of this issue?
Second, this would only be offered to those already addicted. Once the illegal drug trading collapses, so will the "first hit for free" offers, since those are based on the expectation that the receiver will become addicted and be a returning customer. This is, as I understand, the primary way of getting addicted (very few would-be heroin users sit a home Thursday afternoon and decides that today is the day to try a hit).
I agree that drug usage is destructive in so many way, and I've come to realize that my solution isn't really to help the users -- strategies to help the users have failed over and over again -- but rather to contain the problem, and cut the causes as close the root as possible. Once that part is complete, we can look at getting people into rehab -- which should also be more effective when you old neighbourhood isn't full of pushers whose business depends on getting you back in the habit.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...
Yes, there's harm from those drugs being available. However, criminalization hasn't reduced their availability.
Criminalization is very expensive. What are the benefits that we're actually getting?
I suspect that if that were actually true, prices would be an awful lot lower.
Like cars and booze, there are illegal drugs at pretty much every price point. (Crack created a lower price point option for cocaine.)
The war is wrongheaded and self-defeating, regardless of which currently-illegal drugs might be safely and productively legalized.
Oh, and also the drop in opium production will raise opium prices, and so you'll need to keep raising the Afghanistan saffron buying price in order to keep it more attractive than opium farming.
I foresee all sorts of unforeseen consequences, and those are just the foreseen ones!
Growing corn for biodiesel would make very little sense.
I'm saying that if they had the capability to grow corn, as fizx suggests, then it would be better to use that corn for food, as opposed to biodiesel.
So 600 million dollars, give or take, to replace the economic incentive.
Firebombing peasant farmers in another country - and you see nothing wrong with that?
Perhaps we could accept some social and economic responsibility for dealing with the problem. Firebombing the poppy fields would be like removing all web developers hands because a website was compromised and credit card numbers stolen.