6 ms·

Police seem to only want to manage the war on drugs not defeat it, as was explained to me by a friend who's a cop and became totally disillusioned, just countin

by feklar 10y ago

Police seem to only want to manage the war on drugs not defeat it, as was explained to me by a friend who's a cop and became totally disillusioned, just counting out his days until retirement. This means working with one criminal group to help arrest the other groups. Of course by interfering in the drug dealing free market by propping up various mid level street gangs and arresting the others they create an extremely dangerous powder keg where these targeted groups go to great insane lengths to survive, and the propped up group is often dismantled and arrested by police whenever they become too confident and do something stupid like their untouchable gang members terrorizing too many innocent people. The demise of the dominant group once propped up by police means a power vacuum forms and streets become a warzone as all fight to take over the dominant position of police protected status. I'm pretty sure that without police 'managing' these mid level street gangs, they would just exist as smaller decentralized crews that would be much less violent as we would stop creating Tony Montanas and instead just have disorganized criminal activity on a smaller income scale since honest police would be able to easily disrupt these networks into bankruptcy. Instead we get police helping to form supergangs, with multi millions to spend on weapons and corrupt all aspects of a city with criminals getting into mafia-like construction industries to influence city tenders, bribe city employees or unchecked extortion of local business. Either legalize it all or end the strategy of selective enforcement, which means we likely need to double police budgets as cost is a major factor in this strategy of enforcement that relies on criminal cooperation.

pixl97 10y ago
>Police seem to only want to manage the war on drugs not defeat it Because they cannot defeat it. You will never win a war on vice. We didn't learn our lesson when prohibition was enacted. When you target vice and addiction a violent black market is created. >they would just exist as smaller decentralized crews that would be much less violent Being sure is pretty different from knowing. It's just as likely the street gangs would congregate power because there is a whole lot of money in illegal drug sales anyway you look at it. This is no different than non drug gangs, and even businesses themselves. Decriminalization of most drugs, and clinics where drugs are given in free, metered doses is probably the best way to remove massive amounts of money from the drug black markets.
- x0x0 10y ago
  By the by, because it's really interesting, prohibition wasn't intended / wasn't understood to apply to beer and wine by the vast majority of supporters of the amendment. Some people leveraged white nationalism / anti-german racism, including the fact that many brewers were German, to pass the Volstead act which banned all alcohol. And by all alcohol I mean nothing like all alcohol -- there were many widely used loopholes, including getting a prescription from your doctor, buying grape juice with a warning to drink it within X days or it would ferment and become alcoholic, or even becoming jewish (10 gallons per person per year!). It really was a ban on some persons some of the time. If you're interested, read Daniel Okrent _Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition_ https://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/074327704X/ https://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/07... Good thing the American public learned our lesson and never did anything stupid like that again.
- kapitza 10y ago
  You will never win a war on vice That would come as news to Singapore: https://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/media_centre/press_room/pr/2014/201409/press_201409261.html https://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/media_centre/press_room/p...
  - abandonliberty 10y ago
    Wow, I had no idea. How do the facts back this up? It helps when your country is smaller than most international cities. http://www.travelersdigest.com/7390-how-big-is-singapore-in-comparison-to-los-angeles-new-york-london-hong-kong/ http://www.travelersdigest.com/7390-how-big-is-singapore-in-...
    - greggman 10y ago
      Smaller than most international cities? Which cities are these? Singapore us bigger than all but 4 European cities and 1 U.S. city
    - imron 10y ago
      No, I think it's the high probability you'll be executed for this sort of thing that keeps people in line.
stevetrewick 10y ago
>smaller decentralized crews that would be much less violent Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that those businesses are still illegal and so have no recourse to the law for dispute settlement. When fraud, theft, delinquent payments, etc cannot be addressed with the force of the law they can only be addressed with the force of, well, force. Which likely escalates recursively until the biggest bad ass is holding all the marbles, taking us back to where we started out. It's that lack of recourse to legit dispute settlement that fundamentally guarantees that illegal markets for high demand, high value goods will attract and/or create violent actors, IMO.
pbreit 10y ago
Even in the USA eradicating corruption is difficult. Can you imagine how difficult it would be in a country with a culture of corruption and much weaker rule of law?

by feklar 10y ago

pixl97 10y ago

>Police seem to only want to manage the war on drugs not defeat it Because they cannot defeat it. You will never win a war on vice. We didn't learn our lesson when prohibition was enacted. When you target vice and addiction a violent black market is created. >they would just exist as smaller decentralized crews that would be much less violent Being sure is pretty different from knowing. It's just as likely the street gangs would congregate power because there is a whole lot of money in illegal drug sales anyway you look at it. This is no different than non drug gangs, and even businesses themselves. Decriminalization of most drugs, and clinics where drugs are given in free, metered doses is probably the best way to remove massive amounts of money from the drug black markets.

x0x0 10y ago
By the by, because it's really interesting, prohibition wasn't intended / wasn't understood to apply to beer and wine by the vast majority of supporters of the amendment. Some people leveraged white nationalism / anti-german racism, including the fact that many brewers were German, to pass the Volstead act which banned all alcohol. And by all alcohol I mean nothing like all alcohol -- there were many widely used loopholes, including getting a prescription from your doctor, buying grape juice with a warning to drink it within X days or it would ferment and become alcoholic, or even becoming jewish (10 gallons per person per year!). It really was a ban on some persons some of the time. If you're interested, read Daniel Okrent _Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition_ https://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/074327704X/ https://www.amazon.com/Last-Call-Rise-Fall-Prohibition/dp/07... Good thing the American public learned our lesson and never did anything stupid like that again.
kapitza 10y ago
You will never win a war on vice That would come as news to Singapore: https://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/media_centre/press_room/pr/2014/201409/press_201409261.html https://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/media_centre/press_room/p...
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  Wow, I had no idea. How do the facts back this up? It helps when your country is smaller than most international cities. http://www.travelersdigest.com/7390-how-big-is-singapore-in-comparison-to-los-angeles-new-york-london-hong-kong/ http://www.travelersdigest.com/7390-how-big-is-singapore-in-...
  - greggman 10y ago
    Smaller than most international cities? Which cities are these? Singapore us bigger than all but 4 European cities and 1 U.S. city
  - imron 10y ago
    No, I think it's the high probability you'll be executed for this sort of thing that keeps people in line.

stevetrewick 10y ago

>smaller decentralized crews that would be much less violent Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that those businesses are still illegal and so have no recourse to the law for dispute settlement. When fraud, theft, delinquent payments, etc cannot be addressed with the force of the law they can only be addressed with the force of, well, force. Which likely escalates recursively until the biggest bad ass is holding all the marbles, taking us back to where we started out. It's that lack of recourse to legit dispute settlement that fundamentally guarantees that illegal markets for high demand, high value goods will attract and/or create violent actors, IMO.

pbreit 10y ago

Even in the USA eradicating corruption is difficult. Can you imagine how difficult it would be in a country with a culture of corruption and much weaker rule of law?