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It's us, the USA, that is causing this paper to shutdown. The cartels are financed by the insatiable drug appetite of its close neighbor. Our inability and/or u

It's us, the USA, that is causing this paper to shutdown. The cartels are financed by the insatiable drug appetite of its close neighbor. Our inability and/or unwillingness to legalize recreational drugs is the feeding tube for these vicious groups.

2_listerine_pls 10y ago
It's surprisingly simple to locate the plantations using LIDAR + spectrometry. Even easier in Afghanistan, where fields are cultivated in the open. It's so well documented that the UNDOC provides an anual report with the amount in acres. I could go on, but this is enough to make one wonder why they aren't being stopped.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>Insatiable drug appetite is a constant Says who?
  - callalex 10y ago
    The decades upon decades of failed abolishment efforts speak for themselves.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    So I'm by no means pro-drug, and I agree that most people who say "it's impossible to fix because we haven't fixed it yet" lack imagination, but there is absolutely some fishy stuff going on with drug policy. What we are doing now is broken, has been broken, and everyone knows it's broken. There are hidden motives here, no doubt. Corruption is a very real thing and there are a lot of people with a lot at stake regarding drug policy. The most important thing to successful drug prohibition and treatment is a semi-controllable grey market.
- jfim 10y ago
  > I could go on, but this is enough to make one wonder why they aren't being stopped. Except for that pesky sovereignty thing.
  - toss1941 10y ago
    I was thinking of police corruption myself.
  - 2_listerine_pls 10y ago
    Is that the same sovereignty that stopped the US from from drilling their oil after overthrowing their government? It's odd reason given that narcotics are/were supposedly one of the principal sources of the Taliban’s financing.
    - mattnewton 10y ago
      We all moved on after finding out there were no weapons of mass destruction without even an "oops" from the public, so I wouldn't hold your breath on anyone launching a successful campaign there- still, if that's true, I would really like to see someone make a documentary or some articles about it in a format the masses will see. Could be really compelling to people not typically reached by advocates of drug reform.
    - Paradigma11 10y ago
      What oil in afghanistan? Even in iraq the oil reserves are managed by the iraqi ministry and went mostly to chinese companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iraq_relations#Recent_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iraq_relations#R... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-rea...
  - unethical_ban 10y ago
    Sovereignty and the concept of hostile action/influence on life can make the line blurry. If, through inaction, violent warlords displace thousands or millions of people, are the destination countries not adversely affected? The US has millions of economic and war-affected Mexican refugees. Same with Syria... should Germany, Turkey, Greece, etc. say "Syria is sovereign, nothing we can do" when their countries are being overrun? The US should look to improve life in Mexico and reduce cartel power first through economic and peaceful political means, and then, PERHAPS and after much thought, bombing the shit out of every cartel leader on the same night, Godfather style. I'm only half kidding.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  Well, who knows why mexico doesn't take advantage of that. But they are the only people who can.
- therealdrag0 10y ago
  Here's an interesting podcast on the supply of drugs: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/tom_wainwright.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/tom_wainwright.html The guest mentions that in the Ande's mountains it is still tough to identify drug growing.
  - 2_listerine_pls 10y ago
    LIDAR can go through canopy because there are spaces between leaves. Take a look at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory's tech.
- cmdkeen 10y ago
  Because the farmers get paid next to nothing so disrupting supply does nothing to raise costs (the usual measure of the effect a supply side policy has). Mexican weed production soared because the authorities were pulled into cities due to violence leaving the rural terrain uncovered. Narconomics is a good read on the various measures that have been tried. Going after poor South American farmers these days means the cartels just means the cartels don't pay them as much. Far too much policy making around narcotics is done by knee-jerk reactions, on both sides.
snowpanda 10y ago
Mexico has plenty of its own problems that you're overlooking. It's not as simple as problem -> cause. By that logic Mexico would be to blame for Columbia's cocaine trafficking.
- chrischen 10y ago
  Nope, still America.
  - cnnsucks 10y ago
    yes, that's why Canada is just as bad a Mexico, with Canadian drug cartels mass beheading their rivals in the streets of Toronto.
    - ggiaco 10y ago
      The richer the country and the stronger its institutions, the less likely cartels will take over sure, but when $40 billion USD in yearly profit (in the US drug trade) are up for grabs, someone's going to be stepping up.
    - huherto 10y ago
      There was a time when we thought Mexican institutions would resist. I am from Chihuahua Mexico, and we thought this was just happening in the rural isolated areas. Then it spilled over the cities too. I have had family killed. Smart and educated, like you or me. American and Canadian institutions are stronger. They have been able to stand.
23443463453 10y ago
Although I get your point; it's fundamentally asinine both on a logical basis, but also on a practical basis relative to the massive, treasonous, seditious, and self-destructive (almost as if it were drug fueled) opposition to the very President trying to curtail "the insatiable drug appetite of it's close neighbor". I don't know what it is with the Liberal mindset, but it is so screwed up and distorted and twisted that people like you are not only blaming those who are addicted to drugs that are addicting, but you are thereby also siding with some of the most vile terrorist organizations that have totally and utterly overtaken the Mexican government and who are using drugs as a weapon of war to socially fracture America while also draining billions upon billions of dollars from the USA, while leaving nothing but broken families, neighborhoods, and a broken society behind. The argument you make is akin to saying that we should legalize rape because rape is happening. It turns out that Colorado's black market marijuana market is actually booming ( http://kdvr.com/2017/03/03/black-market-marijuana-business-booming/ http://kdvr.com/2017/03/03/black-market-marijuana-business-b... )... so much for that argument that if we just make undesirable, socially destructive behaviors easier and more freely to partake in, it would somehow for some reason decline ... against all rational sanity. If get your head out of the sand or cast off your drug addiction and addict mentality, you would come to the realization that the people using DRUGS ... ADDICTION CAUSING DRUGS are not the primary source of a system. Imagine if no more drugs flowed into the USA, would the demand increase or decrease? Imagine if people tried to kick their addiction by everyone going into rehab, would the drug cartels try to push their drugs harder or less because "shit, geez, I guess we need to stop shipping DRUGS to the USA since no one will want the ADDICTING DRUGS" You're essentially guilt shaming, placing blame at the effect, not the cause. When cocaine first made its way to the USA, it wasn't because there was a massive demand by people in the USA for a drug and they found cocaine. It is ALWAYS the drug and those that push them that are the impetus, the source, the cause that needs to be eradicated to terminate the cycle .
- audunw 10y ago
  Doesn't the link you're pointing to kind of refute your critisism that legalization doesn't help mexico? It seems to say that the main reason there's a black market, is to sell high-quality colorado-grown weed to the rest of the US. Is that a shocker? And is that really that bad? So doesn't that imply that it might be displacing weed from Mexico, from violent cartels, with weed grown in the US from less violent black markets? And who ever said that weed-smoking, weed-growing or black markets would decline? That's a huge straw man right there. The point is to replace a smaller amount of very bad stuff (black markets linked to violent crime, bad quality weed, unregulated untaxed sales, etc), with more of something much better. More people smoking weed isn't necessarily bad, if it's more regulated. It's surprising how often it has to be repeated that there's no qualitative difference between alcohol and other drugs. It's plainly obvious that legal but very strictly regulated sale of alcohol is the best solution. It's odd that it's so hard to see that it's the same for all other drugs. I suppose that the problem is that the US doesn't know how to strike a good balance. You either gotta go all out war-on-drugs, or you gotta go laissez-faire. You don't know how to strike a balance. Maybe look to other countries for solutions. Every heard of government monopolies for alcohol sale? Funny thing is, when you combine this with universal healthcare, then the government that sells you alcohol, is the same that has to take the consequences from overconsumption. So you got someone who wants to sell to you (to avoid black markets), but not too much. That's exactly the incentives you want from a drug seller.
tedunangst 10y ago
Don't forget about our insatiable need for margaritas and the lime cartels.
adventured 10y ago
I agree with you, that the US needs to legalize production and sale. However, why has Canada never been wrecked by extremely violent cartels seeking to feed that insatiable drug appetite? How do you explain nearly all of Latin America having wild murder rates? All of the most dangerous non-war zone countries on earth are in Latin America. And yet that same murder & violent crime problem isn't represented in Canada. What could possibly explain that consistency across ~15 different Latin American nations, except that it's a cultural and institutional problem? Colombia for example has seen dramatic improvements, despite the US demand for drugs increasing in the last 15 years. Or take Venezuela, one of the most dangerous nations, with a truly shocking murder rate, and it has very little to do with the US drug demand. Or take Brazil, a nation of 200 million with a murder rate 7 to 10 times that of the US (with up to half of all murders unreported in official stats), which also doesn't derive its huge murder problems from the US drug demand. It's far too simplistic to just blame the US for everything.
- ggiaco 10y ago
  The richer the country and the stronger its institutions, the less likely cartels will take over sure, but when $40 billion USD in yearly profit (in the US drug trade) are up for grabs, someone's going to be stepping up. Stop it in Colombia and it shifts to Mexico. Stop the routes along all of Mexico and the Caribbean and who knows - no reason to be so sure it absolutely couldn't happen in Canada.
  - isolli 10y ago
    Drug routes are already moving to poorer neighbors of Mexico like Guatemala, who are even less able to stop the cartels. [0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11-drugs_03-15/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11... [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-bloody-battle-with-mexican-drug-cartels-6257571.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-...
- lend000 10y ago
  Simply because Canada doesn't have the natural climate for growing Coca nor Cannabis. Nowadays it doesn't matter as much since a significant amount of production can be done in greenhouses and there are other more synthetic products with market share, but the damage is already done to those poorer countries, and the cartels already wield too much influence.
tim333 10y ago
Also the US effectively supplies a lot of the guns used in the killings by allowing them to be freely purchased near the border.
drawkbox 10y ago
The War on Drugs is now taking down free press in other countries, it is has gone too far for too long. It is essentially funding terror and when you see the billions being made in only a few states such as Colorado with 1+ billion in 2016 [1]. Large amounts of wealth, probably 50-100+ billion going to cartels in the south annually to fund very bad things. Prohibition always creates a criminal black market that becomes uncontrollable when there is a large demand for a product that is illegal. Better to make it legal, remove the revenue for cartels and use some for taxes and lots of jobs in the US. Colorado already has 20k jobs from ending prohibition on marijuana, that could be a 200k nationwide job creator. Legal markets, education, rehabilitation and safe use could also provide many jobs. Legal marijuana markets in the US are already at such high growth rates that they rival the dot com boom growth [2]. It makes pro-business and safety sense to legalize and make it a health issue not a criminal one, because the criminalization of it is creating very bad blow back and funding terror essentially, destroying privacy and lives along the way. The punishment of non-violent drug users, enforcement and resulting black market criminals are way worse than the act and it is cruel and unusual punishment on individuals and people now on a massive scale worldwide. [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marijuana-tax-revenue-hit-200-million-in-colorado-as-sales-pass-1-billion-2017-02-10 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marijuana-tax-revenue-hit-2... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-04/legal-marijuana-sales-bigger-than-dot-com-boom/8161218 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-04/legal-marijuana-sales-...
- hackermailman 10y ago
  Colorado will make much more than that too, since when legalizing governments option for the lowest taxes possible in order for people to not return to the black market. Give it 5 years when the black market for weed disappears almost completely and full taxes are applied like they are to booze/cigarettes and could easily triple that amount in Colorado.
- botverse 10y ago
  That sounds reasonable but is naive and does not take into account how corrupt people are. John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon said: "The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the antiwar Left and black people... We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily"[1] So taking into account things like cultural prejudice. Those things are unlikely to be fixed just with good will and altruism. [1] http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9659888 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9659888
m1sta_ 10y ago
The legalisation is one part of it. The purchasing is another. The cartel is another. In that order.
- runeks 10y ago
  I disagree. Prohibition transforms capital spent by drug users into income for drug cartels. Under full legalization, drug users would have as little incentive to buy their drugs from street vendors as alcoholics would want to buy their liquor from some guy standing on a street corner. The great news is that we are entirely responsible for this mess ourselves, so we can fix it if we want to.
  - petra 10y ago
    The problem with full legalization is that you are making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction. Maybe legalization for only people who are proven addicts, but are probably the bulk of the cartel revenue would give a more favorable result ?
    - krapp 10y ago
      > The problem with full legalization is that you are making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction. That's already an acceptable risk with cigarettes and alcohol, and marijuana in some places, why should it not be acceptable for everything else?
    - PeterisP 10y ago
      Why do you consider that full legalization is making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction? In general, lack of availability is not a strong limiting factor even in countries with full criminalization; illegal drugs can be bought by anyone willing, there exists a market in any population center. On the other hand, drugs being available in a controlled environment makes it easier to recover from addiction, and also limits the proliferation of various highly addictive chemicals which wouldn't be preferred or used by anyone if e.g. simpler opiates were available. Saying that full legalization will cause a huge increase in drug addiction sounds plausible, but what evidence we have (e.g. Portugal decriminalization) shows that it doesn't really cause any disaster.

2_listerine_pls 10y ago

It's surprisingly simple to locate the plantations using LIDAR + spectrometry. Even easier in Afghanistan, where fields are cultivated in the open. It's so well documented that the UNDOC provides an anual report with the amount in acres. I could go on, but this is enough to make one wonder why they aren't being stopped.

enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Insatiable drug appetite is a constant Says who?
- callalex 10y ago
  The decades upon decades of failed abolishment efforts speak for themselves.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  So I'm by no means pro-drug, and I agree that most people who say "it's impossible to fix because we haven't fixed it yet" lack imagination, but there is absolutely some fishy stuff going on with drug policy. What we are doing now is broken, has been broken, and everyone knows it's broken. There are hidden motives here, no doubt. Corruption is a very real thing and there are a lot of people with a lot at stake regarding drug policy. The most important thing to successful drug prohibition and treatment is a semi-controllable grey market.
jfim 10y ago
> I could go on, but this is enough to make one wonder why they aren't being stopped. Except for that pesky sovereignty thing.
- toss1941 10y ago
  I was thinking of police corruption myself.
- 2_listerine_pls 10y ago
  Is that the same sovereignty that stopped the US from from drilling their oil after overthrowing their government? It's odd reason given that narcotics are/were supposedly one of the principal sources of the Taliban’s financing.
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    We all moved on after finding out there were no weapons of mass destruction without even an "oops" from the public, so I wouldn't hold your breath on anyone launching a successful campaign there- still, if that's true, I would really like to see someone make a documentary or some articles about it in a format the masses will see. Could be really compelling to people not typically reached by advocates of drug reform.
  - Paradigma11 10y ago
    What oil in afghanistan? Even in iraq the oil reserves are managed by the iraqi ministry and went mostly to chinese companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iraq_relations#Recent_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Iraq_relations#R... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-rea...
- unethical_ban 10y ago
  Sovereignty and the concept of hostile action/influence on life can make the line blurry. If, through inaction, violent warlords displace thousands or millions of people, are the destination countries not adversely affected? The US has millions of economic and war-affected Mexican refugees. Same with Syria... should Germany, Turkey, Greece, etc. say "Syria is sovereign, nothing we can do" when their countries are being overrun? The US should look to improve life in Mexico and reduce cartel power first through economic and peaceful political means, and then, PERHAPS and after much thought, bombing the shit out of every cartel leader on the same night, Godfather style. I'm only half kidding.
throwaway91111 10y ago
Well, who knows why mexico doesn't take advantage of that. But they are the only people who can.
therealdrag0 10y ago
Here's an interesting podcast on the supply of drugs: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/tom_wainwright.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/02/tom_wainwright.html The guest mentions that in the Ande's mountains it is still tough to identify drug growing.
- 2_listerine_pls 10y ago
  LIDAR can go through canopy because there are spaces between leaves. Take a look at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory's tech.
cmdkeen 10y ago
Because the farmers get paid next to nothing so disrupting supply does nothing to raise costs (the usual measure of the effect a supply side policy has). Mexican weed production soared because the authorities were pulled into cities due to violence leaving the rural terrain uncovered. Narconomics is a good read on the various measures that have been tried. Going after poor South American farmers these days means the cartels just means the cartels don't pay them as much. Far too much policy making around narcotics is done by knee-jerk reactions, on both sides.

snowpanda 10y ago

Mexico has plenty of its own problems that you're overlooking. It's not as simple as problem -> cause. By that logic Mexico would be to blame for Columbia's cocaine trafficking.

chrischen 10y ago
Nope, still America.
- cnnsucks 10y ago
  yes, that's why Canada is just as bad a Mexico, with Canadian drug cartels mass beheading their rivals in the streets of Toronto.
  - ggiaco 10y ago
    The richer the country and the stronger its institutions, the less likely cartels will take over sure, but when $40 billion USD in yearly profit (in the US drug trade) are up for grabs, someone's going to be stepping up.
  - huherto 10y ago
    There was a time when we thought Mexican institutions would resist. I am from Chihuahua Mexico, and we thought this was just happening in the rural isolated areas. Then it spilled over the cities too. I have had family killed. Smart and educated, like you or me. American and Canadian institutions are stronger. They have been able to stand.

23443463453 10y ago

Although I get your point; it's fundamentally asinine both on a logical basis, but also on a practical basis relative to the massive, treasonous, seditious, and self-destructive (almost as if it were drug fueled) opposition to the very President trying to curtail "the insatiable drug appetite of it's close neighbor". I don't know what it is with the Liberal mindset, but it is so screwed up and distorted and twisted that people like you are not only blaming those who are addicted to drugs that are addicting, but you are thereby also siding with some of the most vile terrorist organizations that have totally and utterly overtaken the Mexican government and who are using drugs as a weapon of war to socially fracture America while also draining billions upon billions of dollars from the USA, while leaving nothing but broken families, neighborhoods, and a broken society behind. The argument you make is akin to saying that we should legalize rape because rape is happening. It turns out that Colorado's black market marijuana market is actually booming ( http://kdvr.com/2017/03/03/black-market-marijuana-business-booming/ http://kdvr.com/2017/03/03/black-market-marijuana-business-b... )... so much for that argument that if we just make undesirable, socially destructive behaviors easier and more freely to partake in, it would somehow for some reason decline ... against all rational sanity. If get your head out of the sand or cast off your drug addiction and addict mentality, you would come to the realization that the people using DRUGS ... ADDICTION CAUSING DRUGS are not the primary source of a system. Imagine if no more drugs flowed into the USA, would the demand increase or decrease? Imagine if people tried to kick their addiction by everyone going into rehab, would the drug cartels try to push their drugs harder or less because "shit, geez, I guess we need to stop shipping DRUGS to the USA since no one will want the ADDICTING DRUGS" You're essentially guilt shaming, placing blame at the effect, not the cause. When cocaine first made its way to the USA, it wasn't because there was a massive demand by people in the USA for a drug and they found cocaine. It is ALWAYS the drug and those that push them that are the impetus, the source, the cause that needs to be eradicated to terminate the cycle .

audunw 10y ago
Doesn't the link you're pointing to kind of refute your critisism that legalization doesn't help mexico? It seems to say that the main reason there's a black market, is to sell high-quality colorado-grown weed to the rest of the US. Is that a shocker? And is that really that bad? So doesn't that imply that it might be displacing weed from Mexico, from violent cartels, with weed grown in the US from less violent black markets? And who ever said that weed-smoking, weed-growing or black markets would decline? That's a huge straw man right there. The point is to replace a smaller amount of very bad stuff (black markets linked to violent crime, bad quality weed, unregulated untaxed sales, etc), with more of something much better. More people smoking weed isn't necessarily bad, if it's more regulated. It's surprising how often it has to be repeated that there's no qualitative difference between alcohol and other drugs. It's plainly obvious that legal but very strictly regulated sale of alcohol is the best solution. It's odd that it's so hard to see that it's the same for all other drugs. I suppose that the problem is that the US doesn't know how to strike a good balance. You either gotta go all out war-on-drugs, or you gotta go laissez-faire. You don't know how to strike a balance. Maybe look to other countries for solutions. Every heard of government monopolies for alcohol sale? Funny thing is, when you combine this with universal healthcare, then the government that sells you alcohol, is the same that has to take the consequences from overconsumption. So you got someone who wants to sell to you (to avoid black markets), but not too much. That's exactly the incentives you want from a drug seller.

tedunangst 10y ago

Don't forget about our insatiable need for margaritas and the lime cartels.

adventured 10y ago

I agree with you, that the US needs to legalize production and sale. However, why has Canada never been wrecked by extremely violent cartels seeking to feed that insatiable drug appetite? How do you explain nearly all of Latin America having wild murder rates? All of the most dangerous non-war zone countries on earth are in Latin America. And yet that same murder & violent crime problem isn't represented in Canada. What could possibly explain that consistency across ~15 different Latin American nations, except that it's a cultural and institutional problem? Colombia for example has seen dramatic improvements, despite the US demand for drugs increasing in the last 15 years. Or take Venezuela, one of the most dangerous nations, with a truly shocking murder rate, and it has very little to do with the US drug demand. Or take Brazil, a nation of 200 million with a murder rate 7 to 10 times that of the US (with up to half of all murders unreported in official stats), which also doesn't derive its huge murder problems from the US drug demand. It's far too simplistic to just blame the US for everything.

ggiaco 10y ago
The richer the country and the stronger its institutions, the less likely cartels will take over sure, but when $40 billion USD in yearly profit (in the US drug trade) are up for grabs, someone's going to be stepping up. Stop it in Colombia and it shifts to Mexico. Stop the routes along all of Mexico and the Caribbean and who knows - no reason to be so sure it absolutely couldn't happen in Canada.
- isolli 10y ago
  Drug routes are already moving to poorer neighbors of Mexico like Guatemala, who are even less able to stop the cartels. [0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11-drugs_03-15/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/latin_america-jan-june11... [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-bloody-battle-with-mexican-drug-cartels-6257571.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guatemalas-...
lend000 10y ago
Simply because Canada doesn't have the natural climate for growing Coca nor Cannabis. Nowadays it doesn't matter as much since a significant amount of production can be done in greenhouses and there are other more synthetic products with market share, but the damage is already done to those poorer countries, and the cartels already wield too much influence.

tim333 10y ago

Also the US effectively supplies a lot of the guns used in the killings by allowing them to be freely purchased near the border.

drawkbox 10y ago

The War on Drugs is now taking down free press in other countries, it is has gone too far for too long. It is essentially funding terror and when you see the billions being made in only a few states such as Colorado with 1+ billion in 2016 [1]. Large amounts of wealth, probably 50-100+ billion going to cartels in the south annually to fund very bad things. Prohibition always creates a criminal black market that becomes uncontrollable when there is a large demand for a product that is illegal. Better to make it legal, remove the revenue for cartels and use some for taxes and lots of jobs in the US. Colorado already has 20k jobs from ending prohibition on marijuana, that could be a 200k nationwide job creator. Legal markets, education, rehabilitation and safe use could also provide many jobs. Legal marijuana markets in the US are already at such high growth rates that they rival the dot com boom growth [2]. It makes pro-business and safety sense to legalize and make it a health issue not a criminal one, because the criminalization of it is creating very bad blow back and funding terror essentially, destroying privacy and lives along the way. The punishment of non-violent drug users, enforcement and resulting black market criminals are way worse than the act and it is cruel and unusual punishment on individuals and people now on a massive scale worldwide. [1] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marijuana-tax-revenue-hit-200-million-in-colorado-as-sales-pass-1-billion-2017-02-10 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marijuana-tax-revenue-hit-2... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-04/legal-marijuana-sales-bigger-than-dot-com-boom/8161218 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-04/legal-marijuana-sales-...

hackermailman 10y ago
Colorado will make much more than that too, since when legalizing governments option for the lowest taxes possible in order for people to not return to the black market. Give it 5 years when the black market for weed disappears almost completely and full taxes are applied like they are to booze/cigarettes and could easily triple that amount in Colorado.
botverse 10y ago
That sounds reasonable but is naive and does not take into account how corrupt people are. John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon said: "The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the antiwar Left and black people... We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily"[1] So taking into account things like cultural prejudice. Those things are unlikely to be fixed just with good will and altruism. [1] http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9659888 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/9659888

m1sta_ 10y ago

The legalisation is one part of it. The purchasing is another. The cartel is another. In that order.

runeks 10y ago
I disagree. Prohibition transforms capital spent by drug users into income for drug cartels. Under full legalization, drug users would have as little incentive to buy their drugs from street vendors as alcoholics would want to buy their liquor from some guy standing on a street corner. The great news is that we are entirely responsible for this mess ourselves, so we can fix it if we want to.
- petra 10y ago
  The problem with full legalization is that you are making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction. Maybe legalization for only people who are proven addicts, but are probably the bulk of the cartel revenue would give a more favorable result ?
  - krapp 10y ago
    > The problem with full legalization is that you are making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction. That's already an acceptable risk with cigarettes and alcohol, and marijuana in some places, why should it not be acceptable for everything else?
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    Why do you consider that full legalization is making it easy for people to get the route to drug addiction? In general, lack of availability is not a strong limiting factor even in countries with full criminalization; illegal drugs can be bought by anyone willing, there exists a market in any population center. On the other hand, drugs being available in a controlled environment makes it easier to recover from addiction, and also limits the proliferation of various highly addictive chemicals which wouldn't be preferred or used by anyone if e.g. simpler opiates were available. Saying that full legalization will cause a huge increase in drug addiction sounds plausible, but what evidence we have (e.g. Portugal decriminalization) shows that it doesn't really cause any disaster.