8 ms·

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-t

Let's see, so they didn't nab any of the big players in the operation. So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier drug cartels do conduct business. Sure, way to put the squeeze on the cartels there... A tangent to this is the way we conduct drug enforcement in the US. It's much better for police departments to wait until after the dealers make money to catch them so they can seize the cash as part of the crime. This dis-incentivises the actual prevention of the spread of illegal drugs. The entire system is corrupt and there's little to no incentive for the authority to behave in the spirit of the laws they enforce - to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates.

suifbwish 5y ago
You nailed it. You have to let the fruit ripen before you pick it. Also if you don’t go after the suppliers, you will have more distributors to harvest later. It’s literally a cash crop for the DEA/police
- adolph 5y ago
  Feature or bug? Cui bono? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  I recall there testimony around Operation Fast And Furious where the DEA basically said that they chose a cartel to dominate the trade and busted them once a decade or so. They justified this on the ground that otherwise, the various factions would be fighting things out. But yeah, this make the DEA effectively the ultimate Mafia boss. And yet, each vicious step in this vicious game can be justified by a logic that seems reasonable on it's own ("Drugs" should be illegal 'cause of harm of drug use to society, drug dealing should be actually organized by the police 'cause of harm of unfettered drug dealing, the truth should be covered 'cause of harm of not trusting authorities...).
hpoe 5y ago
Well the reason for that is that the large cartels are already part of the game. SOCOM needs a place to get the money for their off the books operations, and if you start looking into special operations units it turns out there are a lot of those guys pretty heavily involved in drug trafficking.
mschuster91 5y ago
> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates. If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception. The reality is that drug policy has direct roots in racism - marijuana and crack prosecution intended to specifically target hippies and people of color.
- briandear 5y ago
  Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was aimed at everyone.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    One of Nixon's top guys explicitly admitted that the motivation was racism: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-... "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
  - scarecrowbob 5y ago
    Per the grandparent, yes "marijuana and crack prosecution" have explicitly racist elements. Specifically, the 1930s anti-cannabis is specifically anti-Hispanic, and the question of why there are massively different sentencing laws around crack and powder cocaine seems to me and most of the people I know to have many obvious racial elements.
    - 5y ago
lainga 5y ago
> So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier [insert entity here] do conduct business Well, at least the government is consistent. When all you have is a hammer...
Consultant32452 5y ago
I think it’s bold to assume the government even wants to nab the big guys. One example is fentanyl is killing us by the thousands every year. We know who the guy is who owns the factor that’s providing most of the fentanyl and precursors to the cartels. He lives in China and runs an also legit chemical factory. He commits the crime right in the main factory in the open. We politely asked China to arrest him, but they said no. No real political pressure to do anything, no assassinations, nothing. Thousands dead every year.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  In response to the Fentanyl/heroin issue, State govs clamp down on legit opioid Rx, leaving Dr's too wary to Rx any effective pain meds at all. People in chronic pain now get to live their lives without any relief at all. They get ignored my news orgs who are obsessed with amplifying an opioid hysteria narrative. Go Gov.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    Agree. The opiod epidemic is just the latest moral panic used to justify limitng people's rights.if you want to o.d., that's your right and your fault. OTC pain medication useless for serious chronic pain and a bigger ripoff than prescription drug companies. Opiods are safe when taken under doc guidelines. This notion that otc drugs are safe is wrong too: Otc drugs are known to cause liver and kidney problems too.
    - rincebrain 5y ago
      I agree with a bunch of your point, but I want to contest one thing - opioids are not necessarily safe by following your doctor's guidelines. There's not (as far as I've found) currently any consistent threshold for how much of a given opioid you have to take for how long to develop an addiction. Some people might be able to take a high dose for an extended interval and not blink. Some people might take a much lower dose and have a very bad time indeed. (For that matter, I've known some people who got IV opioids with no effect. Biochemistry is wild.) So I don't think it's reasonable to argue "opioids are safe if you follow the guidelines" and "OTC pain meds are unsafe [if you ignore the guidelines]" - both have risks that you can try to mitigate by following the guidelines given, but unknown factors can result in it still having negative outcomes.
cronix 5y ago
Right, like in Oregon they recently decriminalized "personal amounts" of all drugs. Crack, heroin, meth, fentanyl, etc. Whatever you want...it's now just a misdemeanor offense like a parking ticket as long as you're under some limit. So personal amounts are "ok," but how does one obtain a "personal" amount from someone else unless they have more than a personal amount? In other words, on one hand it's illegal to deal the drugs, but after you've obtained them illegally it's ok. That logic doesn't square. > Just because small amounts are decriminalized, it doesn't apply when a person has more than is specified under the law. > "Possession of larger amounts of drugs, manufacturing and distribution are still crimes," Fox said. https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2021/01/31/what-oregon-measure-110-drug-law-mean-decriminalize-drugs-cocaine-heroin-meth-oxy/4318668001/ https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2021/01/31/what-...
- verall 5y ago
  At the very least, it makes it hard to prosecute low level drug offenders, which is where the most abuse (originating from the government) is in the system.
- nicbou 5y ago
  That makes sense to me. Chasing consumers is a waste of time and money. The arrest itself might cause more societal damage than the drugs if it ruins people's lives or is used to target minorities.
  - dorfsmay 5y ago
    Some people argue that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement is the main purpose of laws against drug consumers.
    - nicbou 5y ago
      I didn't know there was a term for that. It's exactly what I was thinking about.
    - 5y ago

suifbwish 5y ago

You nailed it. You have to let the fruit ripen before you pick it. Also if you don’t go after the suppliers, you will have more distributors to harvest later. It’s literally a cash crop for the DEA/police

adolph 5y ago
Feature or bug? Cui bono? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono
joe_the_user 5y ago
I recall there testimony around Operation Fast And Furious where the DEA basically said that they chose a cartel to dominate the trade and busted them once a decade or so. They justified this on the ground that otherwise, the various factions would be fighting things out. But yeah, this make the DEA effectively the ultimate Mafia boss. And yet, each vicious step in this vicious game can be justified by a logic that seems reasonable on it's own ("Drugs" should be illegal 'cause of harm of drug use to society, drug dealing should be actually organized by the police 'cause of harm of unfettered drug dealing, the truth should be covered 'cause of harm of not trusting authorities...).

hpoe 5y ago

Well the reason for that is that the large cartels are already part of the game. SOCOM needs a place to get the money for their off the books operations, and if you start looking into special operations units it turns out there are a lot of those guys pretty heavily involved in drug trafficking.

mschuster91 5y ago

> to raise public health by eliminating the personal health and social problems that drug addition creates. If that had ever been the aim of any drug policy, drugs - including hard drugs - would be legally accessible at licensed stores, mental health care and social services would be accessible for everyone, and fact-based drug education in school be the norm, not the exception. The reality is that drug policy has direct roots in racism - marijuana and crack prosecution intended to specifically target hippies and people of color.

briandear 5y ago
Racism? A bit of a stretch there. Hippies were mostly upper middle class white kids rebelling against their post-war indulgent upbringing. And alcohol prohibition before that was aimed at everyone.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  One of Nixon's top guys explicitly admitted that the motivation was racism: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-... "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
- scarecrowbob 5y ago
  Per the grandparent, yes "marijuana and crack prosecution" have explicitly racist elements. Specifically, the 1930s anti-cannabis is specifically anti-Hispanic, and the question of why there are massively different sentencing laws around crack and powder cocaine seems to me and most of the people I know to have many obvious racial elements.
  - 5y ago

lainga 5y ago

> So effectively they helped the biggest players by making it harder for the small to mid-tier [insert entity here] do conduct business Well, at least the government is consistent. When all you have is a hammer...

Consultant32452 5y ago

I think it’s bold to assume the government even wants to nab the big guys. One example is fentanyl is killing us by the thousands every year. We know who the guy is who owns the factor that’s providing most of the fentanyl and precursors to the cartels. He lives in China and runs an also legit chemical factory. He commits the crime right in the main factory in the open. We politely asked China to arrest him, but they said no. No real political pressure to do anything, no assassinations, nothing. Thousands dead every year.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
In response to the Fentanyl/heroin issue, State govs clamp down on legit opioid Rx, leaving Dr's too wary to Rx any effective pain meds at all. People in chronic pain now get to live their lives without any relief at all. They get ignored my news orgs who are obsessed with amplifying an opioid hysteria narrative. Go Gov.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  Agree. The opiod epidemic is just the latest moral panic used to justify limitng people's rights.if you want to o.d., that's your right and your fault. OTC pain medication useless for serious chronic pain and a bigger ripoff than prescription drug companies. Opiods are safe when taken under doc guidelines. This notion that otc drugs are safe is wrong too: Otc drugs are known to cause liver and kidney problems too.
  - rincebrain 5y ago
    I agree with a bunch of your point, but I want to contest one thing - opioids are not necessarily safe by following your doctor's guidelines. There's not (as far as I've found) currently any consistent threshold for how much of a given opioid you have to take for how long to develop an addiction. Some people might be able to take a high dose for an extended interval and not blink. Some people might take a much lower dose and have a very bad time indeed. (For that matter, I've known some people who got IV opioids with no effect. Biochemistry is wild.) So I don't think it's reasonable to argue "opioids are safe if you follow the guidelines" and "OTC pain meds are unsafe [if you ignore the guidelines]" - both have risks that you can try to mitigate by following the guidelines given, but unknown factors can result in it still having negative outcomes.

cronix 5y ago

Right, like in Oregon they recently decriminalized "personal amounts" of all drugs. Crack, heroin, meth, fentanyl, etc. Whatever you want...it's now just a misdemeanor offense like a parking ticket as long as you're under some limit. So personal amounts are "ok," but how does one obtain a "personal" amount from someone else unless they have more than a personal amount? In other words, on one hand it's illegal to deal the drugs, but after you've obtained them illegally it's ok. That logic doesn't square. > Just because small amounts are decriminalized, it doesn't apply when a person has more than is specified under the law. > "Possession of larger amounts of drugs, manufacturing and distribution are still crimes," Fox said. https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2021/01/31/what-oregon-measure-110-drug-law-mean-decriminalize-drugs-cocaine-heroin-meth-oxy/4318668001/ https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2021/01/31/what-...

verall 5y ago
At the very least, it makes it hard to prosecute low level drug offenders, which is where the most abuse (originating from the government) is in the system.
nicbou 5y ago
That makes sense to me. Chasing consumers is a waste of time and money. The arrest itself might cause more societal damage than the drugs if it ruins people's lives or is used to target minorities.
- dorfsmay 5y ago
  Some people argue that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement is the main purpose of laws against drug consumers.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    I didn't know there was a term for that. It's exactly what I was thinking about.
  - 5y ago