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They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of

They've also been good with the messaging on drugs. Colombian Drug Cartels right? If only we can go to war in South America we can fix it. But the majority of drug use are home-grown. [1]. Take marijuana out the picture (home grown) and Oxy, Prescriptions and other (home grown) drugs prevail. Criminalising weed is a failed policy, which thankfully is being slowly dropped. Less impressive is that the drug machine that created the oxy crisis is more or less ignored. [1] https://drugabusestatistics.org/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/

fatfingerd 3y ago
The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.
mschuster91 3y ago
> But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.
- pixl97 3y ago
  Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.
  - TacticalCoder 3y ago
    But then why is majiuana cheap and cocaine expensive? In most countries ganja isn't legal either.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      It's easy to grow compared with cocaine. You can grow the plant in a tent or if need be just on your windowsill, pluck and trim it, dry it, then smoke it or bake it in an edible. And even a single plant is good for quite a number of joints. Hash oil extraction is more difficult but most stoners prefer to smoke pure or tobacco mix weed anyway. Cocaine in contrast, you need 300-ish grams of leaves to make 1 gram of cocaine, and a ton of chemistry afterwards to extract and purify it.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      For the level of processing involved, marijuana isn't that cheep when compared to any other bulk farming product. Hemp fiber for example is around $150 per ton. The markup is still very high comparatively for the drug product. When you look at the production line of something like high fructose corn syurp, you could industrialize the process in to the range of $10000 per ton pretty easily. Again, it's the black market that turns it into the million dollar range because of the risks involved.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > diverted pharma pills, mostly. these are, in many cases, just other drugs given out in low doses and by prescription. vicodin and percos are just opiates, and fall into the latter two categories. no one gives a shit if grandpa is giving a couple of viagras to his homies or sharing his cholesterol medication.
cogman10 3y ago
The issue is we have a bunch of puritan teetotalers who think the best way to "fix" society is to criminalize the parts of society they find morally objectionable. It doesn't matter that the social sciences have found that rehab works WAY better than prison [1]. It doesn't matter that incarceration is WAY more detrimental both to the individual and society [2]. Nope, sinners need to be punished. If we want a better society, make drugs legal and send public funds to public rehab rather than private prisons. Let's leave prison as a last resort for people that are actually dangerous to society; Not your uncle who grew weed in his backyard. [1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab [2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/13/mentalhealthimpacts/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/13/mentalhealthimp...
- staringback 3y ago
  And then when the drug affected individuals refuse help? You end up with downtowns like Seattle, Portland, LA, etc
  - zokula 3y ago
    [dead]
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Have you actually been to downtown Seattle/Portland? I have fairly recently. It's really not that bad. But to that, I'd also point out that "refusing help" is hardly the reason seattle/portland have so many homeless people. A lot of these people have been priced out of apartments. Some have suffered from mental health issues (or have developed mental health issues after becoming homeless). My son's teacher's aid was temporarily homeless while being fully employed. She was simply priced out of living anywhere. Do you think that was a result of substance abuse? The attitude of your post is actually part of the reason homelessness is so bad. It's the view that people are homeless because they did something wrong to deserve it. Addressing homelessness requires compassion and funds. You can never make it go away all together, but you can relieve it simply by giving people a place to exist.

fatfingerd 3y ago

The DEA is the same social problem as the cold war agencies. The US can't actually get rid of jobs of the correct prestige for these people and as long as they are kept they will continue to commit the US to a criminal path.

mschuster91 3y ago

> But the majority of drug use are home-grown. The thing is, there are three categories of illicit drugs: - relatively harmless / have established use: a lot of the "home grown" drugs fall under this category, they are usually low-price as they are mass products. Marijuana and diverted pharma pills, mostly. - stuff that is extremely fucking dangerous, like fentanyl, its even more strong cousin carfentanyl, meth or self-made stuff like krokodil (gained from boiling codein cough medicine). Extremely simple to make in general, extremely potent, extremely hard to wean off. - stuff that fuels organized crime, aka cocaine (almost exclusively grown/refined in Southern America) and heroin (which comes to an overwhelming degree from Afghanistan's poppy farms). The large cartels almost exclusively focus on the latter, as there's a ton of money to be made smuggling that, which is a very real problem as the cartels can offer sums to corrupt officials even in Western countries that pay good money to border control staff. A boat full of cocaine can make hundreds of millions of dollars, while no one cares about a boat full of weed - not worth the effort.

pixl97 3y ago
Cocaine is not expensive... it's the black market effect that makes its street price high.
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  But then why is majiuana cheap and cocaine expensive? In most countries ganja isn't legal either.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    It's easy to grow compared with cocaine. You can grow the plant in a tent or if need be just on your windowsill, pluck and trim it, dry it, then smoke it or bake it in an edible. And even a single plant is good for quite a number of joints. Hash oil extraction is more difficult but most stoners prefer to smoke pure or tobacco mix weed anyway. Cocaine in contrast, you need 300-ish grams of leaves to make 1 gram of cocaine, and a ton of chemistry afterwards to extract and purify it.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    For the level of processing involved, marijuana isn't that cheep when compared to any other bulk farming product. Hemp fiber for example is around $150 per ton. The markup is still very high comparatively for the drug product. When you look at the production line of something like high fructose corn syurp, you could industrialize the process in to the range of $10000 per ton pretty easily. Again, it's the black market that turns it into the million dollar range because of the risks involved.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
> diverted pharma pills, mostly. these are, in many cases, just other drugs given out in low doses and by prescription. vicodin and percos are just opiates, and fall into the latter two categories. no one gives a shit if grandpa is giving a couple of viagras to his homies or sharing his cholesterol medication.

cogman10 3y ago

The issue is we have a bunch of puritan teetotalers who think the best way to "fix" society is to criminalize the parts of society they find morally objectionable. It doesn't matter that the social sciences have found that rehab works WAY better than prison [1]. It doesn't matter that incarceration is WAY more detrimental both to the individual and society [2]. Nope, sinners need to be punished. If we want a better society, make drugs legal and send public funds to public rehab rather than private prisons. Let's leave prison as a last resort for people that are actually dangerous to society; Not your uncle who grew weed in his backyard. [1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab [2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/13/mentalhealthimpacts/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/13/mentalhealthimp...

staringback 3y ago
And then when the drug affected individuals refuse help? You end up with downtowns like Seattle, Portland, LA, etc
- zokula 3y ago
  [dead]
- cogman10 3y ago
  Have you actually been to downtown Seattle/Portland? I have fairly recently. It's really not that bad. But to that, I'd also point out that "refusing help" is hardly the reason seattle/portland have so many homeless people. A lot of these people have been priced out of apartments. Some have suffered from mental health issues (or have developed mental health issues after becoming homeless). My son's teacher's aid was temporarily homeless while being fully employed. She was simply priced out of living anywhere. Do you think that was a result of substance abuse? The attitude of your post is actually part of the reason homelessness is so bad. It's the view that people are homeless because they did something wrong to deserve it. Addressing homelessness requires compassion and funds. You can never make it go away all together, but you can relieve it simply by giving people a place to exist.