noneoftheabove

Larry Campbell - ex-mayor of Vancouver (also the chief coroner during the worst overdose years of Vancouver's downtown eastside) who is now a federal senator phrased it as:

"You can put the business of 'drugs' into the hands of private industry, into the hands of the government or into the hands of the criminal black market. Why in the world does anyone think that letting the criminals run the business is the best idea?!"

So how is a legal seller, saddled with the burden of paying taxes, not to mention rent, utilities, employee salaries, and all the other extraneous costs, going to undercut Cletus?

Because that $50 is an unrealistic number. Because the precursor chemicals that the tweaker spends days assemmbling (smurfing, stealing from farms etc) are puchased cheaply and legally (and not in "still needs to be converted" forms like cold tablets) by the big company. Because even if your $50 number is realistic the big company can get those ingredients for $1.35.

You really really don't know what you're talking about, do you?

generic user

Prohibition is irrelevant, unless you want to compare heroin to whiskey. You seem much smarter than that.

As an aside, the idea that banning drugs is a failure is predicated on the belief that the goal is to prevent the use of drugs altogether. I would argue that any fool knows you can't stop ANYTHING completely in an open society. The goal is to reduce and minimize the use. In that respect, I think banning illegal drugs is a lot more successful than people want to admit.

As for increased usage...look around man. Take a gander at these mouth breathing buffoons and tell me you really believe that the average 18-year-old frat tard isn't going to go hog wild? I'm too old to have that much faith in humanity. I think if the only thing standing between the average idiot and a smack habit is a cash register and a paycheck, then we're all in deep shiat.

Before it starts up again, I'm NOT talking about weed. I could care less if you all smoke yourselves silly. But crack, meth, heroin...not a good idea.

AtomicPenguin
Pharmacists and Bartenders are apparently exactly the same as illegal drug smugglers and dealers.


Your moral outrage over drugs would be so much more interesting if you'd thought it up yourself. Making something legal doesn't change what it is. It just changes who gets rich from it. The corrupt legal system has decided not to see the prices drop from legalization, so we have a war on drugs and mewing psychophants like you to defend it. Oh, and everyone's on drugs anyway.

Bill_Wick's_Friend

No, $50 is NOT unrealistic. It's almost exact for that payload I quoted. If you know any dealers or users, go ask them how wrong I am.

But you're right that the big boys can get their supplies for cheaper. So what? On any reasonable expense report, their overhead is still going to be substantially higher than a backyard cooker.

All right boys, it's been fun, but I've been here for about five hours now. I have work to do. I'll check back later.

noneoftheabove: On any reasonable expense report, their overhead is still going to be substantially higher than a backyard cooker.

You're just wrong.

Pharmecutical cocaine is priced by the pound. It's cheap.

A legal hit of opiate is $1 a pill. It's the black market which jacks this to $10 a pill on the street. Or do you think that Merck and Bayer and Bristol Meyers are all taking losses (due to taxes and overhead) on their opiates that the clever heroin dealer isn't taking?

YaBa from Burma is hugely cheap -- way cheaper than the tweak that is being sold downtown. Even though it's illegal, it's being made by an army in an area they control using their own chemical supplies so the production is locally "protected", which amounts to decrim. Similarly, the nice clean "go pills" given to US pilots are super-cheap. I don't think the Shan (?) army or the suppliers of drugs to the US military are taking losses.

Marijuana? If it's legal I can grow it in my backyard for free or if it's illegal I can grow it in my basement and sell this "free" product for $2000 a lb. My cost in electricity and one-time gear needs are negligible after my second or third pound.

Why would I care what dealers or users say? That's like asking a guy eating a BigMac (or the guy who assembed the burger) for his opinion on whether McD's current franchising directions are likely to be profitable.

Unless I'm misinterpretig what you're saying your argument is that profit margins aren't big enough to have actual industry in "the biz", yes? Actual industries ARE in "the biz" however and seem to do fine without having to raise up prices even more.

DarthBart: Unknown_Poltroon: And yet its such an easy way to suck tax dollars out and control the population. I wonder why they haven't changed the laws?

Why? Because there's far too much money to be made seizing drug dealer's assets and far too many elections being won by people who are "tough on drugs" and "support the war on drugs".

your sarcasm meters needs a tuenup.

People smuggle things across the border, you say? noneoftheabove: As an aside, the idea that banning drugs is a failure is predicated on the belief that the goal is to prevent the use of drugs altogether. I would argue that any fool knows you can't stop ANYTHING completely in an open society. The goal is to reduce and minimize the use. In that respect, I think banning illegal drugs is a lot more successful than people want to admit.

De-criminalizing certain drugs might be beneficial to society, but it's not going to eliminate the drug trade. There are always going to be people who want illegal drugs, because

* Some drugs (eg, meth) are just too harmful to be legal
* People won't want to pay government prices for pot
* People will prefer to get high "unofficially" and without a paper trail (I'm sure you can imagine numerous circumstances in which this would be true)
* Certain people will not be allowed to have drugs legally for various reasons, eg because they have medical conditions that make taking the drugs especially dangerous

There is also a serious problem of how drugs would be distributed. Presumably we'd want some sort of medical oversight, but physicians are duty bound to act in the best interests of their patients and it's contentious, to say the least, that feeding an addiction or recreational drug habit does that. More generally, there is scope for legal liability if someone gets high and does something crazy, or dies because of a drug. While these may be relatively rare occurrences, they will happen.

Considering this is WND I'm surprised they are upset at heathen "scientists" having their research interrupted. But I guess since it's not explicitly evolution science*, they hate the marauding "wetbacks" more.

* unless you think for like, 2 seconds about where the jaguars and plants came from, that is

randomjsa: Marcus Aurelius: If only there were some way for the government to control the market for drugs.

Yes, by shooting drug dealers in the back of the head. Problem solved.

I like this idea, smugglers of both drugs and people. Then we can strategically hang their corpses in along the paths these assholes take.

noneoftheabove: Because I know what the profit margins are on illegal drugs. If you think these guys are only pulling 20% profit, you're deluding yourself. Their margins are substantially higher than any legit business. That's why they're in the drug business in the first place. I know property is cheap out there, but did you think the Medellin villas were a series of low-rent condos or something?

And once again, you have to fall back on weed to make your point, instead of arguing the topic at hand. Tsk.

Let's take another example, and try to stay on topic this time. Keep up if you can:

Cletus buys $50 worth of supplies, creating a supply of methamphetamines worth between $5-$10,000. At this point, he can pretty much give it away and turn a profit. So how is a legal seller, saddled with the burden of paying taxes, not to mention rent, utilities, employee salaries, and all the other extraneous costs, going to undercut Cletus?

And for what it's worth, most of the cocaine and heroin groups handle their own distribution, at least in part, because it maximizes their profit. The markup is going to them, not to a middleman. When they DO farm it out, they're the middleman, so the markup is their own profit. If the street price is cut in half, a few street dealers might get pushed out of business, but so will the legal vendors. The manufacturer can still sell at a profit. Their margins are large enough to absorb the loss while they wait for the legal vendors to go out of business.

The problem here is that you have absolutely zero understanding of how the street drug trade works. While it is true that the grower/producer can make large amounts of profit, you fail to understand that there are a very very small number of growers/producers.

Most people involved in the drug business buy at a set price and sell at a set price, and any government competition would throw off their entire system. Most people I know that sell drugs make way less than 20% markup... more like they make $50-100 for every $300 they invest. Not that great, and any competition from a legal source could easily, easily disrupt that.

I speak from personal experience, you speak from...? Your arguments aren't even really economically sound.

doodler

Really a weed plant should be worth about $50 for the whole thing. AS it stands, it's worth about $750-$1500. It takes 7 weeks, nutrients, water, and light to grow a plant. There's nothing special about weed that makes it Hundreds of times as expensive as other plants of similar yield. In fact, it grows literally like a weed.

Once it's legalized dealers all go out of business. It'll be grow your own, farmer's markets, or convenience stores. Or a combination of them.

noneoftheabove: generic user

Prohibition is irrelevant, unless you want to compare heroin to whiskey. You seem much smarter than that.

As an aside, the idea that banning drugs is a failure is predicated on the belief that the goal is to prevent the use of drugs altogether. I would argue that any fool knows you can't stop ANYTHING completely in an open society. The goal is to reduce and minimize the use. In that respect, I think banning illegal drugs is a lot more successful than people want to admit.

As for increased usage...look around man. Take a gander at these mouth breathing buffoons and tell me you really believe that the average 18-year-old frat tard isn't going to go hog wild? I'm too old to have that much faith in humanity. I think if the only thing standing between the average idiot and a smack habit is a cash register and a paycheck, then we're all in deep shiat.

Before it starts up again, I'm NOT talking about weed. I could care less if you all smoke yourselves silly. But crack, meth, heroin...not a good idea.

True, but my issue is the fact that billions of US dollars go into pockets of drug lords in other countries and billions more go into trying to stop it.

I don't condone drug use, I don't smoke, and I rarely drink, but many people do. We can either lose money, or make money. Just remember that it is not just lost money, but the places it goes.

noneoftheabove: Either you're being blindly dogmatic, in which case you're not going to listen to reason, or you're woefully ignorant, in which case you can't listen to reason. Either way, there isn't much point in me explaining it yet again.

You keep "pointing out" that the economics of drugs are somehow magically different than the economics of all other goods, without really explaining how.

The only thing that came close to a rational argument was this assertion that "junkies" are addicted and would rather risk their lives to get a discount with the black market than just buy from legal sources. Which people pretty much immediately put to rest by citing the lack of a substantial alcohol black market. And yes, they are comparable. Addiction is addiction.

generic user: noneoftheabove: generic user

Prohibition is irrelevant, unless you want to compare heroin to whiskey.

So alcoholism is less of a problem than drug abuse? It will still kill you, and during the days of alcohol prohibition, people suffered horribly drinking bootleg liquor.

I think we agree on most of this issue.

generic user:
I don't condone drug use, I don't smoke, and I rarely drink, but many people do. We can either lose money, or make money. Just remember that it is not just lost money, but the places it goes.

Not to mention all the "collateral damage" that the War On Drugs brings us: Innocents killed in police shootouts, hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug users rotting in jail, erosion of everyone's rights (especially 4th amendment), the opportunity cost of sending officers after drug busts rather than against violent crime. The War On Drugs isn't just an economic travesty.

stiletto_the_wise:

pretty much, right on the point.

So I keep seeing the 'people wont buy legal pot 'cause they could just grow it' argument. Id like to hear from other toking farkers on this. I smoke, and its pretty much the only time in my life I am on the wrong side of the law. If I could, say, pay 100$ a year for a little tax stamp(I think thats what they are for doing stuff like growing tobacco or brewing more than 500 gallons or whatever of beer a year) to be on the right side of the law when I have a plant or two for personal use, i would pay it in a heartbeat. Multiply that by all the otherwise law abiding pot smokers in the country. Add on another hundred or two a year for small time growers who might want to have a little side business selling the stuff, and BAM, you got a bunch of tax dollars right there.

So far as junkies go, synthetic opioids can be readily manufactured by the ton, the cost and value of dope is 100% due to the large government subsidy program for drug dealers.

all you asshats bring cocaine up when someone mentions pot and then say alcohol is not heroine or cocaine...

legalize the pot... it's not as harmful as alcohol.

and another reason you won't want me as dictator for life.

govt ran drug houses.

junkies check in, get sterilized, and don't check out

sterility reversed if junkies kicks the habit. medical style facilty with needles/drug of choice/place to crash, and feed.

pot would be licensed and taxed, with the dea as the new revenuers collecting taxes from backyeard budders.

I knew I shouldn't have come back to this thread...

Sorry guys, but the more I read, the clearer it is some of you are pulling info out of the air to support some abstract theory that just doesn't hold water.

Only on Fark would the idea that some drugs are too dangerous for mass consumption be so radical that I'm getting insulted by five or six cats at once.

I got into the specifics below, but there's really one main reason I know you guys are all talking theory, not fact: If any of you had real experience with hard drugs, and had to witness just what it can do to someone, you wouldn't be quite so cavalier about unleashing them on the public. fark altruism, this isn't a "think of the children" moment. You're talking about destroying the american economy here. Ready access to hard drugs means a boom in the junkie population, period. If any of you are old enough to remember when crack hit, well, legalization will make that look like naptime in candyland.

BWF - You're wrong (I've seen you in the politics tab, and I actually respect you quite a bit) because not only do you not understand drug production, but you're pretending you do and trying to correct me on the subject. My knowledge there is almost a decade old by now, but it's still firsthand. Where did you get your information from? You can't learn anything if you're dead set on not listening.

Which opiate can you get for $1 a pill? It's not vicodin, demerol, percocet, morphine, or oxy. Maybe codeine, or tramadol, if you can find generic ultrams. For that price, whatever you get is going to be garbage. I lived in Seattle back in 2001, and I remember the government trying to crack down on seniors taking bus trips up to vancouver to get their prescriptions filled in Canada, because the US prices were too expensive for them. Here in California, we go to Mexico, and Vicodin is $8 for one pill. $15 worth of tar heroin is enough for one person to cop three, maybe four times.

Speaking of vancouver, it's worth noting that they've got a pretty big heroin problem, one that got much worse after they decided to stop cracking down on it.

My point wasn't that the margins are so low that the big boys can't get in. It's that the overhead is so low for the street sellers that they can always undercut the legit sellers, who are going to be bound to a very rigid pricing structure and saddle with a LOT of costs, just because of regulation. Do you really believe that they'd sell existing products for less than they're selling right now? They already charge americans more than just about everyone else on the planet, what makes you think they're going to cut into their bottom line to get into a price war with the street dealers?

How much is a pound of pharmaceutical grade cocaine? The mere fact it's packaged in bulk doesn't make it cheap. I did a quick search, and this was all I found. Not exactly conclusive, but it still refutes your claim.

http://www.drug-rehabs.org/con.php?cid=1113&state=Nevada
Dihnekis- You have experience with street drugs? Which ones? I'd like to remind you that weed, acid, X, and shrooms aren't street drugs. Even if you want to say they are, our argument has revolved around the "bad" drugs - primarily crack, meth, coke, and heroin. Which of the those do you have experience with? I'd love to hear about it, because I don't believe you for a second. Those numbers you cited are for kids from the suburbs selling weed to their dorm buddies, or buying a sheet of acid and schlepping hits to high school kids. The only way you'd earn the kind of margins you're describing with hard drugs is if you were a punk-level dealer at the bottom of someone else's food chain - in which case, the money's getting made, just not by you. But I already said independent street dealers would feel the pinch. Your situation in no way addresses the suppliers. As far as supply goes, you're partially right. For coke, there's a limited number of sources, although they're a lot more flexible than you think they are. But heroin supplies aren't limited, and definitely not for meth. They're not big scale, but independent cookers are EVERYWHERE.

Stiletto - Do you really believe all addiction is the same? You can get addicted to crack in one day. Meth in a weekend. Coke or heroin in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. How long does it take to become an alcoholic? A year, two years, five? And once you're addicted, is it the same? Nope. Have you ever seen a drunk get so desperate they started carjacking people? I watched my best friend fall so far down that hole, the last time I saw him was almost ten years ago, when he started sucking dicks to feed a heroin habit (he WAS straight up until that point). The DTs are painful, but crack withdrawal can kill you. Drug addiction is not only stronger than alcoholism, but it's much more easy to fall into. Given that fact, IF a cheaper source exists, then there is no question the average junkie (which will be most users, aside from a lucky few) will end up beating a path to the street dealer's door. If there isn't a cheaper source, you'll still have to deal with a massive rise in crime, necessitating more cops, more hospitals, more jails, more lawyers, and much more government.

generic user - We're actually not that far from agreement. But your health argument has some holes in it. The average cigarette smoker, weed smoker, and drinker might face some health risks, but they're long-term risks. Even pure, street drugs pose an imminent risk. Not counting an overdose, they just plain do more damage, and they do it a lot more quickly. Overdosing on alcohol is almost impossible, unless you're really trying. Overdosing on street drugs takes little to no effort at all. Look at the percentages. How many drinkers overdose each year, and compare that with the number of drug overdoses. If that doesn't convince you, compare the numbers as a percentage of the total consuming population. It's not even close. Most drinkers aren't alcoholics. Most meth users are tweaked out junkies.

Enough weed for 20 joints costs more than a pack of cigarettes. So I'm gonna have to say legal but taxed weed would be cheaper than illegal street prices.

I say legalize pot, then make Meth/Cocaine/Heroin dealing capital offense.

Oldiron_79: I say legalize pot, then make Meth/Cocaine/Heroin dealing capital offense.


Approves

I am in agreement with whoever said 'legalize pot, decriminalize hard drugs but bust the dealers.'

I understand the arguments for safety etc. in legalizing harder drugs, and I think that's pretty valid. However, it's not like alcohol where most people have a social drink or two with no problems of addiction.

Here, in Australia, the government puts large taxes on alcohol and cigs - a bottle of Jim Beam is probably about US$30 and a pack of smokes about US$8-10. Don't know how that compares with US prices, but if they legalized any drug (including marijuana) here, they'd slap on big taxes. For pot that's not so bad, because a lot of pot users are just casual smokers (same as people who drink), so that would make the illegal trade peter out. But hard drugs don't really work the same way. With the taxes, addicts would be forced to go to cheaper sources (dealers). I'm pretty sure that's how it would work in Australia at least, with our government putting a vice tax on things like that. People don't buy moonshine here because usually people who drink don't do it out of compulsion. Our major alcoholics here drink methylated spirits from the hardware shop, which is pretty much undrinkable and doesn't carry that tax. But you wouldn't have that option for hard drugs.

Also I really think that it's pretty irresponsible, socially, to give people liquor store-like access to hard drugs. It sort of puts a bit of a seal of approval on it and lots more people would at least try them. And from what I've heard from ex-addicts, addicts etc. there's not much sometimes between trying them and becoming an addict.

Again, I'm not talking about pot.

/sip of methylated spirits

What a load of bullshiat this is. I live and work on the border and ... GASP ... I even go across the goddamned thing for news assignments!

As for this crap FTA:
" ... describing the caravans of smugglers and illegal aliens with guns and backpacks full of drugs ... "

I've got news for ya'; most drug mules have no interest whatsoever in finding you either.

noneoftheabove: generic user

Prohibition is irrelevant, unless you want to compare heroin to whiskey. You seem much smarter than that.

You keep doing this. They are not comparing heroin and booze, they are comparing the prohibition of both. In both cases, it hands (or handed) the industry over to criminals. This results in a certain similar consequences, despite the difference in the two drugs.

Like most people who have little or no experience with drug use, you seem to think that nearly everyone who uses "hard" drugs is an addict who won't care about safety or ease of purchase. This is why you think that heroin users would continue to buy from gangs and criminals despite the hypothetical ability to get it at a pharmacy. Because anyone who does cocaine or heroin is a brain-dead zombie who doesn't care about anything, right?

Most drug users are not addicts. You only hear about the people who get caught doing something stupid, not about the people who do blow a half-dozen weekends a year, take acid on their vacation or somebody who snorts heroin a couple times. We They don't get into the papers and they don't ruin their lives. They would buy from safe, legal sources.

So the crux of your argument- users would still buy from criminals- comes only from your own ignorance and prejudice.

Also, I'd love for you to demonstrate why the costs of taxes and regulation on legal sellers is of course higher than the increased costs of irregular supply and danger upon illegal dealers. I believe you are wrong and prices would drop- market stability, safety, increased supply and the ability to peddle and make wares without legal intervention are downward price pressures.

Oh, and don't forget about competition.

Drug dealers compete now, but typically though violence, which raises costs. But even heroin addicts you think are incapable of logic would to Walgreens instead of Rite Aid for their buy-one-get-one sale.

Knucklepopper: What a load of bullshiat this is. I live and work on the border and ... GASP ... I even go across the goddamned thing for news assignments!

As for this crap FTA:
" ... describing the caravans of smugglers and illegal aliens with guns and backpacks full of drugs ... "

I've got news for ya'; most drug mules have no interest whatsoever in finding you either.

Like I said earlier in the thread, my friend on the border had nightly pick-ups of drugs on his border property. He would find 40 or so brand new empty back packs on his property the next morning, and no illegals.

As a former Texas park ranger, I'm getting a kick out of this topic.

Seriously.

And actually, Organ Pipe is the worst spot. Everything else is pretty much buttoned up. I worked in the Del Rio area, and we had the place crawling with Border Patrol. Not much getting through around there. But southern Arizona is a big hole in the border, and the smugglers know it.