That does not mean there are less drugs being imported, just that less are being seized. I worked with the Border Patrol years ago and it was astounding how they tracked success:
- When arrests increased, they celebrated that enforcement was working.
- When arrests decreased, they celebrated that deterrence was working.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
While I'm in favor of legalization, you should take these numbers and the process that created them with a grain of salt..
If you ride your dirt bike along the border there (I did), then you will find a few dirt roads that cross the border that look heavily used. I spent 8 hours down there and was not approached by any Border Patrol (Saw some from 100 feet away, but no contact)
There is so much stuff crossing the border, in so many places.
https://www.google.com/maps/@31.333054,-110.626566,3a,75y/da...
Why would I think it wouldn't be porous? It's been that way the entire history of the world, why should we change it now?
The legalization of marijuana is a much bigger battle. We will not get all the benefits of the free market unless government regulations are substantially reduced. If you cant buy Marijuana in Target or Wallmart it probably wont suffice.
Recession? Poor private companies groaning under the massive burden of big-government regulation, and idiotic government "interventions" in the market are to blame! Economic boom? The miracle of the free market succeeding in spite of all obstacles! Hail the market! Down with big government!
The difference, of course, is that I don't know anyone who actually takes the "government is always the solution" line, but I do know plenty of people who take the "government is always the problem" line. So, um, nice straw man you've go there.
Granted, there are still multiple factors at work and you need to take several measurements.
I had a friend give me an ounce of Mexican weed last year. That is a fair bit of weed. I tried a sample one night, and then gave it back. It wasn't worth keeping around, even for free. I knew I would just never use it, it was typical Mexican ditch weed and my tastes had gone to better things.
So which beer did you want? Sam Adams, or this Miller with a cigarette in it? The Mexican weed is just disgusting now. Only people on a tight budget will use it, not people with a choice; maybe 10% of the users I know. Everyone else gets the good stuff. Light, fluffy with 20 strains to choose from, tested and graded, and you can pick out the individual bud that speaks to you; or compressed brick that smells a little like coffee or grease and has an unknown THC level, unknown origin, unknown anything.
The only positive attribute to the Mexican weed is price.
>And it's not just price — Mexican growers are facing pressure on quality, too. "The quality of marijuana produced in Mexico and the Caribbean is thought to be inferior to the marijuana produced domestically in the United States or in Canada," the DEA wrote last year in its 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment.
They perhaps didn't elaborate on it (from a good and interesting perspective) as you have, but it was mentioned.
On a side note: outdoor plants grow much larger, and as such have much larger yields.
This is a really interesting development. There's always been this "gateway drug" argument around pot: once people start with marijuana, they'll move onto the harder stuff. I can imagine that there might be a correlation, but I expect that the causality is the other way around: once you break the law a bit for pot, and discover that it's really not a big deal, you assume that the other illegal drugs are probably fine too.
As marijuana becomes more and more legal in the US, it'll be interesting to see which way the causal link goes.
I have studied ...bunches of stuff. And I believe a huge factor is the fact that marijuana is illegal, so you cross an important legal threshold when you try it and that can become a slippery slope. I think details like that probably matter more than the substance per se. Addiction is hard to solve in part due to shame and all kinds of social reinforcement.
If you have a bad habit that won't get you stigmatized, ostracized and arrested, friends and family can be excellent sources of support for helping you break the habit. But when you can't TELL ANYONE...don't be surprised when a bad habit is exponentially harder to break when deprived of amiable social support.
I've always thought the "gateway drug" nonsense was, in part, due to the realization someone has that they've been blatantly, bald-fadedly lied to about drugs for most of their life. (DARE bangs on about cannabis like it was injecting heroin and PCP with dirty needles!)
And the next thought from there, naturally, is "Okay, now what else were they making up?
(I imagine one can probably find lots of `natural experiments'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment)
To all the magical, healing drugs that are currenly illegal: may you one day be free. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...
Synthetic and natural opioids have the same mode of operation on your brain as endorphins. They bind to these things called "opioid receptors"[1] in your brain. There is a biological purpose for the existence of these receptors. Quoted from Wikipedia: "The endogenous opioid system is thought to be important in mediating complex social behaviors involved in the formation of stable, emotionally committed relationships."
Opiates actually seem to have a significant benefit to people suffering from severe and refractory major depression, where all other legal anti-depression medication has not helped them.[2] Now compare this with alcohol (ethanol) -- a substance that recklessly goes around destroying cells in your brain and your liver, which people take just to get rid of some social anxiety. Huh.
It is because of this that they find alternatives/substitutes, which range from alcohol to heroin to suicide. Two people I know have killed themselves because they could not deal with the pain and the medical system failed them.
It's being "dealt with" for sure. I'm not sure the amount of inconvenience and needless suffering imposed is an improvement on anything. I've never abused drugs. Opiates after back pain, minor surgery or a root canal aren't a "gateway" to anything for the vast vast majority of people.
I don't know about recreational heroin, cocaine or meth. I'm going to err on the side of caution and suggest that they're probably something I don't want to see legalized.
OTOH it'd be nice if marijuana advocates would stop treating alcohol as if it's the worst substance known to man. Current DWI laws are not justified with science. Legalizing marijuana and criminalizing responsible consumption of alcohol is not progress. If everyone you know would probably be in jail were it not for the fact they haven't been caught, it's probably not a good law.
Sane pain management should be between you and your Dr. Ethical patient treatment should not be disincentivized because someone has a political agenda.
I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).
When I was in my early 20's (20 years ago) I got a job in Phoenix AZ working on a concrete crew. We were building poured in place buildings (something like big box store size). First we would pour the floor. Then the walls on top of the floor and pull them up into place with a crane. It was extremely demanding work and the company beat the crap out of everyone. Very often we would get to work at 3 AM so we could pour before the sun to prevent the mud drying so fast. Lunch time was around 10 minutes and there weren't breaks. If you didn't run at all times... going to get a shovel...run, go for a drink of water, run you got yelled at. If you still didn't run a second time you were fired just like that.
My first day there were 7 or 8 new people. At the end of the day they had fired all the new people except me and one other guy. This went on for a couple of weeks until they had the crew they wanted. I needed the job and it paid pretty well (at the time) so I ran and busted ass like you wouldn't believe. After a couple of months I got let go as well and was very OK with it. It was completely nuts and I'm sure illegal as hell but no one appeared to complain and I'm not sure the state at the time and place would have listened anyway.
The point being... almost everyone on the job site was doing meth. Except me and maybe a couple of other people. I've never been a fan of meth and find it completely disgusting even though I'm not "anti-drug" and I damn sure wasn't about to do it out there. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. When you finally burnt out, you were thrown away and left with mental/health problems. But the building was up and the company owner made money.
That is my fear about legal drugs. Expectations. End results. Even social expectations like booze is now in many places. I want to do what I want to do... not be expected to do anything.
It's a complex problem. I don't know the answer. Maybe part of the answer is to invent better/less harmful drugs that are less easy to abuse and legalize those.
The temptation is strong to ban other people from making different trade-offs than us, because it keeps them from besting us in competition and challenging our value systems. But what right do we have to dictate what other people should value and what trade-offs they're allowed to make with their own lives? My sweat, blood, and tears are mine and mine alone to give and withhold.
And you think this might argue in favor of continued criminalization?
The point is, they make this decision themselves. I don't think that your colleagues were somehow oblivious to the fact that meth is bad. I also doubt that your employer gave them meth disguised as "work-enhancing vitamins" or something. When people do things like that, they see the downsides, and they make this decision regardless.
Is it a bad decision, a mistake, for a person to trade his health and long-term well-being and health for his job? Personally, I think that it is. But I also think that people have fundamental human right to do this kind of mistake, that they should be free to decide it for themselves.
Would you die of hunger if you didn't take this job? I don't think so. Could you and your colleagues find a more relaxed job that would put roof over your head and food on your table? I don't know your situation, but somehow I think that yes, you could. So, you didn't take this job just because it was necessary to physically survive, which would be a different situation.
So, if a person doesn't have to sacrifice his health to survive for his job, but does it because he wants something more — should we stop him from it?
I've heard similar stories about how cooks abusing cocaine to keep up with the pace.
But I'd never made the connection that if it's legal, employers could expect performance-enhancing levels of productivity (more than I guess some restaurants and construction crews already do).
This is also an issue in professional sports and the olympics with athletes taking banned (but legal!) performance enhancing drugs. Similarly in colleges you see people abusing adderall or modafinil to study.
would this apply to gun ownership too?
If every gun and every bullet were marked, all sales (or losses e.g. to theft) required registration with a central registry with the new owner requiring a proper license (including criminal background check, etc.), and distributors/manufacturers/registered owners were held liable for damages in the case of improper use, and with potential for their ownership/distribution license to be revoked, guns would become a lot safer. (Exactly what breakdown of liability is up for debate, but currently there is none whatsoever.)
Almost nobody has a problem with “gun ownership” in the abstract, and some type of gun ownership is legal in most parts of the world. The problems are with e.g. semiautomatic rifles being purchased on the black market and then used to shoot up schools, criminals trivially and untraceably getting their hands on as many guns as they want, people leaving guns lying around in places where children can play with them, or huge numbers of untraceable guns getting smuggled across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
Nobel economist Milton Friedman said, "The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill Said in the middle of the 19th century in 'On Liberty.' is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line? If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”
Milton Friedman interview from 1991 on America’s War on Drugs
https://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedman-interview-fr...
Take something illegal and taxing it heavily has a negative impact on the black market's profit and a positive impact on the economy. Truly disrupting the space.
> "The cartels, of course, are adapting to the new reality. Seizure data appears to indicate that with marijuana profits tumbling, they're switching over to heroin and meth."
Essentially legalizing is just getting thing right which was wrong earlier.
That's a rather spectacular claim to make, and indeed, the very first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_India says " All forms of cannabis are currently illegal in India, with some limited allowances made for some traditional preparations." So either you are wrong or the Wikipedia article is, along with all its references, history etc. I'm not a betting man but if I were, I know where I'd put my money...
I saw a sign on the Kansas side of a highway leaving Colorado that said "If you bought pot, leave it behind." Clearly someone had seen an uptick in drugs coming in that way.
It's the same thing that happened when alcohol prohibition was lifted.
> The bill that would legalize cultivation of Australia medical marijuana is guaranteed to become law, with the main opposition party immediately pledging support
/s
