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I don't get it. We know where they are being produced. We know they are harmful to communities and persons all over the world.

So why does relatively little get done about it? Think about this. If there was a concerted, multinational bumming of say, Cocaine Production, where these private armies had to face proper ones with good support, surely the production could be crushed?

Why are we harping on about Terrorism etc, without going after one of their major fundings? Think about smashing the production of Opium in Afghanistan. I'd like to see the Taliban continue their activities with much reduced income?

unfortunately there isnt much we can do about it.... its not that we dont have the military force to destroy cocaine production where we know it exists... we do. its that the production is so decentralized that finding and destroying it is too expensive to be feasible. armies cost alot of money, and we just cant afford to have them running around the world busting up cocaine production 24/7. if we destroy production in one place it can easily be resumed elsewhere, because it really isnt all that difficult.

The other thing is that in order to deploy our military inside another country's borders that country has to give us permission to do it, or else we have to declare war. Occasionally a country like Columbia, maybe Mexico before too much longer, will give us permission to do it, if their drug problem is bad enough, but 99 times out of 100 the answer will be "hell no." Drugs are a problem, but theyre not worth going to war with half the world.

So much for Satellite observation.

We know where the production sites are, or at least enough to make an educated guess. Thus far, it seems the stronger countries are willing to leave to their underequipped, corruption rife neighbours, then have a pop when their forces aren't up to the task.

But we often don't know where it is being produced. You only have to look at the situation in Colombia to realise that dumping chemicals across miles of rainforest isn't efficient. The situation in Colombia is a complicated one anyway, from what I recall of a RAND corporation report a dollar spent inland of the US on anti-drug clinics and other combating of drug proliferation is 100 times better value than a dollar spent trying to tackle the problem in Colombia. So why bother? Because the drugs are bankrolling communist guerillas and the US wants to prop up the democratic government as they have done since the cold war so it's been going on for a looong time. In fact there are health and ecological problems caused by dumping all that gak in the jungle although US authorities try to hand wave it away claiming it's only the drug lords who are complaining. Peru rejected US assistance and money and instead destroys drug crops by hand.

Opium production fell right off under the Taliban and only boomed again after the Afghanistan war. It doesn't help that the country and government is so corrupt and the Warlords controlling various areas see the opium as a source of income, but coalition forces use these same people as a source of information and to keep the Taliban out.

This is why I'm somewhat skeptical when we are being repeatedly told that the Taliban is doing all the Opium growing in Afghanistan which means drugs fund terrorism. In fact it's probably a lot more complicated than that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/world/asia/19taliban.html?_r=1&hp

One way to tackle the growing of drugs is to offer farmers a financially viable alternative. Sending our armies in to fight people growing drugs is very impractical, expensive and politically impossible in many places. If farmers had legal alternatives they could be encouraged to grow them instead.

Mr Mystery wrote:
So why does relatively little get done about it?

Uh, I don't know what you're talking about. In the US, we spend a gakload of money fighting drugs. Also, a high percentage of robberies and other crimes are commited to pay for drugs. Many crimes are commited while the crook is on drugs.

We also provide several latin american countries with funding and other support to fight the drug lords in their countries.

Or maybe the government could try not telling people how to live their lives for a change and just legalize drugs and let people make their own decision. Seriously.

rubiksnoob wrote:Or maybe the government could try not telling people how to live their lives for a change and just legalize drugs and let people make their own decision. Seriously.

Yes. Legalize cocaine and heroin. Great idea.

People aren't smart enough for that to work. It didn't work when those things were medicinal substances that were perfectly legal and it most certainly wouldn't work now that the drugs are significantly more powerful and addicting. It's fun to smoke a dank roach and think that you should have all the rights in the world, but if the drugs are such a problem now when they are expensive and illegal, do you seriously think that legalizing them will reduce the problems? You think that joe jobless who breaks into habits to feed his drug addiction won't just keep doing it now that he can get that sweet horse all the time? You think that infant addiction rates won't skyrocket once theresa can get her fix 24/7? Legalizing pot and legalizing something like heroin are so ludicrously different that they aren't even worth comparing, let alone throwing under your "legalize drugs" banner.

Why are we harping on about Terrorism etc, without going after one of their major fundings? Think about smashing the production of Opium in Afghanistan. I'd like to see the Taliban continue their activities with much reduced income?

They are hesitant to really go all in on attacking the farms (rather they just spray herbicides) because they aren't taliban farms. They are farms that the farmers run and then sell to the taliban because that is their livelihood. It would be a serious blow to the Afghani taliban movement to hit them full force (which is done often and systematically anyway) but it won't win the "hearts and minds" of those farmers, and when they lose their livelihoods who do you think they'll turn to? Regardless though, thats something that the U.S. military is actively engaged in doing.

rubiksnoob wrote:Or maybe the government could try not telling people how to live their lives for a change and just legalize drugs and let people make their own decision. Seriously.

No that won't do, just won't do at all.

Since this is turning into another "should we legalise drugs" thread, my view is that they cause problems whether legal or illegal (look at tobacco and alcohol) so the key thing is to minimise the harm with the least cost to the state.

Kilkrazy wrote:Since this is turning into another "should we legalise drugs" thread, my view is that they cause problems whether legal or illegal (look at tobacco and alcohol) so the key thing is to minimise the harm with the least cost to the state.

Whats your view on entrenched obstruction to their prevalence while relying on medical science to begin curing the addictions in the future (A cocaine "cure" for instance has already been developed)?

Well this is disappointing. I thought the title meant we were being offered drugs.

Shuma wrote:It didn't work when those things were medicinal substances that were perfectly legal and it most certainly wouldn't work now that the drugs are significantly more powerful and addicting.

Actually street level heroin, and especially cocaine, are crap - as anyone who's ever had a noseful of lidocaine and manitol will testify. When they were available on general sale they were pure as far as I can tell.

I agree with everything else you said - whilst it would be nice to pop to the cornershop for a couple of cheeky grams and a porno, it wouldn't actually be a good thing for society.

Mr Mystery wrote:I don't get it. We know where they are being produced. We know they are harmful to communities and persons all over the world.

So why does relatively little get done about it? Think about this. If there was a concerted, multinational bumming of say, Cocaine Production, where these private armies had to face proper ones with good support, surely the production could be crushed?

Why are we harping on about Terrorism etc, without going after one of their major fundings? Think about smashing the production of Opium in Afghanistan. I'd like to see the Taliban continue their activities with much reduced income?

People tend to frown on invading other nations in order to bomb and kill farmers.

Plus, knocking out the ability of a nation to engage in agriculture is, you know, harder than it sounds. Fact is that if you burn a field to the ground, you've only made it that much easier to replant.

Albatross wrote:

Shuma wrote:It didn't work when those things were medicinal substances that were perfectly legal and it most certainly wouldn't work now that the drugs are significantly more powerful and addicting.

Actually street level heroin, and especially cocaine, are crap - as anyone who's ever had a noseful of lidocaine and manitol will testify. When they were available on general sale they were pure as far as I can tell.

I agree with everything else you said - whilst it would be nice to pop to the cornershop for a couple of cheeky grams and a porno, it wouldn't actually be a good thing for society.

I'll agree that at a street level the cuts are significantly watered down, but the formulae for making both drugs in their current state are more potent and the procedures for condensing the dosages have had a very long time to advance. The markets and the science of drugs are best friends here, it takes less to make more that is more powerful and then you can cut more of it to maintain a bigger supply and sell more to more people. The only things that get cheaper and more powerful year over year are computers and drugs.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Albatross wrote:

Shuma wrote:It didn't work when those things were medicinal substances that were perfectly legal and it most certainly wouldn't work now that the drugs are significantly more powerful and addicting.

Actually street level heroin, and especially cocaine, are crap - as anyone who's ever had a noseful of lidocaine and manitol will testify. When they were available on general sale they were pure as far as I can tell.

I agree with everything else you said - whilst it would be nice to pop to the cornershop for a couple of cheeky grams and a porno, it wouldn't actually be a good thing for society.

I'll agree that at a street level the cuts are significantly watered down, but the formulae for making both drugs in their current state are more potent and the procedures for condensing the dosages have had a very long time to advance. The markets and the science of drugs are best friends here, it takes less to make more that is more powerful and then you can cut more of it to maintain a bigger supply and sell more to more people. The only things that get cheaper and more powerful year over year are computers and drugs.

Ok fair enough, but how do you improve heroin and make it stronger without making it... I dunno, something else I suppose? Isn't that (very basically) how heroin is made? Refining opium down to morphine, then morphine to heroin?

What are junkies firing into their veins these days, superheroin?

Albatross wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Albatross wrote:

Shuma wrote:It didn't work when those things were medicinal substances that were perfectly legal and it most certainly wouldn't work now that the drugs are significantly more powerful and addicting.

Actually street level heroin, and especially cocaine, are crap - as anyone who's ever had a noseful of lidocaine and manitol will testify. When they were available on general sale they were pure as far as I can tell.

I agree with everything else you said - whilst it would be nice to pop to the cornershop for a couple of cheeky grams and a porno, it wouldn't actually be a good thing for society.

I'll agree that at a street level the cuts are significantly watered down, but the formulae for making both drugs in their current state are more potent and the procedures for condensing the dosages have had a very long time to advance. The markets and the science of drugs are best friends here, it takes less to make more that is more powerful and then you can cut more of it to maintain a bigger supply and sell more to more people. The only things that get cheaper and more powerful year over year are computers and drugs.

Ok fair enough, but how do you improve heroin and make it stronger without making it... I dunno, something else I suppose? Isn't that (very basically) how heroin is made? Refining opium down to morphine, then morphine to heroin?

What are junkies firing into their veins these days, superheroin?

Depends on the formulae I suppose.

Kilkrazy wrote:Since this is turning into another "should we legalise drugs" thread, my view is that they cause problems whether legal or illegal (look at tobacco and alcohol) so the key thing is to minimise the harm with the least cost to the state.

agree 100%


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mr Mystery wrote:So much for Satellite observation.

We know where the production sites are, or at least enough to make an educated guess. Thus far, it seems the stronger countries are willing to leave to their underequipped, corruption rife neighbours, then have a pop when their forces aren't up to the task.

Its too expensive. Thats why we dont do it. Sending all those guys running around the earth with machine guns and helicopters costs a lot of fething money. We cant afford it.
AF

AbaddonFidelis wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Since this is turning into another "should we legalise drugs" thread, my view is that they cause problems whether legal or illegal (look at tobacco and alcohol) so the key thing is to minimise the harm with the least cost to the state.

agree 100%


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mr Mystery wrote:So much for Satellite observation.

We know where the production sites are, or at least enough to make an educated guess. Thus far, it seems the stronger countries are willing to leave to their underequipped, corruption rife neighbours, then have a pop when their forces aren't up to the task.

Its too expensive. Thats why we dont do it. Sending all those guys running around the earth with machine guns and helicopters costs a lot of fething money. We cant afford it.
AF

It's also illegal!

Gailbraithe wrote:

Mr Mystery wrote:I don't get it. We know where they are being produced. We know they are harmful to communities and persons all over the world.

So why does relatively little get done about it? Think about this. If there was a concerted, multinational bumming of say, Cocaine Production, where these private armies had to face proper ones with good support, surely the production could be crushed?

Why are we harping on about Terrorism etc, without going after one of their major fundings? Think about smashing the production of Opium in Afghanistan. I'd like to see the Taliban continue their activities with much reduced income?

People tend to frown on invading other nations in order to bomb and kill farmers.

Plus, knocking out the ability of a nation to engage in agriculture is, you know, harder than it sounds. Fact is that if you burn a field to the ground, you've only made it that much easier to replant.

I agree.

Welcome back.

Arctick
yes. its also illegal.