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Relapse wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
A lot of bad stuff happens in the world, if you stop to think about it you'll either kill yourself or go join the Peace Corps. I'm not saying don't deal with a problem, just that as soon as you solve it another one's going to turn up somewhere else. I don't advocate criminality, but its so much of a problem that I just try and avoid it. I suspect the guys who are doing it probably have a completely different mindset from us and don't care for the ethical issues that result from their actions. Hell if your a freedom fighter in a country who's just killed a local diplomat's children because he's killed yours who's the bad guy in that situation? If you kill a family to better your own life then there's a clear definition of who the bad guy is, but what if drugs are your only sustenance because the local mob or the like's taken the farm land from you? Its situational, morality's a throw away thing when it comes to human need. =P

People have to be willing to take a stand against the evils in this world or they will overtake us. Look at it this way, if the average drug user were presented with a situation where everytime he used drugs instead of people he doesn't know in another country, but someone he cared about would be killed in some unpleasant way or another,would the attraction to drugs be there?

I'm a secular humanist. I believe that bad things happen, but that's just how things are. Humanity does things that some would call bad, it does good things too, putting a name or morality to them's just you putting your own personal views to them. One person can think about a thing one way, and another theirs. I know people don't give a toss about how much harm their actions do to others. They don't have to be in a country on the other side of the world, they can be their neighbors for all it matters. If someone wants something most of the time they don't give a sod about how it effects others. So people can go about preaching what's write and wrong, but wait till a time of hardship or the like happens and see how soon it is before they're stabbing each other in the back. =P

That's a sad view of life you have, even though you do have some truth in what you say. I've had the privilage of working with people that help others and try to improve their standard of living, though, and realize it isn't as cut and dried as you make it. I believe there is a moral code to be followed and I do reject the blanket concept of things being relative.

By saying that there's so much bad going on in the world that we should just let it happen is like Churchill saying, "So much of Europe is over run already, we should just say quit and give up."

=P I do what I can to be a good person, but I don't live in a world where everybody acts the same as I do. I know that I can try and help a guy all I want and he could easily turn around and stab me in the back. That I'm comfortable with that idea and willing to just write that guy off is just how I deal with things. People can try and be as good as they want, but the world doesn't have a concept of morality, its just something that humans came up with. Everyone has their own interpretations of it, so it shouldn't news that others have ones that are radically different from yours. We in the west may think that slave labor is amoral, but go to Asia and see what they call it.

...Yeah, I've been advised to train as a counselor after Uni. The world's not black and white, but its nowhere near a spotless shade of grey either. =/

I could see us having a fairly long discussion on this. Some of what you say I agree with, but as I say there are other things I disagree with.

And as with any thread on the off topic forum, this has quickly followed true to its namesake. XD

 Wyrmalla wrote:
And as with any thread on the off topic forum, this has quickly followed true to its namesake. XD

I fully agree.

Mexican Marijuana is absolute crap. The only people who smoke that junk are too poor, or too stupid to buy better stuff.

From what I've heard, pot-smuggling isn't particularly profitable, especially not the low-grade stuff that's coming out of mexico. They jump through a lot of hoops and pay a lot of people off at the border just to get a cheap product to the masses. It makes me wonder why there's all this commotion and death surrounding something so... pedestrian. A 'drug war' of this scale usually has something to do with heroine, or maybe cocaine, but not marijuana.

 Captain Fantastic wrote:
Mexican Marijuana is absolute crap. The only people who smoke that junk are too poor, or too stupid to buy better stuff.

From what I've heard, pot-smuggling isn't particularly profitable, especially not the low-grade stuff that's coming out of mexico. They jump through a lot of hoops and pay a lot of people off at the border just to get a cheap product to the masses. It makes me wonder why there's all this commotion and death surrounding something so... pedestrian. A 'drug war' of this scale usually has something to do with heroine, or maybe cocaine, but not marijuana.

Just google anything to do with amounts of mexican pot smuggled and you'll see it's coming across up to 40 tons at a pop. There's definitely a lot of profit the cartels are getting off the stuff.

At least in the case of the UK we grow more of the drugs ourselves than import them. Admittedly its still the foreigners that suffer because of this though (its common for drug farms to be set up and having illegal immigrants tend them whilst they're effectively locked up with them). So I'm guessing that its a similar case with the US. The cheap stuff comes in from the south, but the expensive drugs are just so much easier to produce within the country and avoid the customs.

Hell in the Uk you'll find old women with skunk gardens in their greenhouses. They don't go to dealers for their stuff, they grow it themselves and pass it about in their coffee evenings.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
At least in the case of the UK we grow more of the drugs ourselves than import them. Admittedly its still the foreigners that suffer because of this though (its common for drug farms to be set up and having illegal immigrants tend them whilst they're effectively locked up with them). So I'm guessing that its a similar case with the US. The cheap stuff comes in from the south, but the expensive drugs are just so much easier to produce within the country and avoid the customs.

Hell in the Uk you'll find old women with skunk gardens in their greenhouses. They don't go to dealers for their stuff, they grow it themselves and pass it about in their coffee evenings.

You're right about producing drugs in country. This is why the cartels are more and more moving into the U.S.

Relapse wrote:

 Captain Fantastic wrote:
Mexican Marijuana is absolute crap. The only people who smoke that junk are too poor, or too stupid to buy better stuff.

From what I've heard, pot-smuggling isn't particularly profitable, especially not the low-grade stuff that's coming out of mexico. They jump through a lot of hoops and pay a lot of people off at the border just to get a cheap product to the masses. It makes me wonder why there's all this commotion and death surrounding something so... pedestrian. A 'drug war' of this scale usually has something to do with heroine, or maybe cocaine, but not marijuana.

Just google anything to do with amounts of mexican pot smuggled and you'll see it's coming across up to 40 tons at a pop. There's definitely a lot of profit the cartels are getting off the stuff.

Border Patrol routinely stops people entering Mexico with hundreds of thousands of dollars in Drug Money. And I garuntee they are stopping only a small portion of the people getting accross. Plus alot of money gets spent in the US to buy other things(like guns)

 Monster Rain wrote:
To answer the OP's question:

Yes. Yes they do. The adult thing would be to admit it to yourself, and subsequently, that you don't care.

Yes, exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
Saying American drug users are responsible for crime in other countries is just dumb. Are you responsible for Chinese slave labor with all your Iphones? Are you responsible for children in sweatshops because you just had to get another pair of Nikes?

Umm... you're missing the big, obvious answer to your conundrum... that the person who buys an i-phone knowing the conditions in which it was manufactured is partially responsible for that situation, in exactly the same way that the drug user is responsible.

I mean, you reasoning above basically says 'I say no cow was killed to bring me this steak. You're eating venison and that comes from deer, therefore neither of us did anything wrong.'


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:
I guess it all comes down to personal views. To me a few thousand deaths isnt worse than a couple hundred million in slave labor.

Maybe the quote "judge not lest ye be judged" would fit this situation?

If the issue was people condemning others and doing nothing else, that'd work. But no-one is calling for the stoning of anyone else over this.

This is really about discussing the issue, and maybe discussing what might be done to improve the situation. For instance, here in WA bushie dope is almost entirely controlled by the bikie gangs, but the hydro stuff is still largely coming from small attic operations (although that's slowly changing). By being aware of that, a person could try to only buy hydro and avoid financing the bikies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I'm a secular humanist. I believe that bad things happen, but that's just how things are.

I'm not sure that makes you a secular humanist. Secular humanism generally searches for universal moral codes.

Honestly, that's one of the problems I have with secular humanism. I tend towards a view much more like yours, that different people will have very different views of morality.

in OT:

They got VENDING machines for these?
http://joemiller.us/2012/11/self-service-marijuana-machine-stock-soars-3000-after-washington-colorado-legalization/?utm_source=JoeMiller.US+List&utm_campaign=bd0f534de2-11_19_1211_19_2012&utm_medium=email


Well... I guess that's an old idea as there are still cigarette vending machines in this world.

CAPITALISM ON THE WAY!