Example of a big government fraud: The War on Drugs.

[bkholdem]

There is nothing in heroin or cocaine that makes the transportation or distribution of those substances tend towards violence. It is the illegality of the substances that do so.

A gym bag full of marijuana costs what, 5-10 grand? A gym bag full of cocaine or heroin casts what, 300 grand? What does a gym bag full of money cost? $300 grand?
So If I want to acquire $300 grand and am willing to brandish a gun to do so I am incentivised to go after the cocaine, heroin, or money because I will obtain 3000% more net gain from the coke/herion/money than I will from pot, all other things being equal.

And it is pretty common for people transporting a bag of money on a regular basis to carry a gun regardless of whether that money is 'legal', be they armored car drivers, legal businessmen, or a drug dealer.

So the coke guy and the heroin gun and the money guy are almost certainly armed with lethal force while the pot guy is probalby not since he risks much much less. I can simply kick him in the balls and take his [censored], he doens't keep enough product and cash in one place for me to see him as a reasonable target. He is merely carrying the bag of pot which is much less at risk, so he is much less likely to be carrying a gun.

Robbing with a gun is not an everyday affair. Only a select minority of the population does this with proficiency, we are talking about professional armed robbers here, not
moron drug users who rob. They are a different issue, but I can address that as well. at a later time.

So I have my gun and I want to make my score, a nice score, I'm no small timer. So how do I decide? If I rob the coke dealer or heroin dealer, so long as they do not know who I am I have a very, very high likelyhood of success. Remember I am a professional armed robber. I do my homework and develop a plan that maximizes my chances of success while minimizing my risk. And I keep my mouth shut about it afterword too. Either no one else knows I am doing this, or only a very select few who are my crew and are doing it with me know. We don't brag about it and don't even tell anyone about it. We are careful afterwards to
not show any signs that we just 'hit a score' by flashing cash or moving drugs to avoid attracting attention.

If I choose the coke dealer or herion dealer, so long as I can get away from them
physically and they do not know my identity, I am home free! This is true whether
I rob them of money, drugs, or a combination.

Why are they my target of choice over the armord car, or other legal business transporting money and/or goods?

If I rob the businessman or the armored car driver they have the entire city of police officers behind them as well as the national media. They set into motion a 24/7 investigation run by people with professional traning and experience in conducting
such investigations. So even if I get away from their presence I have a law enforcement machine hunting me. This starts moments after I am away from the scene. Dozens of armed officers are mobilized with their sophistocated communication systems. Once the investigation starts the trained detectives start interviewing anyone who they think can assist them. They can freely interview pretty much anyone on the planet to aid in their investigation. Whereas when the drug gang is robbed all they can do is put the word out to their network of users and sellers to be on the lookout
for someone throwing cash around or drugs around that did not have them before. The police investigation can go on for weeks and months. There is really no drug dealer investigation lol

If I rob the armored car/legal business I am in a cat and mouse game with trained professionals who work in shifts to catch me. Some of them live for this hunt. This is a huge disincentive in robbing the 'legal' bags of money. I get the same payoff but there is significanlty more risk in going after the 'legal' bags of money.

So the drug dealers are at significantly more risk of being jacked. These are the 'crimes' that you do not hear about on the news, but they sure as hell exist! And since the drug dealer can not mobilize the law machine to recoup their loss they deal with the inherent risk more proactively by being armed and ready to fire. They know they are screwed if I get the drop on them and have virtually no chance of 'catching me'once I am out of their site with their money/drugs. What else are they going to do besides being armed and ever viligant, post a sign saying "please don't rob me?"

There is no insurance to make the drug dealer whole. Their lifeblood is gone. All the risk they have lived with of spending a decade in jail is wasted. So they arm themselves as a means to address that risk and are hyperviligant about not becoming my prey.

They are VERY HIGH RISK targets. These crimes just don't make the news.

Assuming I can get the drop on both the businessman/armoured car and the drug dealer, the drug dealer is my target EVERY TIME.

So we can see that it is the fact that they can not seek legal means to protect their business which makes them a very lucrative target. This is one reason behind the high levels of violence in the drug world. The dealers become accustomed to carrying guns and remian in hypervigilant adrenaline charged states, and operate outside of the 'legal' system. They realize they are lucrative targets. Their profession is very high risk simply because it has been deemed illegal.

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]

Let's make crack legal. All the major corporations will not advertise their 'crack' sales, and who knows they may even target kids just like their campaigns with cigarettes.



[/ QUOTE ]

You mean like all the booze manufacturers who target 8 year olds in their ads on the cartoon network?

Appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy which uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions, rather than valid logic, to win an argument. This kind of appeal to emotion is a type of red herring and encompasses several logical fallacies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

The phrase "for the children", or similar phrases such as "think of the children," is an appeal to emotion and can be used to support an irrelevant conclusion (both logical fallacies) when used in an argument. The phrase may also be seen as a valid appeal to a moral value that may be the basis for logical argument or action.

Logical fallacy
"For the children" suffers from the logical fallacies of appeal to emotion and irrelevant conclusion.[citation needed] This argument can simply appeal to the listener's emotion by connecting an argument to innocent children that many people feel an instinctual need to protect.[citation needed] Using such an argument may not even be related to the topic. For example, a politician could claim that a policy to ban oil drilling would protect the children, even if the oil drilling was in the ocean. In this example, the politician is appealing to others' emotional desire to protect children. However, any impact it would have on children would be indirect, so "protecting the children" with this policy is rather irrelevant. It also can contain an abdication of responsibilty of "think of the children, so I don't have to".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_The...%28politics%29

With our current system of prohibition 'children' control the sales and distribution in many cases. This is because unscrupulous distributors up the supply chain exploit the ways 'children' are treated in the legal system as different to adults. With legalization not only would sales to children be against the law, but children would also be removed from the sales and distribution of drugs.

Right now 'children' are dying in the streets fighting with guns over who gets to sell on which corner. If you want to save the children and stop the violence I recommend you try to get a handle on your emotions and use reason and judgement when examining the benefits and drawbacks of prohibition.



[ QUOTE ]


You guys can't comprehend what a drug like crack can do to the mind, and I'm sure the last thing I'd want to see is some viral advertising campaign trying to get the drug into the hands of one of my kids.


[/ QUOTE ]

See my previous post about my experience to get a taste of what I can comprehend. See above re: appleal to emotion as a logical fallacy in reference to the children.

And regardless of the legal status of drugs, alcohol, etc I recommend you begin educating your children about exercising good judgement in decision making now, and not depend on the government to 'protect' them.


[ QUOTE ]


Drugs are already cheap! Lower prices? Are you out of your mind? Alcohol is more expensive than most drugs. You can get a crack rock for about $10, and enough weed to get you high as hell for a week for the price of one $30 bottle of Vodka.



[/ QUOTE ]

You are cofusing single doses with estimated use for heavy users. Heavy crack users do not smoke one rock any more than heavy pot users take one toke or heavy alcohol users take one drink.

pot per toke: 50cents?
alcohol per drink: 50cents?
crack per toke: $10?

HOw much does a heavy pot smoker smoke? When I smoked when I was younger I think I smoked a 1/4 ounce per week. How much does a quarter ounce of potent marijuana cost per week (someone can correct me if I am wrong, but heavy users don't smoke dirt weed).

How much does a heavy crack user smoke per week? It depends to some extent on how much money they can get their hands on, but when I used to work at a homeless shelter the population used to empty out on the first of the month (when they get their SSI checks). They were back 3 days later and completely broke. At that time the monthly checks were $500-$550. That is 3 days use.

It is common for crack smokers to smoke $100 per day and want more. Do you think they smoke $10 bucks and then call it a night? lol


[ QUOTE ]



We need to tighten our borders.

If someone can smuggle 10 kilos of coke through our borders, then I'm sure a few suicide bombers or very destructive weapons can be brought in as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

With 5% of the population standing by waving money in the air to purchase coke and heroin (estimate I pulled out my ass but we need to account for all the casual users, weekend users, holiday users, etc) it is impossible to keep these products out. IMPOSSIBLE!

As far as suicide bombers:

1. See appeal to emotion above, and
2. What about a vial of poison/bio agent to contaminate our water supply?

Should we check every humans orafaces who present themselves at the border?

[Meech]

[ QUOTE ]
Let me go find a US Soldier in Iraq against the war and use it as my baseline in an argument against the war. It doesn't work like that.

[/ QUOTE ]

So then we should ignore your post full of anecdotal goodness.

[bkholdem]

Prohibition that we had is a perfect example. Alcohol legal- people go buy and use it. Cops stroll by the stores where people are selling and using alcohol and don't give it a second thought. Just like they stroll by the laundrymat.

Make it illegal: All the businesses that were selling alcohol stop because they obey the law. They don't like to take wild risks that can land them in jail. They find another busines to open. BUT there is still demand from the populace. So.... everyone just gathers in a circle and says "oh well it's illegal now so lets just forget about it and hug"
Not! When there is a demand then unscrupulous people jump in to fill the demand. By the very act of entering the market of selling alcohol we know that they do not obey the law, or at least this law. But all unscrupulous people are not created equal. Some are more unscrupulous than others. And now the alcohol distributors can not call law enforcement to assist with problems and disputes. They can not access courts to settle disputes. So if they all just come to an agreement to have their little operations and no conflicts arise there is no violence.

But that doesn't happen, does it? And wereas the previous alcohol distributors were friendly with the cops and liked to have them around their stores, the new ones hate to have them around (unless they make contact with unscrupulous ones and pay them off to be left alone or to provide a mafia-esque protection service). They are now being hunted by the cops, who have guns and take people to prison and shoot them if they try to resist. So they have to decide, is it worth the risk? And a few leave the business.... but... there is still demand... so the risk is way up (jail or be shot) and this means they are not going to simply offer alcohol to the public at the old price, right?

This is a black market

In the black market there is no legal protection from theft. If no one wants to steal well that makes it a lot easer. But since we live in a society where people kill for money (like insurance payoffs) and kill for free (for emotional gratification such as anger and revenge, etc) is should not be surprising that people will steal.

And as I have demonstrated in an earlier post, the incentive to steal from a black market operation is significantly larger than to steal from an above ground 'white market' or 'legal' operation. Stealing requires stealth and/or force. Small time outfits are not effected in this way. Some dude mixing beer in his bathtub and selling to a close circle of friends is going to be ignored by the cops and by the robbers. Just like some kid selling herb that he grows in his closet that he sells to friends.


So we understand that the black market merchant can not go to the cops for protection and that he is a huge target for theft....... because he can not go to the cops for protection. If he is big enough for robbers to want to steal from he has to decide: Get out of the business, OR find some other means of protection. This is where the violence comes in.

There is violence in the 'white market' or 'legal' business too but not as much because the cops are the protectiton for those businesses. The law machine is sophistocated and far reaching, hunting criminals is one of their specialties. And jail is the punnishment.

In the black market, mercenaries/violence specialists are the protection and.... death is the punnishment. What do you think they are going to do with a violator? (who would be sent to jail in the 'white market' and society as a whole shares the cost.)

Are they going to build their own private prisons and pay for 100% of the costs themselves? Pay for guards to watch the violators and feed them? (all the while opening themselves up to additional charges of kidnapping while the police machine hunts for this 'missing person'? Not! It doesn't work that way. They kill. (or administer beatings for more minor offences).

If you want set up some system where black market operators can utilize law enforcement and courts and jails, like some hotline where they can call and say "Hey I"m not gonna tell you my name, but C-Tone just jacked my crib. Pick his ass up and convict that mo fo, he deserves jail. I will be remaining anonymous of course because I don't want to expose my illegal business so I can't testify, but just trust me he did it and deserves punnishment" you can give it a try.

[MoreWineII]

Lumping in all drugs together is retarded so it would seem to me that a "War on Drugs" is retarded.

An ounce runs me about $225-300 depending on the quality. I'm not smart enough to know what to do about the harder core drugs but MJ being illegal at this point in time given what *is* legal is supremely stupid.

[Misfire]

The issue of marijuanna legalization (because it's not harmful and harder drugs are legal) is a distraction from the fundamental issue of prohibition of activities/products that have an inelastic demand. The fundamental truth that is clouded by all the rhetoric is that prohibition of ANYTHING people wish to purchase ALWAYS creates higher prices and crime. The higher prices come from a simple suppression of supply. The crime comes from those who wish to exploit the artificially high prices, the users who can't afford the higher prices but "need" thier fix, and the fact that, whenever a deal goes bad, the victim has no recourse but violence.

[bkholdem]

Why is it that every other commodity on the face of the earth (pretty much) has quadrupled in price over the past 25 years but heroin and cocaine (which have been selectivly targeted for elimination by the government whereby a trillion of dollars have been spent 'fighting them') price has either remained constant or reduced?

Substitue drugs for any other commodity (say haynes underwear). Now the government sets out to go to war on haynes underwear. They quadruple law enforcement and spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting haynes underwear. Thousands die from gunfights over the rights to control the distribution of haynes underwear. Cops are shot and murdered. Innocent citizens are caught int the crossfire. Hundreds of thousands are paraded through our courts for possession of haynes underwear. Jails are filled with haynes uderwear dealers and users. We do a tally and find out that significanlty more haynes uderwear are being imported into the country each year. We look around and the price of automobiles has trippled. House prices have trippled. Clothing, food, college, etc. All cost significantly more than they did 25 years ago and no one is fighting to get rid of them. No cops are raiding car dealerships and car manufactuer plants. No grocery stores or farms are raided with their food products conficated. And yet those goods have risen in price significantly. While a powerful government has spent a trillion dollars 'fighthing' haynes underwear and it is cheaper 25 years later?

But the haynes underwear, which is one single product out of thousands that there is a 'war' against is more widely available now at the same price as they were 25 years ago. LMAO

When in the hell are they gonna start a war on pizza (my favorite food)? I will be able to buy them for pennies in a couple decades lol
Call the president and tell him to start a 'war on vacations' I want to visit hawaii in a few years!

Car dealers have not been murdering each other or shooting at cops. Nor have college administrators or teachers. Not grocery store owners either. But cocaine dealers they have and yet the product flourishes at a cheaper price than ever.

Money and lives and familes down the toilet and nothing changes. One haynes underwear dealer arrested and two more are shooting it out in the streets to take his place. Send in more cops to arrest them, risking their lives in the proces. Spend 50K annualy to lock each one of them up. Rince and repeat a hundred thousand times. Haynes underwear is still widely available at a cheaper price.

Legalize drugs and guess what? Prices drastically drop. Every clown dope dealer is out of business overnight. Pharmacists take over. People buy products of a consistent potentcy without adulterants. They don't rob and steal to pay for them because they are leagal and affordable. They get accurate and professional safety information.

Crime and violence drops dramatically.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
HOw much does a heavy pot smoker smoke? When I smoked when I was younger I think I smoked a 1/4 ounce per week. How much does a quarter ounce of potent marijuana cost per week (someone can correct me if I am wrong, but heavy users don't smoke dirt weed).

[/ QUOTE ]

1/4 of good stuff is usually $100 or a little more.

[Misfire]

[ QUOTE ]
Why is it that every other commodity on the face of the earth (pretty much) has quadrupled in price over the past 25 years but heroin and cocaine (which have been selectivly targeted for elimination by the government whereby a trillion of dollars have been spent 'fighting them') price has either remained constant or reduced?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure I buy that the price of drugs hasn't risen. Even still, legalization/prohibition isn't the only factor affecting price. More efficient manufacturing, for instance, lowers price. The price of other commodities would likely rise even more than they have if they were made illegal (although your example of Haynes doesn't fit as well because its demand curve isn't at all similar to that of narcotics). Imagine the cost of cigarettes if you had to buy them illegally from street dealers.

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Why is it that every other commodity on the face of the earth (pretty much) has quadrupled in price over the past 25 years but heroin and cocaine (which have been selectivly targeted for elimination by the government whereby a trillion of dollars have been spent 'fighting them') price has either remained constant or reduced?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure I buy that the price of drugs hasn't risen. Even still, legalization/prohibition isn't the only factor affecting price. More efficient manufacturing, for instance, lowers price. The price of other commodities would likely rise even more than they have if they were made illegal (although your example of Haynes doesn't fit as well because its demand curve isn't at all similar to that of narcotics). Imagine the cost of cigarettes if you had to buy them illegally from street dealers.

[/ QUOTE ]

The price of cigarettes if illegal would be substantially more, correct?

And the price of cocaine has not stayed the same. It has dropped significantly over time since 1981:

1981 price per gram for >50 grams= $201.18
2002 price per gram for >50 grams= $ 41.59

http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/...ine-prices.htm

And before you start in with the "well it probably would have cost tons more without the war" please explain how on earth a policy designed to eradicate a substance that is in high demand can be eliminated without eliminating demand.