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Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

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Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#181

Post by dinkumthinkum »

chei0aiV wrote: post #166
gregpilling wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by the number of Tucson, AZ residents (where I live) that think there already is a large wall, all across the USA. You certainly see a large wall in Nogales, AZ/ Nogales SON. It is only there for the TV cameras, since a few miles out of town it is back to dual strand barbed wire cattle fence. Everybody who lives within a few miles either side of the border knows this - people in Tucson 60 miles away ar…

Aren't borders such silly concepts?

Why are borders silly? I guess it's fun to say but what does that mean? Is it silly that people that live in Vermont have access to the kind of legal due process and protections afforded by the U.S. government that people in Colombia do not?

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#182

Post by dinkumthinkum »

facetube wrote: post #140
School-Cotton wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people (at least from the Southwest) know about this; otherwise Donald Trump's desire to "build a wall" would be incoherent.

Donald Trump's desire to "build a wall" is incoherent.

I think you are getting brow-beaten by a kind of pedantry here, sorry for that. I'm taking you to mean that his statements are those of a buffoon that no one in intellectual society should take seriously. I agree with you.

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#183

Post by School-Cotton »

vacri wrote: post #176
gregpilling wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by the number of Tucson, AZ residents (where I live) that think there already is a large wall, all across the USA. You certainly see a large wall in Nogales, AZ/ Nogales SON. It is only there for the TV cameras, since a few miles out of town it is back to dual strand barbed wire cattle fence. Everybody who lives within a few miles either side of the border knows this - people in Tucson 60 miles away ar…

I visited a couple of locals on the US side of the Nogales border, and they showed me the sights. "Here is the border fence... and 8 miles further (drive drive) here is where it runs out, and they come over those hills there (drive drive) these houses being built are where the immigrants spend their first nights before heading inland...". We drove past a border patrol depot, and there were literally hundreds of vehic…

yup, search for "metric": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_19

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#184

Post by lucaspiller »

gregpilling wrote: post #70
caseysoftware wrote: post #32

> The latest data from the U.S. Border Patrol shows that last year, marijuana seizures along the southwest border tumbled to their lowest level in at least a decade. 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. - W…

Speaking of the US Border, it is way more porous than many people think. Here is a photo of the 2 strands of barbed wire that make up the border fence near Locheil Arizona. 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 n…

Although there isn't so much of an immigration issue, the border between the EU and Russia is also non-existent in a lot of places:

https://euobserver.com/justice/130037

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#185

Post by visarga »

mapt wrote: post #93
jp555 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if she's been working 19 hours without sleep before your surgery? How would you know? How about an eye surgeon that just had 3 big coffees? I think the fact that you haven't smoked makes your perception of cannabis' effects wildly out of step with reality. I wouldn't trust any of the sober university students I knew performing surgery on me.

You introduce working 19 hours without sleep before surgery as a hyperbolic excess that should get one fired. In fact, it appears to be routine and required of medical residents in the US. Which is ridiculous.

It seems medical students and their teachers can't apply basic notions of healthy living on themselves. I always wondered why they agree to stay up to 24 or 36 hours per shift. Can't they have 8 hour long work shifts?

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#186

Post by conceit »

eru wrote: post #178
conceit wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they appear pretty passionless, too. Weed does that to people. Not that I would care. In a more serious tone, I was alluding to the Domestically grown weed that casual weed smokers buying from passionless business will never get to see. Either way, I could have pointed out that quality control is one of the more often noted benefits, in theory.

> In a more serious tone, I was alluding to the Domestically grown weed that casual weed smokers buying from passionless business will never get to see. Are you using `Domestically grown' with a meaning that's different from `grown in the same country as the consumer'?

Yes, I am. Domus means house or home. You know, homegrown. False friend right there. I guess when corporations are people, nations are houses and nationally grown crops may just as well be domestic.

Still stands to reason, as with other industrialized crops, that the selection does still not favor taste over yield, speed and looks, nevermind health factors with regard to the fertilizers and pesticides used. Contrary to what the OP might imply, it's not the best thing since sliced bread. I'm not even going of on the tangent about all natural garening, because the ecosystem has ways to fix itself better than a gardner could treat fungi and all that he can't even see, because then I would sound like a spiritual, paranoid pot head, while agricultural engineering seems amazing, but probably dangerous in the wrong hands.

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#187

Post by logibly »

Why was marijuana in the "illegal" list in the place ? Any scientific studies that it is more harmful then alcohol or smoking ? Here in India it is legal and part of the religious traditions since thousands of years. It's known as "bhang" in hindi.

Essentially legalizing is just getting thing right which was wrong earlier.

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#188

Post by golergka »

cnp wrote: post #17
anon987 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's to hoping people realize and deal with the real gateway drug: Prescription opiates

Here's to hoping people realize and deal with the real gateway drug: Alcohol, that great destroyer of worlds, marriages, cultures, physical health and particularly the brain, time (hangovers, boredom), coping strategies (emotional pain), real pain (coping strategies), poor decision making (you know it), and so on. Start here, and come into it with a few entrenched problems, and sure enough you'll find yourself elsewh…

> Here's to hoping people realize and deal with the real gateway drug

I think they already tried a certain approach, about hundred years ago

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#189

Post by citizensixteen »

cygnus_a wrote: post #2

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).

>This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy.

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...

Re: Legal marijuana is taking a bite out of drug cartels' profits

#190

Post by golergka »

jqm wrote: post #35
cygnus_a wrote: post #2

This is one of the main reasons I support legalization and/or decriminalization of all drugs. Demand is demand, and a black market economy is worse than a transparent & regulated economy. I think it's still necessary to focus on reducing demand (through education and self-help, not punishment).

I'm of the opinion people should be able to do what they want. And certainly drugs being illegal causes more problems than it solves. That being said, here is a case to think about. 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 f…

I don't think that meth is the point of this story. There are a lot of ways to trade off your health for higher productivity, not necessarily with illegal drugs. Professional athletes do this with extensive training and accepting injury rates. Salarymen do it with 80 hour workweeks.

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?

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