31–40 of 56 posts
I wonder how much they would pay for some of the old Soviet diesel subs - they are properly to expensive to scuttle after one trip, but they can properly carry a lot more than these homemade ones, and they would be better at evading radar too.
That's the problem with wars - they lead to arms races.... The sooner western governments start looking into the development of safer recreational drugs (ie no worse than alcohol, and preferably with low dependence), the sooner we can get rid of drug lords, drug wars, and all the killing and suffering that goes with it. Stupid stupid stupid....
legalization itself would make drugs safer. half the problem with illegal drug safety is the inconsistency in potency. But when products are legal, brands develop that have an interest in delivering quality. And they have bank accounts. That guy in the alley really doesn't. If I remember correctly, I think there's even a chemical you can add to cocaine that prevents overdose. No real incentive to do that when its an…
I did a little digging around a little more than a year ago when I had read about the narcotics submersibles. With this step up to full submarines I'm thinking that the people using these can now have them built in almost any location next to the sea around the world. Somalia would seem to be a good place to build, no government to sieze them.
You could program that to zig-zag across the ocean and land on a beach somewhere, where you could extract the cargo, refuel it, and send it back.
Both this submarine and the semi-submersibles they had earlier have crews. It'd be very interesting if they can develop something completely autonomous. E.g. a 10 meter tube that navigates by GPS, occasionally surfaces to get its bearings, and has enough diesel for a ~5000km ocean voyage. You could program that to zig-zag across the ocean and land on a beach somewhere, where you could extract the cargo, refuel it, an…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_glider
The practical range of these things is literally ocean-spanning. Program these on roundabout courses and land them in random places on the coast. They would be very hard to track.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it will be taxed, and probably at a higher rate than other products. The trick is to tax it at such a level that fraud (smuggling) is contained within acceptable bounds. For example, normal VAT here in the Netherlands (only country I know the rates of by heart, I have no reason to believe that it's significantly different in the rest of Western Europe) is 19% ; cigarettes are taxed at close to 300 % (VAT +…
Seeing the sales of cigarettes on reservation that do not honor state taxes and the number of customers buying, I would say paragraph one is not completely true. Smuggling is happening, it is just from a legal source.
I take it that you mean that (Native American or Aboriginal?) reservations have autonomy when it comes to taxation and that they leverage that to attract tobacco customers from outside the reservation. Which makes sense, but I'm hard pressed to believe that it's a significant amount of total consumption. My back-of-the-envelope calculations (based on estimates of the World Bank and 40% of the EU population smoking 10 cigarettes a day) say that in the EU on less than 10% of all cigarettes smoked, no taxes have been paid. Which is not that much.
Of course if you have numbers that show that in the case you indicate the percentages are different I'd be interested to learn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_Cowboys is a good documentary on the drug trade that has an interesting portion on the use of submersibles in the drug trade. That documentary came out in 2006 and it showed how drug runners had already evolved past these vessels by using containers shaped like driftwood logs and attaching them by long ropes to fishing vessels. The driftwood containers had gps trackers on them so…
That's the problem with wars - they lead to arms races.... The sooner western governments start looking into the development of safer recreational drugs (ie no worse than alcohol, and preferably with low dependence), the sooner we can get rid of drug lords, drug wars, and all the killing and suffering that goes with it. Stupid stupid stupid....
legalization itself would make drugs safer. half the problem with illegal drug safety is the inconsistency in potency. But when products are legal, brands develop that have an interest in delivering quality. And they have bank accounts. That guy in the alley really doesn't. If I remember correctly, I think there's even a chemical you can add to cocaine that prevents overdose. No real incentive to do that when its an…
What we should do is make it illegal for hospitals to treat overdoses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
legalization itself would make drugs safer. half the problem with illegal drug safety is the inconsistency in potency. But when products are legal, brands develop that have an interest in delivering quality. And they have bank accounts. That guy in the alley really doesn't. If I remember correctly, I think there's even a chemical you can add to cocaine that prevents overdose. No real incentive to do that when its an…
A living customer is far more profitable even to drug lords than a dead one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
legalization itself would make drugs safer. half the problem with illegal drug safety is the inconsistency in potency. But when products are legal, brands develop that have an interest in delivering quality. And they have bank accounts. That guy in the alley really doesn't. If I remember correctly, I think there's even a chemical you can add to cocaine that prevents overdose. No real incentive to do that when its an…
Might it not be better to make drugs less safe? Kill off all the users, and there's no market. What we should do is make it illegal for hospitals to treat overdoses.
And maybe excessive parking tickets?