Posted on 08/21/2019 10:37:29 AM PDT by SleeperCatcher
A new study by the non-partisan RAND Corporation helps explain why it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to ever stop the illicit drug trade: It’s worth tens of billions of dollars per year.
Researchers at the think tank wrote in their report that illegal narcotics generate some $150 billion annually, or as much as the amusement and gambling industry generated in 2016.
The exhaustive analysis of drug use and spending data contained in the report indicates that there are about 30 million chronic drug users in the U.S. alone as of 2016, with major increases in the number of methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin users.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenationalsentinel.com ...
“Ok, Can’t stop it so let’s just let it go..................”
You don’t have any other choice.
It’s going to happen.
Would it put most of the 150 billion into legal circulation?
Easy - ending Prohibition of the drug alcohol reduced organized crime to bit players in the alcohol market.
As far as that goes, if my government unfortunately decides to make me into an outlaw, then, so help me God, I will be the best outlaw that I can possibly be.
So having a drink and of alcohol or a hit on a joint damns you? Does all illegal drug use require repentance? I made use of a prescription drug not in keeping with its FDA approved application which is illegal. Do I need to repent? Is my conversion rate in danger of being lost? Just curious.
Amen! The only thing government can do about the drug problem is keep making things worse with prohibition.
The battle against alcoholism occurs entirely within the alcoholic.
It’s an individual fight between a man, his own demon and God.
It does not involve you or society.
“Technology has the solution” YEPPER, and the answer is a dozen drones visiting the palaces of the MEXICAN DRUG LORDS !!
The War on Drugs is welfare for dealers.
I doubt there would be more people taking them than there are now. I certainly wouldn't take them.
Really? You mean you're less afraid of the remote chance of arrest than you are of addiction and death?! /s
If there was no profit in them then there would be far less drug gang murders, and far less robberies and burglaries by addicts who need to finance an expensive habit. $150 billion is a low estimate - the money going to the drug dealers. But add in all the police, interdiction, incarceration, the deaths, the property crimes and higher costs of insurance. It’s probably costing America $500 billion to $1 trillion a year.
But Drug War supporters would suffer the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be enjoying themselves in a manner of which the Drug War supporters disapprove.
Bingo. The uniparty refuses to shut down the southern border because they are either getting paid or getting their drugs from the smugglers. or both.
It’s more than money. It’s the intersectionality of criminal behavior. Often tied to trafficking, many other crimes. The profit margins on selling, say fully automatic weapons, submersibles, drug running vehicles is all tied together.
Tax free cash.
“So having a drink and of alcohol or a hit on a joint damns you?”
Immoderate behavior highly endangers your soul, for it tends to distract from your mission in life (after all, that is the definition of immoderate), which is to defeat the grip of one’s original sin (when born into the world with which we are all afflicted) and actual sin (which we all tend toward) and to ultimately reach heaven.
That is not to say all consuming of mind altering substances is immoderate. Having a drink and enjoying some of its effects are not inherently evil. Drunkenness is.
How about a death penalty for using? As long as there are users there
will always be a seller...but on the other hand if all the users are locked up or dead there is no market. We have always gone at this problem from the wrong side..
Another way to fix it is to make all drugs free. Get a big building and put piles of heron, cocaine, marijuana down. Let people come in and use all they want. The drug users will all kill themselves right there...the sellers are not the problem.
“The fact that illicit drug trade in prison can’t be stopped ought to be a pretty big clue that you can’t stop it”
Good point. But they probably don’t want to stop it. Dea is probably a lot worse. Basically this country is governed by secret police agencies operating under globalist direction.
“Technology has the solution - genetically modify drug sniffing dogs to eat drugs without getting sick. Clone them and let them loose.”
Do you like to torture animals?
“Can you imagine what our society would be like if we hadn’t fought the drug battle?”
But are we really doing that? Since 1970 when the dea was established, billions have been spent and drug overdoses are still going up. You can’t expect a secret police state agency that has a vested interest in keeping the war on drugs going forever to just “win” themselves out of a job, do you?
Same thing with the war on poverty, welfare agencies never get smaller and the war is never won.
Investigate dea, build the border wall, take the troops protecting the poppy crop out of Afganistan
Just mix 10% fentanyl with the drugs coming in and the problem would solve itself.
BS, there would be a hundred guys who are next inline to be the king fighting to take over their territory.
The problem is that there are huge profits to be made by the distribution of drugs. Take away the profit, then you will not have people killing for all the dirty money.
It is no different than the people who buy cigarettes in NC, drive them up to NY/NJ and sell them for a big profit because the difference in price without the state tax.
The same thing happens here in NH with liquor on a smaller scale. I see people for MA here at the NH state liquor stores loading up vans in the parking lot. The difference in the price of a 1.75 liter bottle of top shelf booze between MA/NH can be $15 or more. So, businesses come up here and buy their booze. If the MA liquor commission catches them, they may lose their license.
It is the greed to get rich that drives the drug trade. There will always be addicts. Just like there will always be alcoholics.
There were such laws passed and performed that were very effective. One example began in China during their Revolution.
The Chinese had been through the Opium Wars, which all began with the British who bought Chinese tea, paying with metallic silver. Pretty soon the English ran very low on silver, so the British nobility decided to find something the Chinese would not only buy, but pay for in gold and silver. The British East Company literally had warehouses full of opium. So they sold it to China.
The Chinese nobility did their very best to stop the British Opium Trade, but failed when the Royal Navy and Marines, plus the English Army used their superior weapons and military organizations against the Chinese who tried to stop the drug trade. For a couple of centuries the Chinese lost the drug war “Bigly.”
One Chinese faction, a criminal triad called The Green Gang was in the drug trade. Its leader was Chiang Kai Shek, the Nationalist who was fighting the Communists under Mao. After Mao and the Communists won. Their first move was to kill all of the Green Gang triad selling drugs they could find.
Then they gave addicts a choice. If they stopped using drugs they could live. However if they used drugs even once in the future they were publicly executed. After a few tens of millions of Chinese drug addicts were shot the drug problem was solved.
Today drugs are not a problem in China.
So, let’s summarize. What was the economic reason Britain forced China to buy and use opium? IT WAS CAUSED BY A BALANCE OF PAYMENTS PROBLEM. TEA WAS COSTING BRITAIN TOO MUCH CASH, SO THEY BROUGHT IN THEIR ARMY, NAVY, AND MARINES TO BREAK CHINA’S ECONOMY.
China has never forgotten this.
UNFORTUNATELY, CHINA IS THE WINNER OF OUR PRESENT BALANCE OF PAYMENTS SITUATION. WE CAN’T HAVE THIS GO ON MUCH LONGER. WHAT WILL WE DO TO PREVENT CHINA FROM GETTING TOO MUCH OF OUR ECONOMY. BUT THE US MUST DO SOMETHING.
This long screed is to tell us what the effective war on drugs will require: firing squads, a nation wide determination to use mortal force to control addicts and terminate them with extreme prejudice.
I don’t think we have the stomach for this. Besides that too much money is involved.
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