Drug War Fails to Dent U.S. Supply

[Yeager]

In the end the sun will burn out and we will not have developed a way to perpetuate the species beyond this solar system and.......

[rpm]

The "War on Drugs" is too big of a moneymaker for law enforcement to let slip away. It would be like WalMart cutting off it's Chinese suppliers.

[culero]

Originally posted by Casca
snip
To paraphrase Marie Antionette: "Let them play Uno."

Yes, exactly.

No matter how well you can make the argument that drugs are bad - whether you say "only the really hard stuff I've seen the effects of and am therefore scared of" or just apply a blanket as official policy does now, you're ignoring reality.

I do NOT contend that drugs are harmless, not even pot. What I do contend is that the fallout created by the prohibition of them is in its aggregate WORSE for our society than the harm drug use itself causes now, and would if these drugs were legal to obtain and use.

Those of you who support the "War", take a step back, clear your mind into an open state for a moment, and think.

Do we know alcohol is dangerous? Do we know it can have very harmful effects on folks who abuse it?

Now, the point - what's been the most effective method to combat the ills caused by alcohol abuse? Prohibition, or what we've been doing the last few decades?

There's a better approach to the problem.

culero

[Casca]

RE: Culero's post

I do NOT contend that drugs are harmless, not even pot. What I do contend is that the fallout created by the prohibition of them is in its aggregate WORSE for our society than the harm drug use itself causes now, and would if these drugs were legal to obtain and use.

---snip ---


Just so.  Wish I'd said it like that.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Jackal1
Yea , I know the meth market has always been there. What I was referring to was the fact of making the over the counter stuff harder to get and changing some of it`s makeup, we in turn, started another illegal market for the supply of ingredients/chemicals.
  In other words , instead of stopping or even slowing down the meth market, it did just the opposite by opening up another illegal market.

Jackal if we are making the ingredients for meth  harder to come by then how are we NOT stopping or at least putting a dent in the supply of meth?

Also, the article I read was that the drug manufacturers werent jsut making sudafed harder to get they were changing the chemical composition of it all together.  IF a drug isnt readily used in the regular community than it is easier tracked/less available.

[Jackal1]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
Jackal if we are making the ingredients for meth  harder to come by then how are we NOT stopping or at least putting a dent in the supply of meth?
 

  That`s the point . They will not be harder to come by. It just starts another illegal trade. The manufacturing of meth will not be stopped or even slowed down. Just another trade has been added. This has been tried to be dealt with for as long as I can remember with exactly the opposite results. It`s smoke and mirrors bud.
Headlines, make do, throw the dog a bone to appear to be doing something.

Also, the article I read was that the drug manufacturers werent jsut making sudafed harder to get they were changing the chemical composition of it all together.  IF a drug isnt readily used in the regular community than it is easier tracked/less available.

Hehe. Sudafed is a small, small part of it. Sudafed is not needed.
  Do you have any idea how many variants they are?
  It`s sort of comical in a way.
 P2 was sat down on. Big whoop. Another 15 variants before the water could get cold. Back in them days you were looking at about a 3 day process with a fairly sophisticated process. It still was no big deal to learn.
  Now you are looking at 3 to 4 hours with so many different directions to go in it is unreal.
  About the same time the "big crunch" was supposed to be doing so much, lab grade ether was also sit on real hard. Another big whoop. Brake cleaner, starter fluid, etc. No biggy.
  Used to be around here the farmers would have have 5 to 20 anhydrous trailers lined up at the end of the fields way back in the country on unpaved roads. They never worried about them because who in the hell would want to even be around an anhydrous tank, not to mention bother it in any way. Well that changed pretty quick. Any less than moron could make a couple of hundred bucks off of hitting one of these tanks in less than 5 minutes to sell to a meth cook. Got so bad the farmers nearly had to sleep with these things.
  Red Devil lye, road flares, brake cleaner, starter fluid, lithium from batteries, Kodak developing chemicals..........hell you name it.  Just some of the things that have been used in the process.
  I`ve ran into guys that couldn`t spell their own name, but could turn out a couple of grand in crank with no prob in a short time. That`s where all the supposed regulation has gotten so far.

[Gunslinger]

well if I stopped the sale of tomatoe sauce tomorrow at all supermarkets.  Dont you think it will effect the amount of pizzas made that day?

[Jackal1]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
well if I stopped the sale of tomatoe sauce tomorrow at all supermarkets.  Dont you think it will effect the amount of pizzas made that day?

Not if you didn`t need the the sauce to begin with. That`s the point you are missing.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Jackal1
Not if you didn`t need the the sauce to begin with. That`s the point you are missing.

sorry I must be ignorant in the manufactur of meth.  I thaught (my first mistake ig uess) that you could make it using several over the counter products.  Guess I was wrong.

[Jackal1]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
sorry I must be ignorant in the manufactur of meth.  I thaught (my first mistake ig uess) that you could make it using several over the counter products.  Guess I was wrong.

LOL
Nope, you are right. You can.
It`s just that there are many ways to go about it.
  You just don`t need Eckerds, /wally World, Habu-mart, etc to do it.
  The availibility of ingredients goes way beyond over the counter.

[Holden McGroin]

More than a dozen states have restricted access, either by allowing only pharmacies to sell drugs with pseudoephedrine or making retailers sell them from staffed counters. A May report by the Office of National Drug Control Policy found a 50 percent drop in the number of meth labs in Oklahoma and Oregon, two of the first states to enact such restrictions.

link

Seems like there may be a few effective strategies, at least short term.

[Jackal1]

Hehe! Smoke and mirrors. Give the dog a bone. If he is hungry enough he will bite into it.
  I love reports by state and Federal agencies. You can always depend on the accuracy.

[vorticon]

"
Do we know alcohol is dangerous? Do we know it can have very harmful effects on folks who abuse it? "

do you understand how alcohol and meth are different? apparently not.

[jEEZY]

most "precursors" are sold by bulk suppliers to "mega-labs." meth production has been moving away from small time cooks for awhile now. many of the ATF guys in my building are seeing a growing amount of meth coming up from mexico. they can manufacture there with little interefernce and simply have to ship it. this is a consequnce of meth prices becoming high in the midwest--in fact the cases I have been involved with shows that meth prices are on par with cocaine.

The point, moving psuedo-efedra from teh shelf to the pharmacist will  not even begin to address the problem. nor will changin the chemical make-up. these are political, and cosmetic manuvoers that signify nothing and have small effect on either demand or supply.

A solution. First legalize all drugs. Next, a condition to using drugs is that they must be consumed in a certain place (say an old army base converted), and the user must stay there until the effects of the particular drug have worn off. Third, that place must be wired for audio and video. Next, send the audio-video of the users to a couple of cable channels (e.g. cspan) for our entertainment, sell commercials on those channels, and volia we have turned our "drug problem" into a revenue stream. Moreover, exposing what these drugs do to people will be quite the deterent.

[Casca]

Originally posted by vorticon
"
Do we know alcohol is dangerous? Do we know it can have very harmful effects on folks who abuse it? "

do you understand how alcohol and meth are different? apparently not.

Well as a prior user of copious quantities of both substances I make no moral distinction between them.  They are both chemicals that alter mood and physiology.  They both have addictive potential if misused.  Not having used either for about 20 years now some differences are now apparent to me.

One difference is that the probability of being killed by a drunk driver exceeds the probablility of being killed by a speed freak by several orders of magnitude.  Meth actually enhances performance and military pilots are frequently given the first cousin of meth, amphetamine, when arduous duty cycles requre it.

Another difference is that, as a taxpayer, I'm required to fund the "war" against these miserable creatures as well as support cell blocks full of them.  

As citizens we are required to deal with more robberies, burglaries and turf war homocides that are, ironically, contingent upon the very success of that "war" (simple economics: cheap heroin or speed = fewer stolen color tvs).

We are all required to watch the constitution shredded vis a vis civil forfeiture.

I cook Bratwurst in beer, I think if I cooked them in meth they wouldn't taste right.

And lastly, for those that are sincerely worried about the health of the users, there is a big difference in alcohol and meth in that alcohol has quality controls, and meth is usually adultrated crap.

Those are just a few differences on the spur of the moment although there are probably others.  In my estimation most of these problems would be solved by decriminalization.