War on Drugs

Surely this is a good argument to legalise it, use the proceeds to further drug education & get rid of most of the criminal element, bring it out of the shadows - after all it is plainly lucrative, so why not indulge people in their chosen vice - if controlled they are the only ones harmed.
I think you'd better read his post more carefully, you obviously completely missed the point. The druggies may be the only ones "harmed' by their habit, but it is the rest of the population who become targets for the crime to support their habit and also the cost of mental institutions and hospitals to house them.
 
I think you'd better read his post more carefully, you obviously completely missed the point. The druggies may be the only ones "harmed' by their habit, but it is the rest of the population who become targets for the crime to support their habit and also the cost of mental institutions and hospitals to house them.

Then all the more reason to legalise this industry. The point is that demand has created and funded crime families, who are perpetrating violence, against each other, with innocents caught in the middle. Also the addicts would have a proper place to go for their fix - and could thus be controlled. THe revenues from "taxing" this habit could go towards education programmes, health programmes etc. As for drug addicts resorting to crime to get their fix - which they do now, would they be any worse than alcoholics, nicotine fiends etc who resort to crime to feed their habits?

Whilst I dislike drug addicts, I pity them and if we as a modern society can do something to remove the criminal elements hold and power over them - that is for society's benefit & makes money for the govt concerned.
 
US law fights submarine-like boats hauling cocaine

Thought this would be useful to add to the thread

US law fights submarine-like boats hauling cocaine



capt.7a988d0b7b674847870c1ddfdf260f2a.colombia_narco_subs_ny394.jpg


By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer Frank Bajak, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 5, 1:05 pm ET
BOGOTA – It's a game played out regularly on the high seas off Colombia's Pacific coast: A U.S. Navy helicopter spots a vessel the size of a humpback whale gliding just beneath the water's surface.
A Coast Guard ship dispatches an armed team to board the small, submarine-like craft in search of cocaine. Crew members wave and jump into the sea to be rescued, but not before they open flood valves and send the fiberglass hulk and its cargo into the deep.
Colombia has yet to make a single arrest in such scuttlings because the evidence sinks with the so-called semi-submersible.
A new U.S. law and proposed legislation in Colombia aim to thwart what has become South American traffickers' newest preferred means of getting multi-ton loads to Mexico and Central America.
Twelve people have been arrested under the Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act of 2008 since it went into effect in October. It outlaws such unregistered craft plying international waters "with the intent to evade detection." Crew members are subject to up to 15 years in prison.
"It's very likely a game-changer," said Jay Bergman, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's regional director, based in Colombia. "You don't get a get-out-of-jail free card anymore."
The law faces legal challenges, though. The defendants have filed pretrial motions saying it violates due process and is an unconstitutional application of the so-called High Seas clause, which allows U.S. prosecution of felonies at sea.
The vessels, hand-crafted in coastal jungle camps from fiberglass and wood, have become the conveyance of choice for large loads, humping nearly a third of U.S.-bound cocaine northward through the Pacific, said Coast Guard Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, commander of the Joint Interagency Task Force-South based in Key West, Fla.
That's up from just 14 percent in 2007, according to the task force, which oversees interdiction south of the United States.
Colombian Navy chief Adm. Guillermo Barrera told a counterterrorism conference in Bogota last week that 23 semi-submersibles capable of carrying between 4 and 10 metric tons each have been seized in the past three years.
Though semi-submersibles aren't new to cocaine transport, a bigger, sleeker, more sophisticated variety that average about 60 feet (18 meters) in length began emerging three years ago. Earlier versions, christened "floating coffins," couldn't compete with fishing trawlers and speed boats known as "go-fasts" for maritime transport of drugs.
But drug agents started policing trawlers better, leading traffickers to new methods.
With just over a foot of above-water clearance and V-shaped prows designed to leave minimal wakes, semi-submersibles are nearly impossible for surface craft to detect visually or by radar outside a range of about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters.)
That accounts for their relatively high success rate.
They are propelled by 250 to 350 horsepower diesel engines and take about a week averaging 7 knots (8 mph) to reach Mexico's shores, Colombian and U.S. investigators said.
Fuel tanks carry about 3,000 gallons of diesel, so no refueling is needed on the 2,000-mile journey from Colombia north.
With cocaine in Mexico fetching $6,500 per kilo — about triple the Colombian price, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — an average 7-metric-ton load yields $30 million.
Crews have no problem scuttling the vessels after off-loading their cargo, investigators say. The roughly $1 million spent on each craft is simply written off as the cost of doing business.
Though authorities caught 11 semi-subs last year in international waters off the Pacific — with 7 tons of cocaine seized in one off Mexico in September — they estimate from intelligence and interdiction that another 60 delivered their cargo, Nimmich said.
About the same amount will get through this year, predicts Adm. James Stavridis, the U.S. Southern Command chief. He told a mid-March U.S. Senate hearing they would have a potential cargo capacity of over 330 metric tons.
So far this year, crews sunk five semi-subs off Colombia's coast after being pursued by drug enforcers.
Two of the crews were arrested, plus a third one plucked out of the Pacific on Dec. 31 about 100 miles off Colombia. All are being tried in a Tampa, Fla., federal court, said Joseph Ruddy, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting them.
Semi-subs confiscated on land in Colombia since 2007 have given authorities a good glimpse into the state of the art.
In November, authorities arrested a man they consider the most ingenious semi-sub builder. Tammer Portocarrero, a rotund 45-year-old, used a shrimp boat fleet as cover, said Capt. Luis German Borrero, the navy chief in the Pacific port of Buenaventura at the time.
They seized two of his subs at a jungle shipyard in a remote estuary south of Buenaventura, Borrero said.
Portocarrero, whose extradition the United States has requested, allegedly began building vessels as early as mid-2007, as well as recruiting crews.
The made-to-order vessels have become increasingly sophisticated. Engines and exhaust systems are typically shielded to make their heat signatures nearly invisible to infrared sensors used by U.S. and allied aircraft trying to find them.
The cooling system of a semi-sub seized off Costa Rica in September piped engine exhaust through the hull and discharged it at ambient temperature, Nimmich said.
Unfortunately for crews, such design sophistication doesn't extend to their quarters.
"The conditions are terrible," Borrero said. "They don't have bathrooms. The beds are two mattresses draped over the fuel tanks, and the pilot can barely see through very small windows" in mini-cabin.
"The noise and heat must be something infernal," he added.
In a report provided to The Associated Press, Colombia's domestic intelligence agency said a four-person crew was sharing a payoff of about $50,000 per trip before the new U.S. law. Crews now demand about 25 percent more because of the higher risk of getting caught, U.S. law enforcement officials say.
GPS location devices and satellite phones are standard onboard equipment, and the technology is expected to advance.
Law enforcement officials say they already have unconfirmed reports of robotic semi-subs in action.
And with such vessels, Nimmich said, it's not drug smuggling that worries him, but a larger potential for peril:
"I think that what makes semi-submersibles a larger national security threat is: What else can they carry?"


Link
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090405..._narco_subs;_ylt=AiqRr7kyDJUxC.wrxW3Ro1m3IxIF
 
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Nothing a Ma-Duece or a few well placed depth charges can't handle.

Coasties could have a field day.
 
Then all the more reason to legalise this industry. The point is that demand has created and funded crime families, who are perpetrating violence, against each other, with innocents caught in the middle. Also the addicts would have a proper place to go for their fix - and could thus be controlled. THe revenues from "taxing" this habit could go towards education programmes, health programmes etc. As for drug addicts resorting to crime to get their fix - which they do now, would they be any worse than alcoholics, nicotine fiends etc who resort to crime to feed their habits?

Whilst I dislike drug addicts, I pity them and if we as a modern society can do something to remove the criminal elements hold and power over them - that is for society's benefit & makes money for the govt concerned.
Drug addicts are fools with no one to blame but themselves. I don't see why I should have to fund their medical and mental health problems as well as the crime that is a direct result of the industry.

Legalising dope will just encourage more weak willed and impressionable idiots to try it out, as if we don't already have enough problems with Tobacco and Alcohol. As little good as it is, at least the law does stop a certain percentage of persons from trying it out. (those with at least a semblance of a brain).
 
Legalising dope will just encourage more weak willed and impressionable idiots to try it out, as if we don't already have enough problems with Tobacco and Alcohol. As little good as it is, at least the law does stop a certain percentage of persons from trying it out. (those with at least a semblance of a brain).

Is that why so many people try alcohol? Nicotine? Yes we have problems from these, but alcohol & drug use have been prevalent since centurion was a rank. It is political groups which have decided what is "acceptable" & what is not. The law controls access to alcohol & nicotine, the same could happen for drugs. And like both of the legal vices, drugs could be heavily taxed as a further means of control.

I understand your point, mine is that whilst I deplore the situation, drugs are here & here to stay - because there is a demand for them. It is better to control the situation than sweep it under the carpet & let it create a sub-culture & criminal underworld - which is what is happening now.

The definition of madness is to keep doing the same action, expecting a different outcome - which is what we (society) keep doing, maybe we could try a different tack?
 
Is that why so many people try alcohol? Nicotine? Yes we have problems from these, but alcohol & drug use have been prevalent since centurion was a rank. It is political groups which have decided what is "acceptable" & what is not. The law controls access to alcohol & nicotine, the same could happen for drugs. And like both of the legal vices, drugs could be heavily taxed as a further means of control.
Yes, the fact that it is legal, is largely behind the reason so many kids try Smoking and drinking. It's legal, so where is the harm in it? Did you ever know a first timer who actually enjoyed the taste of cigarettes, .. yet they went on as a result of it being legal and the thought that it made them "cool".

The laws are slowly, (Ever so slowly) closing in on Tobacco and Alcohol, I think that it is only a matter of time before we see them much more severely curbed, or even banned. There is talk here of a zero Alcohol policy for drivers, and already smoking is banned in all public buildings and many shopping malls etc. Things like this, along with education has cut the number of young people taking up smoking considerably

My argument is that if it were illegal, many would not have tried it in the first place, and even among those that did many would have never done it again. .

I understand your point, mine is that whilst I deplore the situation, drugs are here & here to stay - because there is a demand for them. It is better to control the situation than sweep it under the carpet & let it create a sub-culture & criminal underworld - which is what is happening now.
If you care to think about it logically, what you are advocating is exactly the same as saying, "To cut down on Breaking and entering, we should leave our houses unlocked" Yes it would certainly stop the crime from occurring, but the costs to society would be horrific. At least so long as it is illegal, it is marginalised, and that in itself minimises the damage. We may not be able to stop it, but there is no reason why we should give up trying.

The definition of madness is to keep doing the same action, expecting a different outcome - which is what we (society) keep doing, maybe we could try a different tack?
That is a truism it is at first glance logical, but it does not survive for long under close scrutiny. What you are saying might be true if there were only one option, however there are many other simpler and less damaging options, than making it legal.

Also, what you are not taking into account, is the fact that not so many years ago, many of these drugs were legal. (Cocaine, Cannabis, Opiates) It was only the fact that people saw what damage they were doing to society that saw them legislated against. Some remained on Pharmacists shelves as prescription only drugs, and even many of those are still only used as a last resort due to their insidious and damaging nature when used .

So your argument for legalisation is completely without basis, as it has all been done before and problems are well known and documented.
 
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I completely agree with senojekips. The druggies are hurting not only themselves but the innocent people. Drugs do harm to everyone not just those using it.
 
So do alcohol - legal, nicotine - legal, carbon monoxide (car exhaust fumes) - legal and so on and so forth. I am not even going to go on to name every thing that scientists have discovered is bad for the human body - it is a wonder we managed to make it out of the Iron Age!!

My point is that drugs are prevalent - whether you like it or not. I'm not saying that drug users are responsible members of society, neither are drink drivers, smokers who smoke around other people or people who live in high risk fire areas and have wooden houses, or people who live in flood areas but don't have flood insurance etc etc etc. So why not turn the situation to the advantage of society as a whole, rather than marginalising some people so that they are at the mercy of criminals?

For the record, I smoke, outside & away from my kids, I drink and I drive, but I don't combine the 2, as for the rest I've made sure that I'm covered.
 
My point is that drugs are prevalent - whether you like it or not. I'm not saying that drug users are responsible members of society, neither are drink drivers, smokers who smoke around other people or people who live in high risk fire areas and have wooden houses, or people who live in flood areas but don't have flood insurance etc etc etc. So why not turn the situation to the advantage of society as a whole, rather than marginalising some people so that they are at the mercy of criminals?
The fact that these things happen is no reason to legitimise them, thereby agreeng for the public to pick up the tab to support their happening.

They are not at the mercy of anyone, as no one made them become involved. It was a free choice and they were aware of the consequences. In short they were idiots, and now they have to pay for the stupidity of their decisions.

We already pay to clean up the mess, lets not increase the mess ten fold, by making it legal.
 
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The fact that these things happen is no reason to legitimise them, thereby agreeng for the public to pick up the tab to support their happening.

They are not at the mercy of anyone, as no one made them become involved. It was a free choice and they were aware of the consequences. In short they were idiots, and now they have to pay for the stupidity of their decisions.

We already pay to clean up the mess, lets not increase the mess ten fold, by making it legal.

As we pay for cancer victims who contracted through smoking, alcoholics who can't hold down jobs or end up with chronic medical conditions and so on.

News flash we, society, is paying for the heathcare of these people anyway, why not control it & make it generate money to fund this healthcare, rather than having these social programmes being a drain on the public budget, subject to cuts when times get hard or budget balancing comes around?

I still say the fact that these drugs are controlled by criminals & terrorists makes them a threat to society - we need to do do something different rather than finger wagging, hurling abuse, jailing & supposed social stigma 'cos that ain't worked for the last 100 years or so!
 
As we pay for cancer victims who contracted through smoking, alcoholics who can't hold down jobs or end up with chronic medical conditions and so on. ... etc., etc
That is my point exactly. We do it because they contracted these problems doing something that is legal, so why would we wish to add to our woes and legalise drugs?
 
The point is that we are picking up the medical tab for drug users, and for the victims of their violence & crime - why not try & make it contribute to society & remove the criminal control?
 
The point is that we are picking up the medical tab for drug users, and for the victims of their violence & crime - why not try & make it contribute to society & remove the criminal control?
The answer is simple if you care to think about it.

The problem and associated cost would multiply 100 fold, and the taxpayers simply don't need the grief.

Like I said, what you are suggesting is akin to cutting the cost of criminal investigation by getting rid of the police force.

We have already seen the cost of legalising Tobacco and alcohol, to our credit we are not going to make the same mistake again.
 
Simplistic solutions are short on analysis, and harmful when simlpistic solutions are used. Did you forget the success of prohibition? As a result of that legislation, we developed a criminal class that is still with us. Do you really believe laws against or laws allowing drugs will make any real difference to those who use them? Did prohibition stop the use of alcohol?

I agree with legalizing because it removes the criminal incentive. An addict can get his drugs legally, and has no need of victimizing anyone to obtain a fix.

As for cost; some states such as Wisconsin spend $30,000.00 a year to incarcerate drug users. A kid selling a joint for a buck is considered a dealer and could go to prison for a term of 1 to 10 years. The non-criminal kid who sells a joint faces the same penalty of prison as the career offender/pro-drug dealer. The law does not distinguish the two, and your son or daughter ( who might be experimenting with substances), could get the same sentence as the career drug dealer. Makes no sense.

As for the stereotype that users are idiots, had choices, etc------must be nice to be able to foresee your future, and to be so strong that you can take on clinical depression, surviving sexual abuse, experiencing poverty, hopelessness, and pain. And do all that without reverting to alcohol or drugs. Sometimes choices are predetermined or limited by circumstances.

Further, not all drug users become addicts not all users become criminals. But a law can come in and label you a criminal for possession or use, and place you in a cage, regardless of your background or past good citizenship.

Make it legal and users will come to those who can help. Legalizing will give us less expensive options than imprisonment. Treatment is always cheaper that security, and it becomes the best security, to know what and where the problem is coming from in any society.
 
Simplistic solutions are short on analysis, and harmful when simlpistic solutions are used. Did you forget the success of prohibition? As a result of that legislation, we developed a criminal class that is still with us. Do you really believe laws against or laws allowing drugs will make any real difference to those who use them? Did prohibition stop the use of alcohol
No law has ever prevented crime from taking place, but that does not mean that we should just get rid of all our laws.

Your example is what you so aptly label as "simplistic solutions that are short on any form of logical analysis".

Further, not all drug users become addicts not all users become criminals. But a law can come in and label you a criminal for possession or use, and place you in a cage, regardless of your background or past good citizenship.
Pardon??... of course they become criminals, the fact that they have used drugs is against the law and therefore they are by default criminals. Murderers are still murderers, and subject to the full force of the law, regardless of the fact that they may have previously been good citizens. The same applies to any criminal.
 
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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

Prohibition is insanity. The longer it lasts the more suffering there will be on both sides of the issue.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,... why don't we stop all crime by just not having any laws at all. It will save a the tax payers a fortune and countless hours of cops time. They could sit back and play solitaire all day.

I think that the people who think of these hare brained ideas have smoked too much weed themselves. It's neither logical nor practical.

Where do people get these loony ideas, and more to the point, who in their right mind would believe them. Hell,... with thinking like that, we could just shortcut the whole system and resort to anarchy so all the nutters of the world could just do as they like, wouldn't it be a wonderful place to live?

Suffering???,... there's no suffering, just idiots who made stupid choices and are now living with the consequences. If that's suffering,... lets have more of it I say
 
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