Spam it on facebook and it'll gather a million hits.. or likes. and signs.
[QUOTE=rooky;30042698]Stronger narcotics like what? Heroin for example can be a very safe drug given the right circumstances.
[url]http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=6555[/url][/QUOTE]
Heroin is non toxic :eng101:
[QUOTE=Natrox;30042679]Good point.
If you're talking about "lower-level" drugs.
The stronger narcotics will never be made legal, they would be too problematic because of the effects on health.[/QUOTE]
Use the money freed up from policing it to fund rehabilitation and medical care for it, while making legal hard drugs almost prohibitively expensive. People would probably still go to it because of assurance of quality and relative safety.
It cant hurt to sign
I signed it because war on drugs is silly.
[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;30044372]Use the money freed up from policing it to fund rehabilitation and medical care for it, while making legal hard drugs almost prohibitively expensive. People would probably still go to it because of assurance of quality and relative safety.[/QUOTE]
If they are prohibitively expensive, you're opening up the market to illegal sellers, and most of the hard drug addicts tend to support themselves with further drug crime and drug dealing (as opposed to property crime, which occurs, but not nearly as much as drug networking).
People inject black tar heroin into their veins.
That shit is supposed to white, not BLACK AND TARLIKE.
QA isn't that big of a deal to your average junkie.
Welp, I did my part. Hopefully something good will come of it.
I don't hold enormously strong views on drugs themselves, but I am very much against prohibition as a concept. You cannot hold back the tide of a majority public demand. The basic rules of free market economics will ensure that a supply is provided as long as demand outweighs the difficulties of supply. And only the basic rules will apply because it's a completely unregulated market. That means harmful-to-the-end-user practices like adulterating and diluting substances, ever stronger strains to maximise the gain from each successful smuggling, and extreme anti-competitive practices to keep prices high, e.g. gang shootings.
Even if you assume that all drugs are deadly and addictive, prohibition increases harm in every way. You cannot justify a drug war in terms of scientific evidence, or cost effectiveness, you cannot justify it in terms of harm to any involved party.
They only justification that isn't based on hypocrisy or outright lying is one of a strong moralistic principle against all drug use, and that's not something that the majority voted for in our democracy.
i thought Avazz was a facepunch member, hah.
[QUOTE=rooky;30042044]I know this, I did say other drugs were sold too :P The main source of income is drugs. They're rolling around in tanks! Over 35,000 were killed in the last 4 years. Anyway I don't want to be discussing this, just please sign it?[/QUOTE]
You realize the purpose of forums is discussion, right?
As TrouserDemon pointed out; the drug war relies a lot on the common misconception and or moralistic principle that all drug use is bad.
Especially ridiculous is that many people who take this as fact use the drugs that are legal and widely available. Not just alcohol and cigarettes but refined sugar ([url]http://www.lurj.org/article.php/vol1n1/sugar.xml[/url]) as well as caffeine and aspirin and many other products people use every day. The funny thing is that a lot of the legal drugs have illegal equivalents that are actually safer to the individual and society.
I'd rather a bunch of football hooligans smoked a load of weed and chilled out after the game than got pissed and violent.
I'd like to experiment with alternative proven recreational drugs to alcohol myself. I tried vaping cannabis with friends a few times and I have to say I like it far more than the obliteration of excessive alcohol consumption.
Nicotine addiction is far more harmful than smoking a bowl or 7.
Surely when it comes down to it, whatever substances you put in your body should be up to you and the government should educate people properly about the ups and downs but leave it to them to decide as an individual choice based on the information provided as well as their own investigation.
There's nowhere [I]near[/I] enough public support for this.
I signed this from DD.
[QUOTE=JustExtreme;30045915]Nicotine addiction is far more harmful than smoking a bowl or 7.[/QUOTE]
Nope. Tobacco addiction is though, but vaporizing nicotine is less harmful than vaporizing delta-9 THC.
You have my signature, and I hope this silly war ends soon.
[QUOTE=Elite Wolf;30046139]You have my signature, and I hope this silly war ends soon.[/QUOTE]
As long as there's demand the'll be a market.
[url=http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/05/11/mexican-drug-cartels/]here's a thing[/url]
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[img]http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/files/2011/05/Mexican-drug-cartels_CSS.jpg[/img]
[b]Drug cartels cause social ills[/b]
Unless you’ve had your head in a bucket since 2007, you are at least vaguely aware that Mexican drug cartels trafficking their goods into the US have caused significant social illness in Mexico, especially in areas close to the US border. Social illness here can be measured in cartel-driven murders, but that captures only the most gruesome, sensational branches of the drug virus. Besides the deaths are fear, anxiety, mistrustfulness as well as poverty, corruption, and vast inequality.
[b]Is mapping the right way to understand Mexico’s drug trafficking problem?[/b]
The graphics here try to pack all of the complexity and destruction of those social ills into maps. Maps are rational. They allow us to feel we have a handle on the components that make up a problem. In this case, I am sure they are not explaining the whole story. I’m also not sure they are trying to explain the whole story.
What I like about the first map is that the map makers lay out the obvious: which cartels are where. Then they go one step further and highlight the contested territory. In case the colors aren’t coming through clearly, the white areas are the disputed areas. There are a lot of white areas.
And yet…
One would expect most of the violence in a situation like this to be in the disputed areas. But that isn’t the case. Most of the violence is near the US border. The border is another kind of contested territory, one that is much more important than white areas as far as violence prevention is concerned. In fact, those areas aren’t governed by one cartel or another because those areas are not critically important to drug trafficking. None of the cartels much care.
So let’s take a look at another map because I’m thinking the first one implies that we should find violence in the middle of the country.
[b]Drugs and deaths in Mexico[/b]
[img]http://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/files/2011/05/mexican_cartels.jpg[/img]
This graphic shows not only traffic patterns – where do the drugs go? – but also maps of where the deaths have been. It quickly becomes clear that the drug-related deaths are up near the US border, not in the ‘disputed areas’ highlighted in the previous map. In this map, (thanks unnamed National Post graphic designer) that undisputed area is left unclaimed and unlabeled. That’s a more accurate way to understand those regions and the inset series of maps below the main map do a good job of visually locating cartel-related violence.
The other thing I love about this map is that it specifies *which* drugs are being trafficked. Call me crazy, but I have found it odd that there is a great deal of talk about ‘drugs’ in Mexico as if there is no good reason to talk about which drugs are being moved where. Why is it useful to know which drugs are going where? First, it’s nice to know which drugs because different drugs have different price points per volume and weight. Economics matter. If one drug has a higher profit margin than another because it retails for more per ounce but doesn’t cost much more to produce/transport, one could assume that it will become more popular. Then again, demand matters, too. Even if pot is easy to produce, doesn’t mean you can convince cocaine users to try weed. They probably already tried it and moved on.
Another reason it matters which drugs we’re talking about is that detection and apprehension vary from drug to drug. An easy example: a pot sniffing dog probably won’t lead authorities to a stash of ephedra. What’s more, being able to tell where things are coming from and going to means that it is easier for authorities to target weak points in the routes. We know from news stories (I recommend looking at the LATimes, see references below), we know that drug runners pour much energy into protecting the drug routes right at the US border. But they aren’t digging tunnels under all of Mexico. There are points in the chain of drug traffic that are more vulnerable. Some of those points are deep within Mexico where it might be difficult to get well-trained, cooperative authorities with the necessary tools and manpower to perform raids.
My main gripe about these graphics is that they display this problem as a Mexican problem. This is not a Mexican problem. It is a Mexico-US problem. The demand in the US is pulling all those drugs up from south of the border. Looking at it this way helps introduce conversations about economic imbalances. I imagine that one of the reasons drugs come from Mexico is the same reason that many large companies choose not to have large labor forces in the US: labor is cheaper in Mexico. Various instantiations of poverty also tend to encourage corruption; encouraging local police to fight the cartels is hard when they are out-gunned and out-manned by cartels who can afford to pay off whoever they want including witnesses, other cops, border agents, and whoever else is likely to become cooperative after the application of a bit of grease.
[b]Conclusion[/b]
The drug-related social illness in Mexico is an unfolding problem, one that has been discussed with more complexity elsewhere. I hope to illustrate that while the rationality of mapping patterns is appealing, it also tends to obscure complexity. It’s easier to misinform than inform with a map. They are deceivingly neat, these maps.
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[quote]Your conclusion about labor cost is a bit naive, for grow ups in north america can be an incredibly profit venture but also a highly risky one. What the Mexican drug cartels can do, which makes it difficult to operate in the same way in America, is to operate with some level of certainty and lack of enforcement. There is a comparative advantage in play but it is hardly that of labor cost, it has more to do with the legacy of PRI (rent seeking behaviour, which has less roots in poverty of the ‘working class’ and more of the ), the maturity of their organizations and the ability to absorb risk. If we can conceptualize the drug cartels as participating in an industrial sector of their own making, their ability to maintain the availability and stability in prices of drugs in america is incredible. It is an industrious activity both in scale and production.
Even legal and formal sector industries do not just only take into account labor cost when they relocate, they also take into account the regulatory environment they are moving into.
This post bothers me so much. I don’t understand why doesn’t author understand the role of regulation play in this industry and why doesn’t the author understand that drug production can exploit labor through violence. the cost of labor is mute compare the cost imposed on by regulations play a stronger role in their calculations as where they would locate their operations.[/quote]
[quote]Thanks for your comment and for giving me an opportunity to clarify. I agree that the regulatory regime is important and I didn’t mean to brush it aside in favor labor costs. There are multiple, complex institutional, political and economic variables in play.
On this particular point – labor costs vs. regulatory regimes – I was trying to imply that labor costs also complicate regulatory regimes. In America, it would be pricey to bribe a cop in part because they are paid decently well (especially if you factor in their health benefits and pension plans). Cops in Mexico aren’t paid very well so bribes work better. Low labor costs put pressure on regulatory enforcement, not just on the cost of paying laborers to grow, process, and transport drugs.[/quote]
[quote]This is ignoring the role corruption plays in reality of mexico. It isn’t as simple as level of pay of the police officers, or their benefits, that correlates with corruption. there is a climate in corruption in mexico because there is a climate which makes prosecution of corruption difficult. to really understand why this is the case you need to historicize the recent cartel activities with those of the Mexican regime.
cops in mexico face a reality that is not faced by their american counter parts, granted, but it has little to do with their wages. what makes bribes work better for the mexican cop is not they get access to health care but the alternative is lead. As the saying goes, in boarder towns, the cartels will pay you either in lead or silver.
the idea that bribes works better is simply ridiculous, it implies the single over riding reality for the Mexican cop is economic. even in your reply you are not encompassing the complexity of the labour relations that makes mexico attractive for the drug cartels.
until you historicize the relationships between these actors and groups have with each other, driving an economic determinant thesis seems incredibly simplistic.[/quote]
[QUOTE=Contag;30046132]Nope. Tobacco addiction is though, but vaporizing nicotine is less harmful than vaporizing delta-9 THC.[/QUOTE]
Thats what I meant, sorry I was trying to sound cool by saying nicotine it seems
honestly, i dont care if people are doing drugs, its their life, as long as they dont drive fucked up or are dangers to the public, drugs should be legal to use on peoples own properties
Guys, the only way we could ever end the war on drugs would be to elect individuals to office that wish to do so as well, or at least listen to their constituents.
[QUOTE=Mabus;30041833]You really think a petition can end the violence in Mexico, hahaha.[/QUOTE]
Uh, no, legalizing drugs can help though.
[QUOTE=slippp22;30048610]honestly, i dont care if people are doing drugs, its their life, as long as they dont drive fucked up or are dangers to the public, drugs should be legal to use on peoples own properties[/QUOTE]
Alcohol seems to be the worst for driving and danger to the public... not all drugs are as harsh as that.
[QUOTE=Contag;30046132]Nope. Tobacco addiction is though, but vaporizing nicotine is less harmful than vaporizing delta-9 THC.[/QUOTE]
???
You smoke tobacco because you're addicted to the nicotine.
It can work if we get enough people :).
[QUOTE=JustExtreme;30048796]Alcohol seems to be the worst for driving and danger to the public... not all drugs are as harsh as that.[/QUOTE]
I know driving on psychedelics like acid and shrooms wouldnt be to smart either, or sometimes when youre too high on weed
[QUOTE=JustExtreme;30048796]Alcohol seems to be the worst for driving and danger to the public... not all drugs are as harsh as that.[/QUOTE]
you shouldn't be intoxicated in any sense while driving; you're piloting a hunk of metal that weighs a tonne at 50 mph in a potentially crowded area, you need your wits about you
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;30051997]you shouldn't be intoxicated in any sense while driving; you're piloting a hunk of metal that weighs a tonne at 50 mph in a potentially crowded area, you need your wits about you[/QUOTE]
Yeah I agree. When I drive I don't even chance a single alcoholic beverage and I do the same with other substances that have a similar level of impairment.
Caffeine driving can be pretty dangerous too, I've found, especially if you have enough of it to start twitching and get in a real bitter impatient and unfocused mood/rage.
[QUOTE=Contag;30046132]Nope. Tobacco addiction is though, but vaporizing nicotine is less harmful than vaporizing delta-9 THC.[/QUOTE]
Great source. And 'Tobacco addiction' is Nicotine addiction.
Drugs are dangerous. I can understand legalizing Marajauna, but something such as the harder drugs can easily kill.
drug wars will never end until the legalize that shit and make a devaluation maybe
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