The Murder Solution Rate In The US Used to Be 91%

[MSimon]

It is now 61%.

A police officer discusses how the War On Drugs has made us less safe:

http://youtu.be/5PFr7hfx0mo

He also discusses how Blacks make up 13.5% of those involved with Drugs (slightly fewer than whites) but go to prison at a very much higher rate. Many times that of whites.

He says that the War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

The video is mostly a recitation of statistics. The officer who gives it says that 80% of any audience after hearing the talk comes out against prohibition.

I did the first interview with a member of LEAP that ever appeared in print and on the 'net. You can read it here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ficer.html

Near the end of the video he discusses how legalization reduces addiction. He discusses policy in Portugal and Switzerland. It starts about 20 minutes into the video.

He explains how prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use. A point I have been making here for a very long time. Objectively Prohibitionists want to spread drug use. Too funny.

[Skipjack]

He also discusses how Blacks make up 13.5% of those involved with Drugs

Which is AFAIK almost exactly their part of the overall population...

[Diogenes]

It is now 61%.

A police officer discusses how the War On Drugs has made us less safe:

http://youtu.be/5PFr7hfx0mo

He also discusses how Blacks make up 13.5% of those involved with Drugs (slightly fewer than whites) but go to prison at a very much higher rate. Many times that of whites.

He says that the War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

The video is mostly a recitation of statistics. The officer who gives it says that 80% of any audience after hearing the talk comes out against prohibition.

I did the first interview with a member of LEAP that ever appeared in print and on the 'net. You can read it here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ficer.html

Near the end of the video he discusses how legalization reduces addiction. He discusses policy in Portugal and Switzerland. It starts about 20 minutes into the video.

He explains how prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use. A point I have been making here for a very long time. Objectively Prohibitionists want to spread drug use. Too funny.

And here we have the latest religion update. A funny thing. Those progressives of the 1900s that you hate so much also used to trot out their experts and various charts, diagrams, and tables to justify the stuff they wanted to do. Of course it was all a crock, but people who don't know any better will listen to people who sound like they know what they are talking about. (even when they don't.)

You really ought to quit hanging out with the cannabis crowd, and find out what REAL drugs do to people.

[kcdodd]

So, the solution is to lock them up. That makes no sense. If you "ruin" your life with drugs, we'll make sure you never get up.

[Diogenes]

So, the solution is to lock them up. That makes no sense. If you "ruin" your life with drugs, we'll make sure you never get up.

The answer to your question depends upon for whom you want the solution. Locking them up might not be what's best for the addict, but it certainly benefits their neighbors.

[williatw]

It is now 61%.

A police officer discusses how the War On Drugs has made us less safe:

http://youtu.be/5PFr7hfx0mo

He also discusses how Blacks make up 13.5% of those involved with Drugs (slightly fewer than whites) but go to prison at a very much higher rate. Many times that of whites.

He says that the War on Drugs is the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral policy since slavery & Jim Crow.

The video is mostly a recitation of statistics. The officer who gives it says that 80% of any audience after hearing the talk comes out against prohibition.

I did the first interview with a member of LEAP that ever appeared in print and on the 'net. You can read it here:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ficer.html

Near the end of the video he discusses how legalization reduces addiction. He discusses policy in Portugal and Switzerland. It starts about 20 minutes into the video.

He explains how prohibition is a vector for spreading drug use. A point I have been making here for a very long time. Objectively Prohibitionists want to spread drug use. Too funny.

Its also a vector for other things like legalized theft.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/21/d ... l-stealing

No price is to great to keep us safe from the scourge of drugs.

[kcdodd]

Of course, put an entire family out on the streets for something they aren't responsible for!

[Diogenes]

I guess it's pointless to point out that legalizing drugs is a bigger vector for the spread of drug use.

[choff]

I picked up on this story about 14 firefighters killed because a plane was diverted to ship drugs around, or how Ecuador nearly had a coup so drug shipments would be unimpeded by law enforcement.

http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/11/19/re ... #more-2646

I don't believe for one second that drug smuggling is essential for covert operations by intelligence networks, that's a lame excuse to make money. Any self respecting country can fund its own intelligence agencies legally.

Also, if the banking industry is dependent on drug money laundering, then it's a damning indictment of the whole fractional reserve system.

[MSimon]

I guess it's pointless to point out that legalizing drugs is a bigger vector for the spread of drug use.

Well you keep saying that and yet facts keep refuting you. Faith is a powerful thing. I admire yours. It is a sight to behold.

From what I can see all faiths work the same way. A mechanism for avoiding reality.

I do have a personal faith. But it is so ridiculous that not even I believe it. And I do try to keep from resorting to it in maters practical. That would include engineering and politics. But I have no illusion that the mass of humanity will do the same.

Experience is a hard teacher. War and revolution destroy faith. Short of that we are stuck with it.

What has destroyed prohibition is 40 years of the War On Youth. If you give people hard experience in their formative years - between ages 15 and 25 - you get them for life. Very few can change major opinions after those years.

Such experience also explains the rise of libertarianism in America. A real desire for smaller government in all aspects of life. Without a continuing War On Youth by their elders such a transformation would be impossible. Libertarian thought has made no inroads in those past the age of 25 from the time it became an issue in the culture. That would be around 1980. What it has done is to collect a sizable cohort in every generation since.

This encapsulates why:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck

He could have dropped "scientific" without changing the fact. How would that read?

A new truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

[cgray45]

I tend to try to avoid political debates, but there is another issue about the war on drugs.

Has it been successful? Forget morality or anything else, Has it stopped the flow of drugs, or made them harder to get?

The answer is: no. IN fact, it's helped spur the development of new drugs, meth, etc, to fill the gap.

Because honestly, let's look at it like this: in 2001, wholesale prices for cocaine could be as high as 35,000/KG. The costs of making cocaine can be less than a few hundred dollars. These prices vary greatly, but the thing is, the profit margin is tremendous.

And lets say you stop 100 KG's of Coke.

Fine, they produce another 100 KG's and meanwhile benefit from the increased street price.

So our "War" isn't stopping things. If anything, it's empowering the producers because it allows them to take advantage of the price. That's one of the reasons why latin american nations have such a problem with drug cartells, because they're making, literally, billions of dollars a year for a product that is tremendously cheap to make.

But how much does it cost us?

A lot. There's the price of locking people up for long periods for even non-violent drug use, which results in broken famailes and depressed communities. There's the fact that we've created a HUGE prison-industrial complex, complete with for-profit prisons that now demand on ensuring (and they have lots of lobbyists to make certian of this) that those prisons are filled-- whether or not there is a public policy benefit to doing so.

We have asset forfiture-- and if you brought this up to a guy living in 1955, his question would be: Did the occupational Chinese or USSR authorities initiate that policy. Hell, asset forfiture got so bad in Louisiana, that AAA started to tell people to not go through the state for a time.

Now, these tactics might be worth it if they worked-- but they don't! It's just as easy to get some crack or horse, or weed today as it was when the war was launched.

Not only that, but calling it a war, and again, by getting the enforcement at any cost groups in, we've ignored tactics that Europe has used (hell that *China* has used), that have real success in curing addicts-- because our model isn't interested in treating addiction, it's interested in punishing addicts-- which does nothing to reduce your pool of addicts-- in fact it increases them. (Because nothing convinces someone to try and take chemical exits from life's troubles then doing a five stretch for a non-violent drug use offense and then finding out that he'll never work as anything other than a part time janitor again-- in fact you might say that he no longer ha a lot to lose by breaking the law).

And of course the final problem is that the war on drugs his helping build up forces in Mexico that might one day give us our very own Iraq style insurgency in Mexico and the border states-- ask any Iraqi vet how fun *that* will be.

[MSimon]

I picked up on this story about 14 firefighters killed because a plane was diverted to ship drugs around, or how Ecuador nearly had a coup so drug shipments would be unimpeded by law enforcement.

http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/11/19/re ... #more-2646

I don't believe for one second that drug smuggling is essential for covert operations by intelligence networks, that's a lame excuse to make money. Any self respecting country can fund its own intelligence agencies legally.

Also, if the banking industry is dependent on drug money laundering, then it's a damning indictment of the whole fractional reserve system.

Also, if the banking industry is dependent on drug money laundering, then it's a damning indictment of the whole fractional reserve system.

Yes it is.

Fractional reserve banking is very handy on the rising edge of a Kondratieff wave. Progress comes much faster. When profits of 50% are possible a LOT of investment is a good thing. As a technology gets incorporated into the bigger system and profits fall, there comes a time when the profits can no longer keep a system that requires 3% growth a year to balance the books to keep running.

We may just be lucky enough to see the next wave start before the whole system fails. But it is touch and go.

In any case - drug profits are required to maintain the system at the current stage.

I lived in the Bay Area in the very early days of Silicon Valley. I was told by people in the know that Drug money was part of what got the system started. The people running drugs didn't care that half their investments were losers. They needed to launder that money. And the fact that some of the investments produced spectacular growth was a very nice bonus.

There are very few areas of technology that are producing big profits these days.

But we do have new ways of investing that don't require Drug Money.

Crowd Funding:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-1 ... sdom-crowd

[MSimon]

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2010/01/n987sa.html

[choff]

With fractional reserve banking, the multiplier effect works just great during expansion, but it also works in reverse during contraction. I was listening to a video by a guy whose uncle was near the top in the Bank of England.

He was saying as a young man his uncle told him never to believe anything in the newspapers, they only wrote what the bank told them to. Likewise, the politicians only ever did as instructed by the bank, ukcolumn.org.

[Diogenes]

I guess it's pointless to point out that legalizing drugs is a bigger vector for the spread of drug use.

Well you keep saying that and yet facts keep refuting you. Faith is a powerful thing. I admire yours. It is a sight to behold.

From what I can see all faiths work the same way. A mechanism for avoiding reality.

A choice of words, that from my perspective applies to you more so than me. Of the two of us, I perceive that I am the only one with any real experience dealing with people addicted to hard drugs. You are still in the wading pool of the drug culture. Get in deeper and I fear you will drown.

I do have a personal faith. But it is so ridiculous that not even I believe it. And I do try to keep from resorting to it in maters practical. That would include engineering and politics. But I have no illusion that the mass of humanity will do the same.

Experience is a hard teacher. War and revolution destroy faith. Short of that we are stuck with it.

What has destroyed prohibition is 40 years of the War On Youth. If you give people hard experience in their formative years - between ages 15 and 25 - you get them for life. Very few can change major opinions after those years.

And here is a good example of your faith. At a time when the public has been growing increasingly and demonstrably irresponsible, you somehow believe that their movement towards legalizing drugs represents some sort of intellectual awakening?

The simpler explanation is that the stupidity now running rampant amongst low information people is simply manifesting itself in another way.

Such experience also explains the rise of libertarianism in America. A real desire for smaller government in all aspects of life. Without a continuing War On Youth by their elders such a transformation would be impossible. Libertarian thought has made no inroads in those past the age of 25 from the time it became an issue in the culture. That would be around 1980. What it has done is to collect a sizable cohort in every generation since.

It is not libertariansim which is ascendant. It is Liberalism. (Otherwise known as God-less Moral-less Communism. There will be piles of bodies ere long. ) What makes it resemble Libertarianism is that degree of overlap with Liberals in eschewing the nature mandated rules of a functional society.

In Economics, Liberals think they can out-manuever Adam Smith. In Social Dynamics, Libertarians think they can out-maneuver Edmund Burke. What they don't realize is that it is not the men they need to out-maneuver, it is natural law which will eventually lay them low.

This encapsulates why:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck

And when that maxim works in reverse, people/societies repeat the same mistakes made in the past from which they were unable to remember the lesson.

He could have dropped "scientific" without changing the fact. How would that read?

A new truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

And again, when people forgot why it is a bad idea to behave a certain way, Nature comes along and refreshes their memory for a generation. We are about to repeat the massively failed socialist experiments of yesteryear, and you want to append on the massive mistake made by China.

When will they ever learn?