45 dead in attack on casino in northern Mexico

[Lord Baal]

I would like to see the day cocaine gets legal... but yeah, this is a slippery terrain, for one side we have "legal drugs" like tobacco and alcohol, on the other cocaine or marijuana, and then comes the why are not legalized too.... Any one knows why? Politics I must guess?

About the incomes I guess I was wrong, at least on the profit they make out of USA, I concede that. However I still disagree with marijuana being legal, even if the medicinal one is.

I know is a wildly comparison, but is like legalizing rape because we don't want people going crazy with their sexual urges....

[Simon_Jester]

I don't get your analogy, Baal.

Rape is inherently immoral by the definition of the act. Why would smoking marijuana be inherently immoral?

If the problems are consequences of marijuana use, such as money going to the pockets of drug dealers, then why not just come up with a way to avoid those consequences and not worry about it?

Marijuana, as a drug, doesn't harm its users much more than tobacco does. The reasons why one and not the other is legal have more to do with historical factors than anything else, as far as I know.

[Lord Baal]

Yep, that's why I said it was a really wild comparison... but I refereed more in the crime itself. Marijuana does have consequences in your body too, not only in your pockets. Tobacco should be illegal too, or at least more regulated.

I accept that also I have a personal issue with drugs (I have never taken them by the way). So instead of stooping the money to the drug dealers I rather the approach of eradicate the drugs altogether...

[Phantasee]

Is there any sort of practical way of doing that? You have to have some sort of solution. I've never taken drugs, don't plan on taking drugs, and I have a strong distaste for people who take drugs, but I still think legalizing at least some of them is the best way to solve most of the problems associated with them.

[Simon_Jester]

But most states are already publicly committed to eradicating the drugs. What more could the US government do to "eradicate" marijuana within its borders than it already does? What would be the point? Likewise, what would be the point of trying to "eradicate" tobacco?

How about "eradicating" alcohol? We already tried that as an experiment in government-subsidized moralism, and it failed miserably. We wound up with organized criminal cartels selling illegal alcohol on the streets... hey, wait, this looks familiar.

Ultimately, you have to balance the harm done by the drug against the amount of resources we'd have to spend getting rid of it. If we could, hypothetically, eliminate marijuana use in the US by spending 200 billion dollars, would it be worth it? Or would it make more sense to ignore the marijuana use and spend the 200 billion dollars on other things?

I'm not sure you're asking yourself this kind of question, Baal.

[loomer]

If they lose 60% of their income, they may not go out of business, but they'll be relatively weaker, there will be more fighting amongst themselves over the diminished market share, and so on. There's no single silver bullet to get rid of organized crime, but you can still make big holes in their power if you're smart.

But yeah, Baal, it's the competition from legal growers (quite a few in the US itself, probably) that would undermine the cartels if marijuana were legal in the US. It's not like you see criminal cartels trying to ship tobacco or alcohol into the US, after all; what would be the point?

You actually do see the odd illegal shipment of tobacco and alcohol in the US, though mostly it's between states rather than internationally.

[Lord Baal]

Jester, that's an interesting perspective too...I see you point, but as you said, most governments, if not all are already committed with the eradication, not legalization and control (that's it, if they are not the ones dealing with it, like in my country).

I guess my posture comes from the fact that I have seen how drugs among other things have eroded the society I live in the point that now I doubting about evolution, cause I'm witnessing the devolving of the species!
Drugs are, for me inherently evil (just like rape) for that cause.

Retaking my first paragraph, yes I would like them to finish them up even if that cost that amount of money. But more like eradication is a matter of education, no drug addicts, no business for drugs. Of course that's harder that fighting them will violence.

Also there´s the consideration of what to make legal, marijuana I could even agree at some point, but not for drug but as raw material for paper and textiles... But what about stasis? Heroine, crack, cocaine? Then we should legalize them too? I really would hate see that kind of stuff...

[Ryan Thunder]

Right, I basically used to be like you. Never tried alcohol, disliked its effects, had zero interest in ever trying weed or anything of the sort, etc.

Then I kinda grew up a little and realized that
1. Alcohol isn't all that bad if I don't have too much of it.
2. I hate weed.

Legalization with regulation is cheaper and more effective at saving lives than any attempt at eradication due to the simple fact that, for better or for worse, people want their drugs, and will go to whatever lengths they have to in order to keep them. We can throw all the money we want at it; people will still consider having or giving people the capability to get piss drunk and/or high off their tits a higher priority than avoiding your punishments.

[Lord Baal]

Yeah... humanity sucks then...

I actually enjoy alcohol and hate marijuana too (and are a grow up man in case you wonder), I'm not a puritan or something like that. But of course I enjoy alcohol with moderation, I don't get drunk for the sake of being drunk or drink every day or even every week!

I'm not sure if such thing is achievable when using marijuana, cocaine or crack, if it's so I'm yet to see it (yes I don't use them, but a lot of people in my environment does) Of course, there are tons of alcoholics too, but as there are alcoholics there are people that drink but are not alcoholic, is that possible with drugs? I'm curious, do any of you guys know some one that do "heavy" drugs without being "addicted" and ending up bad?

[Lord of the Abyss]

I'm not sure if such thing is achievable when using marijuana, cocaine or crack, if it's so I'm yet to see it (yes I don't use them, but a lot of people in my environment does) Of course, there are tons of alcoholics too, but as there are alcoholics there are people that drink but are not alcoholic, is that possible with drugs? I'm curious, do any of you guys know some one that do "heavy" drugs without being "addicted" and ending up bad?

Marijuana at least is milder than alcohol.

[Simon_Jester]

Jester, that's an interesting perspective too...I see you point, but as you said, most governments, if not all are already committed with the eradication, not legalization and control (that's it, if they are not the ones dealing with it, like in my country).

My argument is that the governmental commitment to eradicating relatively harmless drugs is stupid and wasteful.

Trying to eradicate powerful drugs is a different matter, but powerful drugs only make up a fraction of the share of the overall market- especially when alcohol and tobacco are factored in as part of the 'drug market.'

I guess my posture comes from the fact that I have seen how drugs among other things have eroded the society I live in the point that now I doubting about evolution, cause I'm witnessing the devolving of the species!
Drugs are, for me inherently evil (just like rape) for that cause.

So, drugs are evil because drugs cause your society to erode.

Armed men can cause a society to erode; does this mean guns are evil?

A society which does not maintain its water supply might be undone by contaminated water; does this mean that algae and human intestinal flora are evil?

You cannot divorce the question of drug policy from the consequences of the policy. If the consequences of a policy are worse than the consequences of leaving matters alone, why bother with the policy?

Retaking my first paragraph, yes I would like them to finish them up even if that cost that amount of money. But more like eradication is a matter of education, no drug addicts, no business for drugs. Of course that's harder that fighting them will violence.

I don't think you can really educate people to the point where no one uses drugs.

Take a step back and think about what drugs do, chemically. They make you feel calm or invincible or whatever, depending on the drug. They make you happy. It's a fake kind of happiness with big costs, but it's still a kind of happiness. There will always be people who are unhappy with their life, or who are so bent on their own pleasure that they don't care what they do to their health, who will turn to chemicals to alter their mood.

There will, therefore, always be demand for drugs. The way to reduce demand for drugs is not just to try to demonize them. This won't work, because anyone who's already taking heroin probably has big enough problems in their life that they'll ignore any indoctrination you gave them in school because the heroin makes them feel good. It's to change society in ways that give people more sources of happiness than just the drugs.

But this is even more difficult than trying to indoctrinate everyone not to use drugs, and you will never manage to get every last drug off the market- there's a reason alcohol consumption has been the norm in so many different societies throughout history.

So you have to do a cost benefit analysis. You can't run your entire policy on the basis of:

"I think drugs are icky, so we should spend an infinite amount of resources to get rid of them!"

Also there´s the consideration of what to make legal, marijuana I could even agree at some point, but not for drug but as raw material for paper and textiles... But what about stasis? Heroine, crack, cocaine? Then we should legalize them too? I really would hate see that kind of stuff...

Who said anything about that? My point is that we have to use logic and thought to figure out what should be banned, what should be kept under tightly limited control, and what should be allowed. We can't just let personal dislikes decide what we want done about everything.

Yeah... humanity sucks then...

I actually enjoy alcohol and hate marijuana too (and are a grow up man in case you wonder), I'm not a puritan or something like that. But of course I enjoy alcohol with moderation, I don't get drunk for the sake of being drunk or drink every day or even every week!

I'm not sure if such thing is achievable when using marijuana, cocaine or crack, if it's so I'm yet to see it (yes I don't use them, but a lot of people in my environment does) Of course, there are tons of alcoholics too, but as there are alcoholics there are people that drink but are not alcoholic, is that possible with drugs? I'm curious, do any of you guys know some one that do "heavy" drugs without being "addicted" and ending up bad?

There are plenty of people who have smoked marijuana without becoming addicted.

Most other drugs are more difficult to break free of, when it comes to how strong the physical dependency on the drug is. Alcohol can be bad- there are cases where an alcoholic can actually die when deprived of alcohol for a long period, because of how much their body depends on the drug. Many of the 'hard' drugs are the same way... but there are so many different substances out there that there's no way to make a law that affects every last one of them fairly; the judgment has to be done case by case.

[Lord Baal]

My argument is that the governmental commitment to eradicating relatively harmless drugs is stupid and wasteful.

It's the only way until we find another one. When left unchecked this kind of things tends (see the tittle of the thread to happen)

So, drugs are evil because drugs cause your society to erode.

Armed men can cause a society to erode; does this mean guns are evil?

Oh no, drugs are quite good actually! I'm gonna start using them every day now!!

Of course they are evil. Tell me what's good about cocaine? Or heroine? I agree marijuana fall under a sort of gray space there, but the others are chemicals made with the explicit and only porpoise of making money by breaking the law and creating addiction, taking advantage of people. Weapons are something completely different, they are "ideally" used to self defense and protection.

The difference comes here:
A weapon:
- On the hands of a police man ideally should serve to enforce the law and prevent crime.
- On the hands of a criminal will be used to break the law.
While a line of cocaine:
- Be it aspired by a police man, a criminal, or a kid will have the same results....

A society which does not maintain its water supply might be undone by contaminated water; does this mean that algae and human intestinal flora are evil?

No, that would mean that this society left unchecked the bio-hazard risk to the point it got back and bite it in the ass... ummm it sounds familiar...

You cannot divorce the question of drug policy from the consequences of the policy. If the consequences of a policy are worse than the consequences of leaving matters alone, why bother with the policy?

Hitler killed +10.000.000 people, however the war against him resulted on +61.000.000 peoples death on the allied side. By that logic it would have been better to not do war with him and let him instead exterminate as much as 50~59 million people perahps?

I don't think you can really educate people to the point where no one uses drugs.

Take a step back and think about what drugs do, chemically. They make you feel calm or invincible or whatever, depending on the drug. They make you happy. It's a fake kind of happiness with big costs, but it's still a kind of happiness. There will always be people who are unhappy with their life, or who are so bent on their own pleasure that they don't care what they do to their health, who will turn to chemicals to alter their mood.

There will, therefore, always be demand for drugs. The way to reduce demand for drugs is not just to try to demonize them. This won't work, because anyone who's already taking heroin probably has big enough problems in their life that they'll ignore any indoctrination you gave them in school because the heroin makes them feel good. It's to change society in ways that give people more sources of happiness than just the drugs.

But this is even more difficult than trying to indoctrinate everyone not to use drugs, and you will never manage to get every last drug off the market- there's a reason alcohol consumption has been the norm in so many different societies throughout history.

Sadly you are right and it's a unavoidable fact, however we must do the fight from our homes... simply ignoring the trouble or saying "we can't" won't help either.

So you have to do a cost benefit analysis. You can't run your entire policy on the basis of:
"I think drugs are icky, so we should spend an infinite amount of resources to get rid of them!"

Who said that? I would rather to ban drugs from existence, but I know that's not a practical objective achievable on short term or that expending infinite resources is an option. I think I stated that on previous post. I would rather resources expended on space exploration.

Who said anything about that? My point is that we have to use logic and thought to figure out what should be banned, what should be kept under tightly limited control, and what should be allowed. We can't just let personal dislikes decide what we want done about everything.

Some one else here said that, and I have listened to it several times, it's pretty moronic to say, and I agree with you, this would have to be on a case by case for every substance, but most of them are simply outright bad with no benefits beyond the "trip" they give you.

There are plenty of people who have smoked marijuana without becoming addicted.

Most other drugs are more difficult to break free of, when it comes to how strong the physical dependency on the drug is. Alcohol can be bad- there are cases where an alcoholic can actually die when deprived of alcohol for a long period, because of how much their body depends on the drug. Many of the 'hard' drugs are the same way... but there are so many different substances out there that there's no way to make a law that affects every last one of them fairly; the judgment has to be done case by case.

I agree with you. And actually it's nice to talk about this with some one with different opinions, it helps to look things in perspective.

[Simon_Jester]

My argument is that the governmental commitment to eradicating relatively harmless drugs is stupid and wasteful.

It's the only way until we find another one. When left unchecked this kind of things tends (see the tittle of the thread to happen)

...This is a common case of political antilogic:

"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do it."

Seriously, that makes no sense- we must continue doing what we are now doing, because otherwise we'd have to change our policy, and you dislike what would happen if we tried one of the ways that we might change our policy?

So, drugs are evil because drugs cause your society to erode.

Armed men can cause a society to erode; does this mean guns are evil?

Oh no, drugs are quite good actually! I'm gonna start using them every day now!!

Of course they are evil. Tell me what's good about cocaine? Or heroine? I agree marijuana fall under a sort of gray space there, but the others are chemicals made with the explicit and only porpoise of making money by breaking the law and creating addiction, taking advantage of people. Weapons are something completely different, they are "ideally" used to self defense and protection.

"Chemicals made with the purpose of breaking the law..." and by the way you really need a spell checker...

You do realize that the drugs are not made with the purpose of breaking the law; they are simply illegal. You cannot make a law against something and then say that the thing is wrong because it breaks the law. That's backwards- a thing should become illegal because it's immoral, not the other way around.

As to the rest, the fact that drugs are addictive does not in and of itself make them evil. Alcohol is addictive; is it evil? Video games can be, to some extent, addictive; is that evil? People can become self-destructively 'addicted' to eating large amounts of food; is that evil?

You have to assess consequences, not assign some moral "goodness/evilness" to inanimate objects and then insist that the rest of the world follow your ideas about what is good and what is evil. Why would anyone be convinced by your argument that X is evil if you can't point to the bad consequences of X, and explain that outlawing X will make things better?

You cannot divorce the question of drug policy from the consequences of the policy. If the consequences of a policy are worse than the consequences of leaving matters alone, why bother with the policy?

Hitler killed +10.000.000 people, however the war against him resulted on +61.000.000 peoples death on the allied side. By that logic it would have been better to not do war with him and let him instead exterminate as much as 50~59 million people perahps?

You're not thinking, you're just grabbing rhetoric.

If you were more historically literate, you'd see why that calculation doesn't work the way you think it does. I'm not interested in supplying you with the history lesson you need right now; someone else here can, I'm sure.

So you have to do a cost benefit analysis. You can't run your entire policy on the basis of:
"I think drugs are icky, so we should spend an infinite amount of resources to get rid of them!"

Who said that? I would rather to ban drugs from existence, but I know that's not a practical objective achievable on short term or that expending infinite resources is an option. I think I stated that on previous post. I would rather resources expended on space exploration.

So why would you rather spend large sums of money on something impractical (getting people to stop using marijuana by having elementary school teachers talk more about how marijuana is bad), instead of spending small sums of money on just letting people smoke the damn marijuana?

Who cares if they do it or not?

Who said anything about that? My point is that we have to use logic and thought to figure out what should be banned, what should be kept under tightly limited control, and what should be allowed. We can't just let personal dislikes decide what we want done about everything.

Some one else here said that, and I have listened to it several times, it's pretty moronic to say, and I agree with you, this would have to be on a case by case for every substance, but most of them are simply outright bad with no benefits beyond the "trip" they give you.

You're missing the point. It's not whether the drug has benefits, it's whether the costs of not banning the drug are more or less than the costs of banning it.

The US already tried banning alcohol, and this turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, because people still drank and the profits were going to organized crime instead of to lawful breweries.

[Lord of the Abyss]

You cannot divorce the question of drug policy from the consequences of the policy. If the consequences of a policy are worse than the consequences of leaving matters alone, why bother with the policy?

Hitler killed +10.000.000 people, however the war against him resulted on +61.000.000 peoples death on the allied side. By that logic it would have been better to not do war with him and let him instead exterminate as much as 50~59 million people perahps?

A flawed argument. First, he would have kept on killing unless stopped. And second, unlike the "Drug War", WWII worked. The Axis lost and was destroyed. In order to compare to the Drug War, World War II would have to somehow have continued to the present day, with no noticeable hindering of the actions of the Axis.

[Knife]

I'm afraid Lord Baal has one hell of a bias against something that contributed to the downfall of his country, so I will cut him some slack. I'd say the corruption from all the money that illegal drugs bring in did far more than the actual product the cartel's were selling but...

Anyway, Cocaine and Heroine keep being referred to as chemicals (fair enough) and Baal wants to refer to them as immoral without any sort of function. I would say that those chemicals actually were the basis for a large chunk of modern medicine. Lidocaine to morphine. Granted, they are synthetically derived anymore, but they do get credit for being the basis of a lot of modern medicines even if the original 'chemical' itself has fallen out of favor and is used for other purposes.

[Lord Baal]

I admit my flawed statement about WWII (I'm not historically illiterate, actually I quite like history and read a lot about it, of course I'm not PHD on it either), but I was talking hot headed... today, two years ago one of my brothers (a deputy) got kidnapped and killed for getting involved on this things.

And yes Jester, drugs are not made only to brake the law. I just think that they should not be legalized. Good work pointing out a grammatical error, that helps to your cause I guess. As for the solution, yeah it's not working pretty well, but again, I don't think that make them legal will help by that far, and there's the thing that we can't legalize all of them. And cocaine, heroin are evil. No, not evil, are simply worthless and dangerous, have NO useful purpose and should not be defended, that's my position. Finally I didn't came here to argue about drugs, and I in fact started stating that bullets and brute force are not the answer, but either is simply turning the backs on it.

Thanks knife, but I'm the first one to accept that it does not give me a free past to being a arsehole, so I'm sorry if I strike anyone here like that, I'm generally not confrontational. Also, I'm sorry for any spell mistakes, since apparently I'm in dare need of the spell checker, but English is not my mother language, and I think I fare pretty well for being some one that learned it by itself.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry about the grammar thing, that was persistent irritation building up and I shouldn't have let it get to me.

Basically, I think that drugs aren't the problem. Drug addiction is a problem, and vile criminal thugs are a problem.

If we have a drug for which addiction isn't likely, and we can stop vile criminal thugs from getting any profit out of the drug, why should we care about the drug? For drugs like marijuana which are unlikely to cause dangerous addiction, legalizing them instantly neuters any gang of criminals who rely on marijuana sales. That's good enough for me.

Again, Baal, remember that there aren't any violent criminal cartels that make money off tobacco or alcohol sales to the US, because in the US those are legal drugs- there is no danger or lawbreaking associated with making them, so Americans simply make them themselves and don't have any need to buy them from foreign criminals.


Now, for other drugs, you need other policies, because with those drugs the addiction itself becomes a problem.

[Lord Zentei]

<snip>

Thanks knife, but I'm the first one to accept that it does not give me a free past to being a arsehole, so I'm sorry if I strike anyone here like that, I'm generally not confrontational. Also, I'm sorry for any spell mistakes, since apparently I'm in dare need of the spell checker, but English is not my mother language, and I think I fare pretty well for being some one that learned it by itself.

Prohibition in the case of vice crimes has a very bad track record. Interdiction doesn't meaningfully diminish the profits made by cartels, even though they reduce consumption, since they shift the supply curve and not the demand curve. Meanwhile more people become "collateral damage" in the crossfire, and shady politicians and prison managers make a mint trying to fool the public into thinking that they want and are able to solve their problems. Best just to cut the Gordian knot and legalize it. Earns you profits too, with taxation. Empiricism demands no less.


As for spelling, here's a useful link. Don't know about a grammar checker, though.

[Lord Baal]

Jester, actually, now that I see it, why are we arguing for?! I agree with you on most of your points. Maybe I'm to stubborn on the legalization of certain ones due a personal bias, but I guess that we must try how legalization could work before making any judgements then.

[Lord Baal]

And thanks Lord Zentei, I'm starting to use it now.

On my way back home from work I was thinking, why tobacco and alcohol are socially accepted when they are drugs, dangerous ones actually... and beyond the obvious politic and economic reasons, I think that for one, cigarettes don't get you "intoxicated" at the levels of alcohol or other drugs, so even when they are so dangerous at medium and long term, they are accepted because the short term effects are not enough "shocking" or "reality alienating". As for alcohol maybe is because "its more natural", like wine and beer (yes, so marijuana or amapola), and also is served as a drink, like juice and water, what do you think about this?

[Lord Zentei]

And thanks Lord Zentei, I'm starting to use it now.

On my way back home from work I was thinking, why tobacco and alcohol are socially accepted when they are drugs, dangerous ones actually... and beyond the obvious politic and economic reasons, I think that for one, cigarettes don't get you "intoxicated" at the levels of alcohol or other drugs, so even when they are so dangerous at medium and long term, they are accepted because the short term effects are not enough "shocking" or "reality alienating". As for alcohol maybe is because "its more natural", like wine and beer (yes, so marijuana or amapola), and also is served as a drink, like juice and water, what do you think about this?

How is alcohol "more natural"? Poppy leaves are "natural" too you know. It's just that familiarity breeds contempt. Once upon a time the US actually put a ban on alcohol in their constitution, no less. They eventually repealed it after the gangsters turned cities into combat zones. After legalization, organized crime withered - or might have except for the ban on other drugs.

[Lord Baal]

That's why I said "more natural"(costume) instead of more natural(organic precedence). People are way more familiar with it.

Thanks again for the spell checker!

[Block]

And thanks Lord Zentei, I'm starting to use it now.

On my way back home from work I was thinking, why tobacco and alcohol are socially accepted when they are drugs, dangerous ones actually... and beyond the obvious politic and economic reasons, I think that for one, cigarettes don't get you "intoxicated" at the levels of alcohol or other drugs, so even when they are so dangerous at medium and long term, they are accepted because the short term effects are not enough "shocking" or "reality alienating". As for alcohol maybe is because "its more natural", like wine and beer (yes, so marijuana or amapola), and also is served as a drink, like juice and water, what do you think about this?

How is alcohol "more natural"? Poppy leaves are "natural" too you know. It's just that familiarity breeds contempt. Once upon a time the US actually put a ban on alcohol in their constitution, no less. They eventually repealed it after the gangsters turned cities into combat zones. After legalization, organized crime withered - or might have except for the ban on other drugs.

That's only part of the reason why. Technology had a huge influence on the decline of organized crime within the US as well.

[Alkaloid]

The other end of the legalisation issue needs to be considered as well. If you just put a blanket ban on a drug, it becomes difficult for addicts to 1. buy the drug, leading to committing crime in order to actually be able to purchase it, and 2. seek treatment for their addiction, out of fear of being arrested.

I know in Australia there has been a lot of debate about setting up injecting rooms in areas where there is a high incidence of drug use, and they have a pilot operating in Kings Cross in Sydney with generally positive results.

The advantage to this is that not only do users have access to supply of clean needles and i believe it also supplies uncontaminated doses of some drugs, but I'm not sure. Anyway, point is that they are properly staffed with medical personnel, to 1. prevent and treat overdoses should they occur (in 10 years the room in Sydney has had north of 3000 overdoses and no fatalities and 2. refer people who want help with their addiction to treatment if/when they want it. (On that note, making treatment mandatory is pointless, you need to want to stop using before you have a hope in hell of actually being able to)

Even if you could just turn off the tap, so to speak and completely halt the manufacture of all illicit drugs tomorrow, you wold have a huge problem with huge numbers of desperate and dangerous people willing to do almost anything for another hit. Its a problem you have to hit from both ends, by removing the suppliers ability to make money from sales, and reducing the demand from users for their particular product. And providing safe places to use safe drugs with people to look after you if things goes wrong beats the hell out of playing russian roulette with the crap that comes out of places like Mexico, even for addicts.

[lance]

Injecting rooms also hinder more people from becoming addicted.