[HN Gopher] Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison
___________________________________________________________________
Dream Vendor "Canna_Bars" Sentenced to Prison
Author : a5withtrrs
Score : 243 points
Date : 2020-09-20 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (darknetlive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (darknetlive.com)
| ourmandave wrote:
| There's useful links at the bottom of the page, like the Darknet
| Market's Noobs Bible. =)
|
| _Hello and welcome to the Darknetmarkets bible for buyers.
|
| The buyer's DNM bible aims to be a complete guide that covers all
| steps that users have to take in order to buy securely from
| darknetmarkets._
|
| In case you're thinking about launching your criminal career or
| whatever.
| non-entity wrote:
| In what world does purchasing from a DNM make you a career
| criminal? What if I buy a completely legal item?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| None. Doubt you find legal items there though. Maybe you find
| legal items in some parts but illegal in others, like
| marijuana is now in US. Better have all papers prepared to
| prove you made the purchase in a legal state though.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Good thing that the government has to prove our guilt
| instead of we having to prove our innocence.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| So uhhhh, who's building a deep fake generator that'll transpose
| someone else's fingerprints on a photo containing another hand?
| iseanstevens wrote:
| A friend described that many in the government/military of Nazi
| Germany (including Hitler) were using significant amounts of
| amphetamines. Which in part lead to the atrocities of humanity
| that occurred. I can't speak to the truth of this, and have
| definitely seen the US War on Drugs as a way to treat people
| unfairly based on race etc. I would certainly believe something
| similar is going on with the Trump administration. It would at
| least make a bit of sense as to why so little sense is being
| made. Anyways I thought it was an interesting theory so figured I
| would relay it here.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I wish more resources were spent on law enforcement at the local
| level, fighting _real_ crime. They could have more police
| patrolling the streets and subways, deterring assaults[0] and
| daylight shootings[1].
|
| Does anyone really care that this drug dealer is locked up? Is
| anyone safer now? Do I have to worry any _less_ about getting
| mugged on the subway at night?
|
| Of course people are calling to defund the police, and if that
| happens I'll have to be more worried.
|
| [0]: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-
| homeless-m...
|
| [1]: https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/three-injured-in-broad-
| dayligh...
| redisman wrote:
| There are also magnitudes more destructive things they could be
| hunting on the dark web. This is like the lowest bar of
| illegality going on
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| The amount of resources that the US federal government will use
| to pursue ridiculously long sentences (that frequently involve
| torture[1]) against people who did not victimize a single person
| is absolutely insane to me.
|
| The prohibition on the possession and sale of drugs must come to
| an end, and weapons charges should never, ever be brought against
| anyone who didn't _use_ weapons to commit a crime or otherwise
| perpetrate violence /cause harm.
|
| Literally no violence and no victim is claimed by the state here,
| and yet he's going to spend almost six years in prison, even
| after a plea deal. This is well over a half of a million dollars
| in tax money, just to house/feed/medicate him during that time
| (perhaps as much as twice that in the event of medical
| conditions), not counting the resources spent within the courts,
| the prosecution offices, the clerks, and the provision of public
| defenders (if any). It's probably closer to a million tax
| dollars, all told.
|
| Had he not taken the plea? He could have received a much, _much_
| longer sentence: 20+ years. This would then be upwards of 4 or 5
| million dollars spent by the state.
|
| Is this justice? More importantly, is this a good use of the
| public's resources?
|
| A million+ US tax dollars could instead be used to prevent
| _violent crime_ , or to house the homeless, or any number of
| other purposes which very easily surpass the benefit or
| usefulness of the imprisonment of people who do not victimize or
| harm others.
|
| [1]: in the form of exceptionally long periods of forced solitary
| confinement, which causes permanent physiological and
| psychological damage.
| yboris wrote:
| You make an excellent point about the rigged justice system: by
| accusing a defendant with numerous crimes, they are encouraged
| to skip a fair trial and take a plea bargain. This is an
| immense erosion of the justice system.
|
| A brilliant book on this (and related) topics is
| "Overcriminalization" by Douglas Husak
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Overcriminalization-Limits-Criminal-D...
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I personally want drug-dealing gun-wielding ex-felons to be put
| in prison. Plus he only got 5 years, which isn't a long
| sentence in the US.
| bunfunton wrote:
| I personally don't want somebody supplying goods to customers
| who want them, coming together in a consensual transaction
| jailed. Where one person then decides to alter their own
| brain chemistry with their own consent. 5 years not long? Ok.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| By that logic, would you be okay with people supplying
| random people with tons of explosive? I mean, it's
| supplying goods to customers who want them.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > Where one person then decides to alter their own brain
| chemistry
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| There are large social impacts to lots of individuals
| choosing to alter their brain chemistry, just as there
| would be large impacts from distributing explosives.
| Individuals don't live in a vacuum.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Well yes there are. We have seen that with both alcohol
| and sugar. And with alcohol we have seen how horribly
| wrong it goes when you try to treat a medical problem -
| addiction - by using the legal system. It doesn't work.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Your comment implies that most people drink alcohol
| because of addiction, which isn't the case. Most people
| drink it for novelty or entertainment.
|
| Addiction isn't the only reason people take drugs, so
| only addressing or dissuading addiction wouldn't fix the
| social problems that arise from ubiquitous drug use.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > Your comment implies that most people drink alcohol
| because of addiction, which isn't the case.
|
| No it doesn't. You might have wrongly inferred that
| though.
|
| > Most people drink it for novelty or entertainment.
|
| And? So what? What do you suggest be done differently in
| the case of alcohol?
|
| > only addressing or dissuading addiction wouldn't fix
| the social problems that arise from ubiquitous drug use.
|
| Take a look at how Switzerland took an out of control and
| growing youth heroin use problem and turned it into a
| medical issue that young people have zero interest in.
|
| Also what are are the exact "social problems" you are
| trying to fix that come from wide spread drug use? Please
| give concrete examples. Because based on history, I'm
| almost certain the problems you are trying to fix won't
| get fixed by making things against the law. The legal
| system is not the only tool in the toolbox.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Most people also use drugs (safely) for novelty or
| entertainment. And what's wrong with that?
| serpix wrote:
| In Finland manslaughter is maximum 6 years in prison. This
| guy sold plants.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| This guy also sold a neurotoxic addictive
| stimulant(methamphetamine), supported Mexican cartels by
| doing so, and had guns while being an ex-felon.
| sumedh wrote:
| > This guy also sold a neurotoxic addictive
| stimulant(methamphetamine)
|
| So should alcohol manufacturers and bartenders be thrown
| in jail as well?
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| There is no widespread, easily producable alternative to
| alcohol. Prohibition is ended not because the drug isn't
| bad, but because it's truly trivial to make it, making
| enforcement impossible.
|
| Meth has several good alternatives just as easy to
| manufacture(for big companies with the right precursors)
| that aren't neurotoxic. Think adderall, methylphenidate,
| modafinil, etc. Those bring the stimulation without
| destroying your brain.
| bunfunton wrote:
| All of those have distinctly different effects and, in
| the case of ADHD, all work subpar with worse side
| effects. The reason why people get so fucked up on meth
| is BECAUSE it's so safe that you can smoke half a gram
| w/o a problem. Also, meth is the easiest to manufacture
| out of all of the above. Will give you that meth is the
| most addictive.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Then you should waste your own personal money on it. It has
| made the problem worse. The illegal drug trade to the US is
| now almost as big as big oil. It's an industry in the
| hundreds of $ billions. This type of thinking has created
| millions of addicts in the USA along with helping make many
| very rich and powerful criminals globally.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The two aren't mutually exclusive. I support drug
| legalization and regulation(for many drugs. Methamphetamine
| and strong opioids like carbofentanyl shouldn't be legal
| IMO). I also think that cartel activity and drug
| distribution by ex-felons should not be supported.
|
| Drug enforcement wouldn't go away if drugs were legalized
| and regulated.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > Methamphetamine and strong opioids like carbofentanyl
| shouldn't be legal IMO
|
| I'm not sure how your personal opinion adds anything to
| the conversation? Please at least explain your reasoning
| to move the conversation along.
|
| Addiction is a medical problem, not a legal problem. You
| are wasting my hard earned tax dollars by using the legal
| system to fix a medical problem.
|
| > I also think that cartel activity and drug distribution
| by ex-felons should not be supported.
|
| Well yes, making all recreational drugs legal and easy
| enough to get through your doctor (or other legal
| sources) would completely eliminate that.
|
| > Drug enforcement wouldn't go away if drugs were
| legalized and regulated.
|
| I don't think anyone made that claim? How many criminal
| cases are there these days around alcohol sales and
| purchase via dark net? How many people thrown in $$$
| expensive jail for five years for selling alcohol to
| another adult? How many criminals are getting rich and
| powerful thanks to alcohol sales?
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| In this specific case, there was no violence, and no one
| victimized.
|
| If you want to spend $5+ million USD in tax money (which is
| approximately what would have happened in the event of his
| refusing the plea agreement) on investigating and charging
| and prosecuting and caging and feeding and medicating someone
| for their entire lifetime for engaging in activities that
| _victimized no one_ , then I don't really know what to tell
| you other than that seems like an extreme
| emotional/nationalistic bias to me, because I know what $5mm
| USD can do when wielded instead to benefit people versus
| caging them like animals.
|
| > _Plus he only got 5 years, which isn 't a long sentence in
| the US._
|
| Five years is a long time in jail no matter what the country,
| but it's an exceptionally long time in the US given that
| people are _commonly and routinely_ tortured[1] whilst
| imprisoned there.
|
| Being pro-incarceration in the US, given the present abusive
| system and widespread, well-documented prison conditions, is
| congruent and coterminous with being pro-torture, which is an
| unconscionable viewpoint to promote, in my view.
|
| I really, really hope that it's an opinion from ignorance of
| these systems, because I can't personally fathom a world
| where reasonable human beings want other human beings (who
| have not caused anyone to come to harm in this case, but
| really _any_ human being) to be tortured.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement_in_th
| e_Un... and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#Torture
| mschwaig wrote:
| 'So we have these fingerprints, and we think they belong to this
| guy we already have prints on file for. Can you give us a yes/no
| answer if they match up?'
|
| seems like a pretty low bar for evidence. Seems like the kind of
| thing that could heavily skew towards telling you what you want
| to hear. Maybe someone else knows if it actually works like that,
| the writeup made it sound like that to me.
|
| I'm just some guy who saw a tv documentatary at some point about
| how forensic techniques that worked like that got called into
| question when conflicting DNA evidence started turning up.
| Camas wrote:
| > Law enforcement made a number of controlled purchases during
| the investigation into Porras and his co-conspirators. The
| purchases and subsequent surveillance followed the same pattern
| every time: make a purchase; watch Porras drive to a storage
| facility where he stored product; follow Porras to the Post
| Office; talk to Postal Inspectors about the package Porras or
| his co-conspirator had dropped into a USPS Blue Box.
| zapdrive wrote:
| My understanding from skimming the article is, they only
| identified the suspect from fingerprints. After identification
| they did surveillance and gathered additional evidence.
| mschwaig wrote:
| > The FDL [HSI Forensic Document Laboratory] returned the
| request after conducting a comparative analysis of the
| friction ridge detail of the fingerprints from the Imgur
| album and the fingerprint samples taken after police had
| arrested Porras for a different crime. The fingerprints in
| the Imgur album matched the prints they already had on file
| for Porras.
|
| It doesn't sound like that to me, but maybe I am
| misunderstanding what a comparative analysis would entail.
| zapdrive wrote:
| It doesn't say they arrested him immediately after the
| match. If you read the article they say they placed
| multiple orders and would surveill him after every order.
| That's how they gathered evidence.
| mschwaig wrote:
| I did read the article. I am interested in how forensic
| evicende like that is gathered in general and how
| reliable it is in general. It's debatable what role that
| fingerprint played in that investigation, but I did not
| want to call into question that particular outcome.
|
| For example my impression is that DNA evidence is very
| reliable while for example optically matching hairs or
| matching bite marks, which I think was done in the past
| in a similar 'does A match B setup' is fairly unreliable.
|
| It's interesting to me both from both the 'what bar does
| evidence have to meet to make sure there are no false
| convictions' side as well as the 'what are the privacy
| implications of posting pictures with fingerprints in
| them' side.
| ddelt wrote:
| I'm reading a lot of comments here which tackle the thorny topic
| of decriminalization of drugs in the US that we have historically
| over-prosecuted. I happen to agree with this sentiment as well.
| But almost everyone here arguing for a middle ground agrees that
| things won't change because all three branches of the US seem
| determined to keep a hard-line or zero tolerance policy on drugs,
| even when legalization and medical supervision, creation of new
| business and exploration of safer alternatives and research into
| benefits of said drugs are brought up as arguments and are
| summarily dismissed because "reasons".
|
| What are some actual, practical steps we all can take towards
| making decriminalization a reality?
| cnst wrote:
| I've always been conscious of fingerprints potentially showing up
| in the photos.
|
| _Just because you 're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after
| you._
|
| The same thing goes about keys -- it's amazing how people
| willingly share photos of their keys (with full signature and
| all) in full view.
| EmilioMartinez wrote:
| Always wondered the same. More so, it baffles me that
| locksmiths use physical keys to copy new keys, propagating
| errors in the long run.
| yboris wrote:
| As far as I can tell (from other comments I came across in the
| past), lock-picking is such an easy thing, that going through
| the effort of creating a key from a photo is just a technical
| exercise, not a needed strategy.
|
| But I think you are likely talking about different keys than
| the ones that open physical doors ;)
| mabbo wrote:
| > Porras also admitted possessing a Model A uzi-style pistol; a
| MAK 90; and an S&W .44 caliber revolver. Although all weapons in
| Porras' possession were legal firearms (the uzi-style pistol used
| post ban parts), a felony conviction for possession with intent
| precluded firearm ownership.
|
| Can someone explain this part to me. Was he _previously_
| convicted of a crime that precluded ownership? Or are the police
| able to take legal behaviour and change it to illegal behaviour
| later on?
| refurb wrote:
| It mentions he had already been a convicted, or at least
| arrested, for a prior crime. That's why they had his
| fingerprints on file.
|
| Whether that crime was a felony, I don't know.
|
| But I believe the "felons can't possess firearms" also includes
| possession while committing a felony - you don't need an actual
| conviction (but the felony would need to be proved).
| mjh2539 wrote:
| That he was previously convicted of felony possession with
| intent to distribute and that this precluded him from owning
| firearms is the only felicitous reading of that sentence.
| ciarannolan wrote:
| Felons cannot own guns in the US. There's nothing complicated
| about it.
| garrettgrimsley wrote:
| It's actually more complicated than that. In many states if
| you are convicted of a non-violent felony then at the end of
| your sentence your firearm rights are automatically restored.
| There are also the cases of pardons, expungements, and other
| restorations of civil rights. It varies by state, and while
| USC 922(g) outlaws firearm ownership possession by _any_
| felon, in practice the Federal courts look at whether the
| person has had their civil rights restored in the state of
| the alleged offense. When it comes to Federal charges, the
| prospect of amelioration is grim. In the Federal scenario,
| there is no expungement or pathway to restore your civil
| rights, but a pardon is possible. [0]
|
| There's also a discussion to be had about your and the legal
| definition of a "gun." For example, antique firearms such as
| some black powder rifles are specifically excepted [1] from
| the Federal legislation, but it could vary on a state by
| state basis.
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-
| manual...
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921
| notassigned wrote:
| Well they can, they just aren't allowed to...
| pstrateman wrote:
| I can't tell from the article.
|
| Certainly if he was previously convicted he can't legally poses
| a firearm.
|
| However I believe that possession of a firearm while operating
| a drug distribution business is also illegal.
|
| The article seems ambiguous on which it is.
| themark wrote:
| Things I learned:
|
| Use the spell checker.
|
| Randomly misspell different words.
| SpelingBeeChamp wrote:
| Check out Anonymouth:
|
| https://github.com/psal/anonymouth
|
| (How do you hyperlink text here?)
| djinnandtonic wrote:
| I don't like to sound like I'm wearing tinfoil, but I'm not sure
| I believe this. We keep getting eyebrow-raising explanations for
| how computer criminals are caught; I always ask why bother?
|
| The American intelligence apparatus has compromised nearly all
| network traffic, from hardware backdoors on up. I assume the real
| way this person was detected and caught would be too embarrassing
| to admit, hence the fingerprints-from-a-photo cover.
| justanotheranon wrote:
| Parallel Construction.
|
| it would be a national security catastrophe if it leaked that
| NSA was bulk decrypting all TLS/SSL traffic Internet-wide, by
| using a giant rainbow table of prime pair products for instant
| decryption without factoring, which was first proposed by Rabin
| back in 1997 at a NIST working group for establishing crypto
| standards.
|
| then NSA would lose the biggest SIGINT advantage since ENIGMA
| back in WW2.
|
| so instead, DEA is tasked with finding the dummies who post
| photos of their hands or bookshelves or who made n00b opsec
| mistakes like re-using handles or email accounts that connect
| to their real names. then DEA applies Parallel Construction to
| fabricate an investigative evidence chain to present to the
| Court. the Court never needs to know the truth.
|
| by the way, i personally do believe NSA is doing this, and all
| of Tor is as good as plain text to Ft Meade, because Rabin's
| idea really would scale with today's computing and storage
| capacities, and because that is exactly what i would do too.
|
| just what do you think Bluffdale is really for?
| jasoneckert wrote:
| What I find the most interesting about this article is that
| someone was able to be identified using a picture of their
| fingerprints.
|
| Thus, any photos posted online could be scoured for
| identification information. And with computer vision technologies
| becoming more mature, it means that regular video footage of
| people could identify them the same way in seconds or less using
| a wide variety of different visual traits.
|
| The implications of this on individual privacy are immense.
| redisman wrote:
| What I find incredibly disturbing is that these resources and
| expertise are being spent on drugs rather than child abuse
| materials etc.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It isn't either/or. There are teams devoted to hunting child
| abusers and teams devoted to hunting large scale drug
| dealers.
| gcbpp wrote:
| you have half your brain thinking analytically, and the
| other half devoted to being disingenuous? how is that not a
| waste of resources when both halfs could have been thinking
| properly?
| redisman wrote:
| Right but the balance should be more like 99/1 on those
| flatiron wrote:
| They were also shipping Xanax and Meth and those two ruin
| lives. But yeah spending time busting weed dealers is
| dumb.
| redisman wrote:
| Those will always be easily available. They're also
| available as prescriptions
| justinclift wrote:
| People have been warning this is likely possible, for years.
| genewitch wrote:
| There was some pytorch software called "enhance", i.e.
| ./enhance <image> [options] and you could take an image that
| someone took of their unpowered tv across the room and pull out
| a high resolution image of their face from the reflection in
| the matte-ish surface.
|
| I used it on reddit to convince people it was unsafe to post
| any images of that sort. It seemed to work for about 6 months.
|
| There's magic in image enhancement, but I don't know that
| ridges and valleys of a fingerprint are there, yet. I don't
| even know that "this specific person is scared that they leaked
| their face in a way that is recognizable to them" even scales
| to "never upload anything" - it could be this sort of news is
| programming the population that computers can tease out
| identities with any and all leaked information, pictures,
| audio, etc.
|
| Heck, a decade and a half ago there were claims that
| governments could narrow a search for an audio file upload
| based on the deviation from 60hz on the power line noise - in
| an audio recording.
|
| So who knows?
| SpelingBeeChamp wrote:
| Got a link to the particular enhance software you are
| referring to?
| absorber wrote:
| > Heck, a decade and a half ago there were claims that
| governments could narrow a search for an audio file upload
| based on the deviation from 60hz on the power line noise - in
| an audio recording.
|
| Wow. Any source for this?
| achairapart wrote:
| Facial recognition would be much easier then looking for
| fingerprints. Given all the social media apps steadily growing
| their datasets, won't be long before a leaked dump of a greater
| part of the whole world population data will be available to
| anyone. Maybe facial surgery will be a major thing in the
| future. Or we will all wear masks anytime, beside viruses.
|
| I know, that's not a bright vision of the future. I wonder
| where is the line where technology will switch from useful to
| socially dangerous and how far we are from it. To tell the
| truth, it already kind of switched from useful to a useless
| waste of time in many cases.
|
| Or the day when FAANG & other big tech will get bored with
| selling those stupid ads and move on to more powerful and scary
| things.
| sslalready wrote:
| I've reflected on the fact that some makers on YouTube wear
| gloves and wondered if this is for privacy reasons. I see
| globes being worn even when they're not obviously doing
| anything that risk getting their fingers dirty.
| sebastialonso wrote:
| Which is hilarious if you're monetising their videos.
| flatiron wrote:
| YouTube obviously knows who they are. I think they would
| want to prevent 4chan from doxing them.
| epakai wrote:
| Possibly to hide damaged cuticles, dirty fingernails, or
| something else unsightly. Comments will harp on just about
| any flaw. Ben Heck addressed comments about his fingers'
| condition, but he just offers some sarcasm about them instead
| of hiding it. Some might resort to gloves.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Anyone engaging in legally questionable activity who didn't
| already consider this attack vector and take it seriously
| simply haven't been paying attention and have bad OPSEC.
|
| The possibility of this kind of attack has _always_ been
| mathematically possible and it doesn 't take machine learning
| or computer vision to do it. It boils down to basic linear
| transformation.
|
| There's a long history of attempts to identify persons by
| photos of fingerprints for evidence, there's just a level of
| uncertainty involved which make it more suited for gathering
| intelligence than court-submitted evidence.
| microtherion wrote:
| > identified using a picture of their fingerprints
|
| It's not clear to me that they _identified_ him that way. It
| might be that they arrested him due to other evidence, compared
| the fingerprints afterward, and told him that they could prove
| the fingerprints matched, whereupon he pled guilty.
|
| It's no unheard of to elicit guilty pleas using less than
| scientifically robust forensic methods.
| refurb wrote:
| Indeed. I got the impression this was one of many pieces of
| evidence used to put the case together.
|
| The biggest one was the money laundering.
|
| _Porras had used a money laundering service controlled by
| Homeland Security Investigations. Vendors sent the money
| launderer a certain amount of Bitcoin and the money launderer
| mailed cash back to the vendor. At some point in the money
| launderer's career, federal agents quietly took control of
| the money laundering operation and used the position to
| identify dozens of darkweb vendors._
| rv-de wrote:
| How is that surprising? Isn't it absolutely obvious and
| technically trivial? They'll manipulate it into something
| monochrome with sufficient contrast and feed it into their
| database - done.
|
| Having said that it could just as obviously be a deceit to
| distract from an informant or other sources of information.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if writing style could also be used. I
| tend to use certain constructions and vocabulary across many of
| my comments. Some are under a handle with little or no link to
| my real identity, and some are quite the opposite. I expect
| someone could deanonymize the former based on correlation of
| writing style with the latter.
| refurb wrote:
| That's in the indictment too. He misspelled "quality" across
| several different posts.
|
| Alone it's not conclusive, but it's one more piece of
| evidence linking all of the activity together.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Yes, though I was thinking more about entirely correct
| writing. Patterns among hay in a haystack, as opposed to a
| needle.
| 3131s wrote:
| That's called stylometry and it can be surprisingly accurate
| under the right conditions.
| gruez wrote:
| What's the actual scientific evidence backing this? I'm
| asking because various forensic techniques that were
| previously perceived to be reliable (fingerprints,
| handwriting analysis, bite marks) turned out to be total
| bunk.
| SpelingBeeChamp wrote:
| Evidence that fingerprint analysis is "total bunk?" That
| one is news to me.
| slim wrote:
| this is not news. in 2008 CCC published finger prints of Angela
| Merkel
|
| https://www.wired.com/2008/03/hackers-publish/
| detaro wrote:
| > _in 2008 CCC published finger prints of Angela Merkel_
|
| The article you link neither talks about a fingerprint of
| Angela Merkel nor about a fingerprint recovered from a
| photograph.
|
| (But a CCC group did indeed years later show a politicians
| fingerprint recovered from a photo, but again not Merkels)
| slim wrote:
| sorry
| varispeed wrote:
| It's incredible that so much tax payer money and human resources
| are devoted to defend pharmaceutical companies monopoly on drugs.
| By his inventory it sounds like his customers would likely be
| people with chronic conditions that have strong presence of
| pharmaceutical lobby to prevent legal sales of cannabis and
| probably cannot afford Xanax through legal means because the cost
| of getting medical help is extortionate.
| antihero wrote:
| What a colossal waste of time. Prosecuting someone for selling
| online something that is illegal in a lot of states. Mindblowing
| how stupid the war on drugs is.
| lysium wrote:
| You mean 'legal' in a lot of states, don't you?
| amelius wrote:
| At least they implied legal in _some_ states.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| They have seized 30M in cash which means they will be able to
| fund their department with that cash.
|
| If taxpayers don't fund the police, the police funds itself.
| syspec wrote:
| I'm super sure, that is exactly how play out......
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| But that money doesn't get burnt and/or destroyed - it all
| goes into the budget.
|
| Same thing with confiscated cars in relation to drug deals
| which was quite recently in HN
| mixologic wrote:
| Yeah, weed really shouldnt be a priority, and should be
| legalized nationwide, but...
|
| ```Canna_Bars, on Hansa, advertised pounds of methamphetamine.
| In the description of the product, Porras had claimed the
| methamphetamine came "direct from Mexico."```
|
| So, defintely not legal anywhere, nor is mass distribution of
| meth really something that is of benefit to anybody but the
| cartels he bought it from.
| bunfunton wrote:
| It's a benefit for me. Meth is the only thing that treats my
| adhd without horrible side effects. 10mg / day orally. I
| can't afford the outragous out of pocket price for desoxyn
| per month. Moreover, after initially being prescribed it and
| having great results, after moving I can't find any
| psychiatrist willing to prescribe it because they are all
| terrified of the DEA. Thus I and many other stigmatized
| people directly benefit from cheap pure meth on the street.
| Thanks for reading about this casualty of the drug war.
| mixologic wrote:
| I was not aware that there were legitimate prescriptions
| for it. But it sounds to me like you're a casualty of the
| pharma industry more so than the drug war. The ratio of
| people that street meth helps to people that it harms is,
| by my SWAG, a very, very small number.
| sneak wrote:
| There's no victim. Literally nobody was harmed here.
|
| "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more
| damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and
| where they are, they should be changed."
|
| - Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
| gbrown wrote:
| Well, the supply chain for illegal drugs hurts a LOT of
| people, but that's because of the illegally.
|
| In a world with legal drugs, you'd still want to prosecute
| someone for giving money to cartels, but there would be much
| less incentive for people to do so in the first place.
| sneak wrote:
| The supply chain is not on trial in this instance, this one
| person (who did not harm or victimize anyone) is.
| tha0x5 wrote:
| This same illogic is used for people who want to defend
| looking at child porn:
|
| "The person abusing the child is not on trial in this
| instance, this one person (who did not harm or victimize
| anyone) is."
|
| More people have died in Mexico and Central America due
| to the drug war than have died in the war in Afghanistan.
|
| If you buy drugs from a supply chain that involves the
| cartels, you are indirectly funding organized murder and
| crime.
| mindslight wrote:
| The supply chain for all of society hurts a lot of people.
| Drugs are only a higher proportion because that industry's
| order presently can only be supplied by smaller competitors
| with similar fixed costs to the incumbents.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > There's no victim. Literally nobody was harmed here.
|
| The IRS doesn't agree.
| sneak wrote:
| While the US spends the incredible quantities of tax money
| it does[1] waging neverending imperialistic war, there is a
| strong argument to be made that _not_ giving the IRS money
| is the "least harm" option among the set of ("pay the
| IRS", "don't pay the IRS").
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_mil
| itary_...
|
| (Spoiler alert: the US spends more on its military, per
| capita, than any country in the world except Israel, and
| more than 2x as much as the next free, industrialized,
| developed country (Norway), and many multiples more than
| all other developed free countries.)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Money taken by the IRS and money spent by Congress have
| almost no relationship. "Starve the beast" doesn't work.
|
| It has had the effect of adding trillions to the debt we
| are passing on to our children and grandchildren though.
| Good job boomers!
|
| And I say that as a boomer myself.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| The point I was trying to make is that you may see no
| harm as an individual, but the state has another
| viewpoint.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The more money the IRS get the more money they waste or use
| to increase inequality.
|
| The US is already spending 13bln per day
| HoveringOrb wrote:
| If he was funding cartel activity by purchasing meth from
| Mexico, you can be sure that harm resulted (even before you
| get to the destruction that meth addiction causes).
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| If drugs were legal there wouldnt any cartel activity
| associated with it, maybe no powerful cartels at all, so
| this is stupid logic
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Perhaps, but right now--as it stands--there _is_ cartel
| activity associated with it. And funding violent cartels
| for any reason should be illegal, for the same reasons
| that funding any violent organization should be illegal.
| sneak wrote:
| The alternative of having a square job and funding the US
| military via compulsory tax payments kills and tortures an
| order of magnitude more people than the cartels, if you
| want to follow the money in this line of reasoning.
|
| Furthermore, the destruction caused by the _individual use_
| of meth cannot reasonably be attributed to anyone other
| than the person who willingly purchased, acquired, and
| ingested the substance with full consent.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The difference being that if you don't buy drugs online
| voluntarily you won't get jailed. If you don't pay your
| taxes you, eventually, will.
|
| It's not moral to ask citizens to pay taxes, but it's not
| immoral to pay taxes: you do it because it's the least
| harmful option available to you.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| You are glossing over the illegal firearms. Would it really be
| better to wait for the murder.
| antihero wrote:
| The firearms were legal and licensed, however due to the
| drugs, they became illegal.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| He also had a prior felony, sold meth, sold Xanax, and had an
| Uzi. Not someone you'd want to date your daughter.
| gilrain wrote:
| ...or your son.
| plutonorm wrote:
| What people put into their bodies is their own business.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| So you say. I'm not obliged to agree with what you think
| should be legal or illegal.
| henearkr wrote:
| This has nothing to do with an abstract notion of
| morality.
|
| In our society, we look out for each other, if somebody
| is in distress, e.g. hurt on the side of the road, we
| help him, call an ambulance, he gets medical help.
|
| The fact that society makes huge efforts to save and cure
| people requiring medical attention, is at the root of the
| taboo on substances (or behaviors) that are unhealthy.
| Otherwise that would be a pure waste of resources for the
| society.
|
| At least that was the theory. In practice, you are free
| to drink booze until you pass out...
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Yes, this is correct. I also don't want my children to
| take drugs, and when you make things widely available,
| people use them more. You don't have to look further than
| the opioid crisis to see that.
| bunfunton wrote:
| So perhaps you should teach them not to use drugs instead
| of trying to control what other people are allowed to put
| into their own bodies.
| pkphilip wrote:
| It really should be both.
| vips7L wrote:
| Disregarding the fact that opioids are still illegal
| without a prescription (much like meth, and marijuana)
| there's plenty of articles that show that legalizing
| marijuana has lowered opioid use in those states.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's the opposite of what studies on drugs
| use/availability say.
|
| People in the Netherlands don't get stoned everyday just
| because they can.
| HoveringOrb wrote:
| I want to agree with this, but I've seen firsthand how meth
| heads bring down everyone around them.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Meth isn't life destroying poison sorry to inform you.
| It's a benefit for me and many others. Meth is the only
| thing that treats my adhd without horrible side effects,
| it's the smoothest calmest most effective solution. 10mg
| / day orally. I can't afford the outragous out of pocket
| price for desoxyn per month. Moreover, after initially
| being prescribed it and having great results, after
| moving I can't find any psychiatrist willing to prescribe
| it because they are all terrified of the DEA. Thus I and
| many other stigmatized people directly benefit from cheap
| pure meth on the street. Thanks for reading about one
| casualty of the drug war (me). Go look up reviews for
| desoxyn if you're curious. Yes it's the same thing.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| This is ridiculous. The poster clearly meant recreational
| abuse of meth. Your anecdotal experience with ADHD
| medicine does not warrant advocation of meth across the
| board for your sake. The difficulty you're having is a
| direct consequence of how toxic and life destroying meth
| is.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Something like <10% of people who try meth get addicted.
| Perhaps we should ban donuts next :)
| rhexs wrote:
| Meth isn't a life destroying poison because you're
| addicted to it? Is that really the argument?
| tchaffee wrote:
| That's called confirmation bias. The people who are
| living fulfilling and successful lives using meth,
| cocaine, wine, tea, or marijuana do not advertise it and
| therefor you have zero information about how many of them
| there are. Well people do talk about the legal and
| socially acceptable ones: wine, tea, and increasingly
| marijuana. So until meth becomes both legal and socially
| acceptable, your anecdotal data is heavily skewed towards
| those who crashed.
|
| With that said, meth undoubtedly has a higher potential
| for abuse and addiction than marijuana and is worse for
| the health when abused. But evaluating just how much of a
| difference is near impossible while it remains illegal
| and while there is an huge and profitable government
| funded industry around the war on drugs.
| dTal wrote:
| No. We live in a society. If I'm expected to help pick up
| the pieces when you self-destruct, it's absolutely my
| business.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Then so is your diet and exercise regime my business. I
| also want to control who you spend time with (for your
| mental health) and what you consume for entertainment -
| there will be limits on what you can read and watch and
| how much. Alcohol is of course no longer ever an option,
| and many injury prone sports are also forbidden. At any
| point we predict you might commit a crime, we will jail
| you first to reduce the cost to society.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Slippery slope fallacy
| dTal wrote:
| Thank you for at least engaging with what I _actually_
| said.
|
| Obviously, you must balance the harm of the intervention
| itself with the harm that the intervention is trying to
| mitigate.
|
| In fact many of your measures are already in place.
| Civilized society does control your diet, through food
| regulation. It controls what you watch to some extent -
| you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and
| violence. Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance, and
| many injury-prone sports have been discontinued or
| modified to be safer, although some (like boxing)
| continue despite solid evidence of terrible cumulative
| injury - to great controversy. I'm not sure what you're
| going for with the pre-crime thing...
|
| There's no need to equate "my business" with "draconian
| control".
| tchaffee wrote:
| > Civilized society does control your diet, through food
| regulation.
|
| No they don't. I can grow my own food and it is perfectly
| legal and loads of people do exactly that.
|
| > you'll have to go a bit out of your way to find sex and
| violence.
|
| Hardly. It's all over the internet. Even teens easily
| find it.
|
| > Alcohol is indeed a restricted substance
|
| Not for adults though, which is what we are talking about
| here, right?
|
| > any injury-prone sports have been discontinued or
| modified to be safer
|
| Only commercially. I can engage in the vast majority of
| the more dangerous version of those sports in my own free
| time any time I want. Play American football without
| helmets in my own backyard? Who is going to stop me?
|
| So no, none of the things you mentioned are controlled to
| the point of being illegal. And even in rare cases where
| they are illegal (buying raw milk for example), no one
| gets thrown in jail for five years for doing it, and
| people do continue to do it and take those risks, and
| society does continue to pay when things go wrong.
|
| > Obviously, you must balance the harm of the
| intervention itself with the harm that the intervention
| is trying to mitigate.
|
| Who decides that? Because I find it difficult to put a
| measure on the cost of removing so many freedoms trying
| to make life risk free. It's not a society I would want
| to live in. I will temper that by saying I'm fully in
| favor of requiring people to wear masks in public. But
| only because it's a public emergency and in unusual
| circumstances I'm flexible. But what you are suggesting
| is long term and permanent policy.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Sugar costs way more in health consequences. It's easier
| to recover from abuse from most drugs than sugar, which
| is a slow poison, yet available everywhere and given to
| us since early childhood (actually, in the womb).
| nip180 wrote:
| That's absurd and incorrect. It's significantly safer to
| expose an unborn child to sugar than alcohol, cocaine,
| meth, or heroin.
| tchaffee wrote:
| It is not significantly safer. If we are comparing like
| to like, then we are not talking about a one time
| exposure, we are talking about addiction and regular
| exposure. Addiction to sugar will almost always result in
| a high BMI.
|
| "Having a high BMI during pregnancy has been linked to an
| increased risk of various health problems for a baby,
| including: Birth defects Being
| significantly larger than average (fetal macrosomia)
| Impaired growth Childhood asthma
| Childhood obesity
|
| " [1]
|
| [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-
| lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...
| nip180 wrote:
| People addicted and regularly consuming alcohol, meth
| (smoked, snorted, or injected), street heroin, and
| cocaine all suffer from significantly worse side effects
| than people addicted to sugar.
|
| I'll grant you that sugar has a higher total social cost,
| because more people are addicted to it.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Street heroin isn't comparable because that's a
| complication of it being illegal. You would have to
| compare sugar to legalized heroin and safe injection
| sites like they have in Switzerland. In which case you
| are wrong. Heroin is a very safe drug once you eliminate
| the possibility of overdose, extremely well tolerated by
| the body aside from constipation. Which is why opiates
| are extremely common in hospitals and are used in great
| quantities all over the world.
|
| Diabetes is far more dangerous than legal and medically
| supervised heroin. So you got that wrong. What else did
| you get wrong?
|
| Alcohol addiction is worse than sugar addiction without a
| doubt, I can agree with that.
|
| Diabetes is a very serious disease. I wouldn't be
| surprised at all to find out a cocaine addiction is safer
| long term. You would really need to back up your claim
| with stats instead of just continuing to insist.
| nip180 wrote:
| I used the term "street heroin" instead of heroin because
| of all the complications that come along with it being
| illegal. This is a thread about black markets after all.
|
| I don't feel like my claims are controversial at all.
| Take cocaine. It's use often leads to psychosis. Snorting
| cocaine damages the nose significantly. Injecting cocaine
| is probably the worse drug for the number of punctures a
| person will do because of the short high and incredible
| addictive nature of the drug. Cocaine damages the
| cardiovascular system. It leads to ulcers. It decreases
| appetite so strongly it often leads to malnutrition.
| Cocaine increases the risk for seizures and strokes.
| Cognitive impairment often occurs after long heavy use.
| This is completely ignoring the social costs of cocaine
| use, which are significantly higher than being diabetic.
| The cartels don't profit from insulin.
|
| I'd rather be diabetic than have years of heavy cocaine
| use behind me. I've been close to people with type 2
| diabetes and people that went through cocaine addiction.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > I used the term "street heroin" instead of heroin
| because of all the complications that come along with it
| being illegal. This is a thread about black markets after
| all.
|
| Well yes, and a thread about why recreational drugs
| should be legalized to reduce harm. But either way we
| should not be comparing the legal use of one substance to
| the illegal use of another. It's a mostly useless
| comparison when it comes to the nature of the substances
| and mostly useful to talk about the risks of prohibition.
|
| As far as your other claims, I already said "You would
| really need to back up your claim with stats instead of
| just continuing to insist."
|
| Anecdotal evidence about your friends and which addiction
| you would prefer don't do anything to move the
| conversation forward, so lacking stats and evidence about
| your claims, I'll stop here.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Just noting that a lot of these addicts have awful diets
| (even worse than the already bad average). The common
| extreme tooth decay seen in meth addicts is obviously not
| caused by the substance itself but by negligence paired
| with consumption of extreme quantities of... sugar.
| robocat wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meth_mouth
|
| The hypothesized causes of meth mouth are a combination
| of MA side effects and lifestyle factors which may be
| present in users:
|
| Dry mouth (xerostomia)
|
| Clenching and grinding of the teeth (bruxism)
|
| Infrequent oral hygiene
|
| Frequent consumption of sugary, fizzy drinks
|
| Caustic nature of methamphetamine (less likely: "Meth
| mouth is generally most severe in users who inject the
| drug, rather than those who smoke, ingest or inhale it.")
| lambdaba wrote:
| That's why I said "most drugs".
|
| That being said, there is an epidemic of childhood
| diabetes and _newborn_ obesity, which is entirely due to
| mother's high sugar & processed foods diets. It's a
| serious matter.
|
| Also, it's possible to be a long-time user (obviously not
| a abuser) of heroin or meth (I know it's not exactly
| comparable but consider people taking adhd meds).
|
| I'd take that over abusing sugar, which will cause fatty
| liver, diabetes, and cancer.
| nip180 wrote:
| If cost, purity, and consistency of supply (for the drug
| and all paraphernalia) wasn't a problem it's probably
| safer to consume heroin regularly than consume coca-coal
| regularly.
|
| With the realities as they are coca-coal is probably
| safer, but because it's cheaper, won't have unexpected
| adulterants, and you won't have to invest much time or
| effort in finding a new supply if your favorite vending
| machine breaks down.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Yes, that what was I was thinking, particularly the Dutch
| example where heroin addiction is treated as a healthcare
| problem and addicts have long lives.
|
| I like that you spelled Coca-Cola "coca coal" :)
| derbOac wrote:
| Except that criminalization doesn't help anyone pick up
| the pieces, at least as criminalization goes in the us
| today. There's also lots of ways to self destruct that
| aren't criminalized.
| dTal wrote:
| You are arguing against a position I did not take. My
| sole point is that hyper-permissive individualistic
| libertarianism is inappropriate in a cohesive society.
| Your health, your success, even your happiness; all
| affect me. We all depend on each other. As such, it's
| simply not correct to say "it's my business what I put in
| my body".
|
| "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a
| piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be
| washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if
| a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends
| or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me,
| because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never
| send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sugar, alcohol, and sitting have cost society more than
| meth, yet no one is going to go around policing people
| for those vices.
|
| Education and positive incentives are the better
| solution.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There's a simple solution, don't socialise safety nets
| and let people pay for their mistakes or misfortunes.
|
| It may sound cold but at least you don't have to steal
| money from all the people who actually create value and
| you don't have to pay for bureaucracy
| dTal wrote:
| Bob runs a small but successful company that produces a
| niche variety of widget for manufacturing sector X. Bob
| likes a cigarette! He applies his personal agency and
| smokes several packs a day. He says they help him focus.
| One day, in his forties, Bob is diagnosed with emphysema
| and learns he doesn't have long to live. In between
| crossing items off his bucket list, he tries to find a
| way to keep his company going; but no one else
| understands this niche like Bob does.
|
| Bob dies and the company goes under. A few of his
| customers can't find alternate suppliers and go under as
| well. Some products cease to exist; others become more
| expensive. A huge loss to the market.
|
| We _all_ pay for others ' mistakes and misfortunes.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > steal money from all the people who actually create
| value
|
| When someone creates hundreds of millions of dollars in
| pollution and they have far less in the bank or in
| profits, who pays for the cleanup costs? You will. Your
| "simple solution" only fixes small cases of mistakes or
| misfortune, the easily affordable ones.
|
| And while you might be happy living in a society where
| you watch someone die on the sidewalk because they should
| "pay for their mistakes or misfortunes" I think the vast
| majority of us don't want anything to do with that kind
| of society. We aren't here to serve the economy, it's
| here to serve us.
| redisman wrote:
| Ok. One word: Obesity. What do?
| syspec wrote:
| You're doing that right now, with your tax dollars. It
| cost $81,203 _per year_ to house just one inmate in
| California[0].
|
| I understand punishing sellers, but I think the
| punishments for drug charges (and most charges in the
| US), are so draconian. 1 Year in prison for this guy
| should be enough. From what I've heard, prison is
| terrible, people do not want to spend 1 day in prison.
|
| There is absolutely nothing he will learn in year 3, or
| year 4, or year 5, that will make him a better person
| when he comes out.
|
| "Tough on crime" and "war on drugs" are just two huge
| mistakes we have made that we cannot retract, because it
| is politically unpopular to do so.
|
| [0] https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost
| dTal wrote:
| The dysfunctionality of the American penal system, as
| well as the propensity to treat it like a hammer for
| every problem's nail, warrants an entirely separate
| discussion.
|
| Hopefully there's a satisfactory middle ground between
| "locked up in harsh conditions for years" and "ain't
| nobody's business if you do".
| nip180 wrote:
| It's literally all about that $81k at this point.
|
| More time in prison, more people in prison, more lobbying
| dollars to encourage the use of the prison system. We
| have 2.5 million people in jail/prison.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Not if it results in them becoming a burden on society,
| both financially and socially.
| luckylion wrote:
| Does it necessarily? Was Paul Erdos a burden on society,
| both financially and socially? Are people who have
| handicaps because of sporting accidents not a financial
| burden on society, should we outlaw Snowboarding?
| johnwheeler wrote:
| Well, he probably didn't burglarize and mug people for
| snowboard gear, so there's that.
| luckylion wrote:
| I guess meth isn't the issue then, otherwise he would
| have.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| And what their daughters put into their bodies are their
| daughters' own business.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| The Uzi was a semi-automatic. It wouldn't be any more
| dangerous than your typical Glock, but would be bigger and
| heavier.
|
| He's still a felon carrying a gun which is bad, but it's not
| worse than any other gun.
| Kiro wrote:
| For someone outside the US your comment sounds so alien.
| johnnyfaehell wrote:
| I guess the thing is, if drugs were legal the chances are
| lots of drug dealers would be doing some other crime. There
| are obivously drug dealers that sell just to pay for their
| own drug usage. But there are lots and lots are in it for the
| money and choose crime because it's easy to get into.
| grumple wrote:
| Other types of crime require crimes against people. I know
| easily dozens of people who have dealt drugs, half of them
| are small women, and none of them would hurt anyone or
| commit other crimes. Your argument is unsupported by
| evidence.
| johnnyfaehell wrote:
| My argument is supported by crime statistics that show
| lots of drug dealers are convicted of other crimes.
|
| I would like to point out that I used the word lots and
| not many, not most, not all. I specifically used the word
| lots. So counter statements like yours couldn't be used.
|
| And if we're going to be pedantic, I guess it's my turn.
|
| > Other types of crime require crimes against people.
|
| There area many crimes where you don't commit it againit
| a person. Selling counterfeit goods, the victim is a
| company. Creating fake currency. Selling illegal weapons.
| Smuggling people in to countries (many do commit crimes
| againist people, but it is not required, just taking
| money and getting someone across a border hurts no-one).
| Shoplifting. Insurance fraud. The list goes on and on.
| grumple wrote:
| The word "lots" is what's called a weasel word [1]. 1000
| is "lots". Is it a lot if there are a million drug
| dealers? How does it compare to other crime correlations?
| Or general rates in the population?
|
| Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100%
| correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other
| crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation
| tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard
| for authority exists.
|
| Also I'd say most of those crimes are not victimless...
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
| johnnyfaehell wrote:
| > The word "lots" is what's called a weasel word [1].
| 1000 is "lots". Is it a lot if there are a million drug
| dealers? How does it compare to other crime correlations?
| Or general rates in the population?
|
| Let's be serious, you and I both know, I meant a high
| percentile. This is just a bad faith argument made after
| using an anedote of knowing 12 drug dealers to say a
| statement about a high percentile of drug dealers would
| commit other crimes to make money if drugs were legal.
| Despite the fact that a high percentile of current drug
| dealers commit other crime. The reason I'm not using an
| exact number is because I don't want someone like you
| saying "Well the in the US 26% don't do that" when I
| found a stat for differnt country. We both know what is
| meant.
|
| > Your logic is fallacious. You know what has a 100%
| correlation with dealing drugs and committing those other
| crimes? Breathing. Drinking water. Eating. Correlation
| tells us little. Perhaps it does hint that a disregard
| for authority exists.
|
| My logic is: Someone who got into selling drugs to make a
| profit because the barrier to entry is low would move
| into another area of criminality to make money because
| the barrier to entry is low.
|
| Your logic is: ???
|
| Is it that they would still sell drugs? Why don't they
| sell something that is legal? Is it because the barrier
| to entry is higher? That they just wouldn't try and make
| money anymore?
|
| > Also I'd say most of those crimes are not victimless...
|
| Drugs is not a victimless crime either. Drug users are
| often victims of shoddy drugs being sold with dangerous
| chemicals in them. And I never said they weren't
| victimless, I just said they weren't against a person. A
| company is not a person.
| grumple wrote:
| Most drug dealers in this country are small time weed
| dealers. Usually college kids or recently graduated.
| These are the drug dealers who are small time and
| basically never get caught because they aren't the
| demographic that drug laws were created to criminalize.
| So no, you and I seem to know different things.
|
| Selling drugs is cheap, profitable, easy, and relatively
| low risk if you're somewhere weed has been decriminalized
| but not legalized. You think smuggling people and selling
| weapons to felons is low risk and easy? You think
| insurance fraud is low risk and easy? That's an absurd
| argument to make.
|
| You know what they'll move into? Selling literally
| anything else. I've seen it a dozen times. "Oh dealing
| drugs makes good money but it turns out selling artisanal
| chocolate/soda/nude pics/clothing makes even more money."
|
| I've got to say it seems like this argument comes from a
| lack of real world experience and a strict adherence to
| the reports and theories of law enforcement agencies.
| Contrary to your belief, non-drug crimes do not suddenly
| spike in areas where drugs are legalized. See: Europe,
| American states where weed is legal.
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| My favorite book on the topic is "Legalize This!" by Douglas
| Husak arguing that we should decriminalize _all_ drugs.
|
| Surprisingly, the prohibition of alcohol in 1920's did not
| punish alcohol drinkers, just distributors. This model for
| drugs today would be a major improvement over the draconian
| treatment we have of the non-violent drug offenders.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Legalize-This-Decriminalizing-Practic...
| blunte wrote:
| There is considerable information back from the 80s to suggest
| that the US war on drugs was actually a system to enable racial
| discrimination.
|
| Then some years later, the ear on drugs became associated with
| the growth of the private prison industry and it's lobbyists.
|
| Indeed I provide no references here because it is quite an
| involved topic and difficult to prove given the publicly
| available information.
| handmodel wrote:
| I think that it is hard for younger people (especially young
| affluent people) to get a sense of how big of a problem drugs
| can be in society. Even prohibition seems crazy now - but it
| was popular at the time partly because public drunkenness and
| abusive husbands were a big deal.
|
| I think the fact that black people are prosecuted at higher
| rates or the fact that crack is prosecuted harder than
| cocaine is a sign of racism, but it does bug me when people
| assign a conspiratorial level of control to the problem. It's
| a lose-lose, and at least in 2020 we are eon the side of
| prosecuting things too harshly.
| pmachinery wrote:
| The motivation for fictitious wars against bogeymen is to
| empower and bankroll law enforcement while diminishing the
| civil rights of citizens.
|
| Like the war on terror, the decades long war on drugs has
| been a roaring success.
| ArkVark wrote:
| And now we have the War on COVID.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Uh... and how many virii have been illegally imprisoned?
| I'm not following.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| > _The motivation for fictitious wars against bogeymen is
| to empower and bankroll law enforcement while diminishing
| the civil rights of citizens._
|
| Thank you. This trend where people recast everything in the
| 20th century to be racially motivated (but can't provide
| any proof, because it's like complicated) is exhausting.
| pmachinery wrote:
| Just for the record, I wasn't trying to deny the racial
| element in drug 'warfare', which certainly exists (how
| deliberately is another matter).
|
| And when people 'recast' things it's sometimes because
| new evidence emerges, or becomes more well known.
|
| An example of that is in these comments, the interview by
| former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman made only in 1994, but
| probably still not that well known until this article
| from 2016:
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
| wwright wrote:
| The war on terror and war on drugs are closely related
| enough (through expansion of powers and economic policies
| such as allowing police to purchase old military equipment)
| that I wonder if it's worth even treating them as separate
| things.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| The war on drugs has a lot more raids in the own
| territory while the war on terror has more bombings in
| foreign territory, so for now there are some major
| differences. However once using predator and reaper
| drones against citizens without any judicial oversight is
| normalized, that difference will be gone.
| pc86 wrote:
| There are quite a few domestic impacts of the war on
| terror: domestic spying and the USA PATRIOT Act are two
| huge examples. In the context of "bankroll law
| enforcement while diminishing the civil rights of
| citizens" it's nearly identical to the war on drugs
| domestically.
| xxpor wrote:
| In terms of domestic spying, it's hard to articulate any
| practical effect it's had though. People have certainly
| reacted to it (see the move to TLS everywhere, for
| example) but I can't actually think of any enforcement
| actions its linked to. There's almost certainly parallel
| construction out there, but compared to the war on drugs,
| which has lead to mandatory minimums, constant police
| harrassment, no knock warrants, etc, I'd have to concider
| the war on drugs the higher priority target for fighting.
| three_legs wrote:
| I'm seeing the same happening for covid - governments and
| police using it as an opportunity to gain more control and
| power without real justification, only the excuse of "for
| health safety".
| disown wrote:
| Also to cause fear and panic to unite the population
| against a common enemy. Fear is the fundamental basis of
| government and control.
| znpy wrote:
| That's not "considerable information", that's a known fact.
|
| Adam Conove made a whole episode in his show, "Adam ruins
| everything", about the true reasons why weed is illegal.
|
| Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0
|
| Spoiler: it's about giving the government of the US a tool to
| discriminate black people and mexicans.
| animationwill wrote:
| I'll have to watch Adam's episode, but I watched a Netflix
| documentary five years ago (don't recall the name) that
| presented the argument that it was primarily the (cotton?)
| industry that lobbied to classify weed as illegal, because
| they wanted to destroy the hemp industry (and succeeded) as
| they were producing clothing.
|
| So it sounds like original bad intent (destroy competition)
| led to it being abused for further bad intent (racism).
| throw_away wrote:
| As the bootleggers and baptists phenomenon has shown, the
| drive for prohibition can come from multiple, disparate
| sources.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
| CJefferson wrote:
| I'm going to be honest, the argument that hemp is a
| generally great material has always seemed weak to me.
| There are plenty of countries where growing hemp is
| legal, and it still never seems to get much use.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| It historically has had _tons_ of use. It was pretty much
| the only material used for making rope for centuries in
| Europe, and was used widely in building construction too.
| Hemp cultivation was a crucial piece of colonial
| Virginia's economy, heavily promoted by the British
| government, and it was used for clothing, sails, and even
| fine textiles as far back as the Viking age (eg,
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep02686).
|
| I could provide more references but I'm typing with
| thumbs - they are easy to find, though.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The war on drugs makes no sense, it should in fact be called
| the war on some drugs. So called illegal drugs like cocaine
| and marijuana cause very few deaths, compared to tobacco and
| alcohol, less than 1% It has been established that the best
| way to reduce drug abuse is through education and support,
| this was in fact from a RAND study. The militant policing
| approach has not in fact reduced drug use in the USA.
| CPLX wrote:
| > The war on drugs makes no sense, it should in fact be
| called the war on some drugs.
|
| I prefer the war on some drugs when consumed by some people
| Mirioron wrote:
| Didn't the war on drugs grow out of prohibition though? It's
| kind of odd to think that a lot of common drugs were
| commercially available 150 years ago. One of the most popular
| soft drinks ever started from that even.
|
| We also got anesthetics from the general availability of
| drugs. I doubt doctors would've tried using cocaine on
| patients if it had been illegal back then.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > There is considerable information back from the 80s to
| suggest that the US war on drugs was actually a system to
| enable racial discrimination.
|
| It also was a way to increase the private jails business,
| which in fact peaked during the 80s, but the racial and
| political discrimination stands too. The following piece from
| the Wikipedia article about the War on Drugs is telling.
|
| "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after
| that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You
| understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it
| illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
| the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
| with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could
| disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders,
| raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them
| night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were
| lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
|
| -- John Ehrlichman (White House Counsel and Domestic Affair
| advisor during the Nixon administration)
| xibalba wrote:
| > There is _considerable information_ ... that the US war on
| drugs was ... a system to enable racial discrimination.
|
| > I provide no references ... it is ... difficult to prove
| given the publicly available information
|
| These claims seem to strongly negate each other... to a
| degree that one detects the putrid scent of conspiracy
| theory.
| alsobrsp wrote:
| > There is considerable information back from the 80s to
| suggest that the US war on drugs was actually a system to
| enable racial discrimination.
|
| I believe it was started as a voter disenfranchisement effort
| by the Nixon Administration.
|
| > Indeed I provide no references here because it is quite an
| involved topic and difficult to prove given the publicly
| available information.
|
| Agreed, as I have none either.
| Lammy wrote:
| So is the environmental movement in America. It's no
| coincidence that the EPA came out of the Nixon administration
| too. I say this as a huge proponent of the Earth and all of
| her humans, and I have similarly struggled to prove it to
| people. It is hermetically sealed.
| save_ferris wrote:
| > The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after
| that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You
| understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it
| illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting
| the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
| with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could
| disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders,
| raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them
| night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were
| lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
|
| - John Ehrlichman, Domestic Policy Chief for Richard Nixon,
| in a 1994 Interview for Harpers Magazine[0]
|
| 0: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-
| racism-n...
| sibane wrote:
| This is also clearly what happened with psychedelics. When
| they found out LSD wasn't the truth serum or mind control
| tool they had hoped it would be, and instead tended to just
| make people think more like hippies, they put the leg down
| hard.
| aristophenes wrote:
| I can partially understand that point of view for marijuana
| (though I think it's important for a functional society to obey
| laws, and get them changed if they aren't working instead of
| just breaking them based on personal preference). But the guy
| had been selling methamphetamine too, which is life destroying
| poison. Our government provides costly services for people who
| are incapable of taking care of themselves, and that drug
| creates a bigger burden on those programs. Unless you also
| advocate for the removal of social safety nets I don't see how
| you can justify thinking that the government shouldn't try to
| limit drug use.
| adrusi wrote:
| It is absolutely possible to be a functional methamphetamine
| user. Methamphetamine is prescribed for ADHD under the brand
| name Desoxyn. Not as often as amphetamine, largely because of
| the tighter legal restrictions on methamphetamine, but there
| are still _plenty_ of people who take that drug daily without
| fitting the stereotype of a meth addict (not to mention all
| of the functional illegal meth users who you wouldn 't hear
| about because why would they want other people to know about
| their illegal habits?)
|
| Meth does not make you incapable of holding down a job. It
| will probably make you incapable while you're in your
| chasing-the-high phase where you're constantly upping the
| dose to outrun your tolerance. But in the climate of
| prohibition, everyone either stops doing that at some point
| or reaches an equilibrium where they can't afford higher
| doses so they settle into a maintenance dose where they would
| be totally capable of holding down a job if they hadn't spent
| the last _n_ months making themselves unemployable.
|
| And why do they become unemployable? Because the word getting
| out that they use meth _in itself_ makes them unemployable,
| and then because the price of meth is inflated due to
| prohibition[1], they turn to crime to make enough money to
| pay for their addiction.
|
| Legalizing meth would certainly lead some people who wouldn't
| have otherwise tried it to try it, and some fraction of them
| would become addicted and suffer the health consequences[2],
| and many of those who got addicted would in fact become
| burdens of the state. But life would be better for anyone who
| _did_ find themselves addicted, life would be better for
| people who didn 't choose to try the drug on account of lower
| crime[3]. Some people who would try meth under prohibition
| would be less interested in it because if it were legal it
| would fail to signal their disregard for authority, and it's
| possible that the different personality types of new addicts
| under legalization would lead to different outcome, but it's
| probably not worth speculating about what differences there
| would be.
|
| Legalization trivially reduces crime by denying an income
| stream to organized crime. If public policy under
| legalization were not entirely incompetent, and we were able
| to either help a significant number of addicts hold onto a
| legitimate income, or help a significant number settle into
| an affordable maintenance dose (which would be easier than it
| sounds since their drug would likely be much cheaper), then
| the criminal activity of drug _users_ would likewise plummet.
| These cost savings surely offset the increased burden on the
| social safety net.
|
| [1] This is generally the case with illegal drugs. Generic
| Desoxyn is actually extraordinarily expensive, at 1 USD/mg in
| the US. which is higher than the street price in some parts
| of the US per https://havocscope.com/black-market-
| prices/meth-prices/. It's possible that this has to due with
| the cost of achieving pharmaceutical-grade purity, but I'm
| skeptical of that. I think it's more likely that the price of
| the pharmaceutical drugs reflects one of the many market
| failures of the US healthcare system, or the costs of DEA
| licensing for its production and distribution. But it's worth
| acknowledging that a quick google search doesn't back up my
| claims about price inflation.
|
| [2] The health consequences of meth are also exaggerated by
| prohibition. Meth is somewhat neurotoxic for chronic high-
| dose users, and definitely caridotoxic. The skin issues
| associate with meth addicts are caused by the meth itself
| combined with obsessive picking at the face, but while meth
| can cause some dental problems as a result of clenching the
| jaw and gnashing one's teeth, it's likely that most of the
| dental issues associated with meth addicts are actually cause
| by impurities in the drug that's available to them, a result
| of prohibition.
|
| [3] This is critical: the consequences of drug use would be
| redirected from people who made no choice whatsoever to
| involve themselves in drugs to people who at least made
| _some_ choice, even if they somehow didn 't fully comprehend
| the consequences of that choice. And even for the latter
| group, the consequences wouldn't be as bad as they are under
| prohibition, though that group would probably be larger.
| BTCOG wrote:
| I understand it will seem that I am playing devil's advocate
| here, but the dose makes the poison. How are you to know that
| the folks buying the methamphetamine are not in fact
| experienced microdosers who are taking functional 5-10mg
| doses for productivity or ADD? While I have known
| methamphetamine users to take things too far, I've known far
| more heavy alcoholics who ruin their lives and their families
| lives dealing with them drinking each and every day. Aside
| from that, the government has no right to tell another man
| what type of substance he puts in his body unless he is doing
| harm to others.
| redisman wrote:
| The war on drugs (officially) started in the 70s. What do we
| have to show for it 50 years later? Are there more drugs or
| less drugs today? How many lives destroyed by the drugs vs
| the enforcement and violence caused by their legal status?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| While I whole-heartedly agree with you, it's easy to frame
| this situation in a misleading light: "we've been fighting
| drugs for 50 years, and we still barely have them under
| control. Imagine how much worse the situation would have
| been if we hadn't fought them! Now give us more money and
| let us be even harsher!"
|
| Of course, this is pure sophistry, but it will appeal to
| many people. The better line of argument I believe is about
| the extreme positive impact that
| decriminalization/legalization have had in every single
| country that have tried. That is much harder to dispute and
| twist.
| hourislate wrote:
| >Our government provides costly services for people who are
| incapable of taking care of themselves, and that drug creates
| a bigger burden on those programs.
|
| Maybe the Gov should go after Coca Cola and Pepsi or
| McDonald's and Burger King. The fast food industry has caused
| more health issues peddling their poison than all the drug
| dealers in the country. An epidemic of obesity and related
| illnesses from type II diabetes, HBP, Heart Disease, etc have
| destroyed more families than all the marijuana use could
| ever.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| First, legality does not presuppose morality. America is the
| result of breaking laws based on personal preference, and
| taking up arms against the current government to get it done.
|
| Second, other life destroying poisons include: alcohol,
| nicotine, sugar, fast food, dopamine hits from social media
| feedback/gambling/gaming... are you ready for the government
| to decide your intake for those?
|
| The only thing prohibition does is fund organized crime, and
| increase the costs of policing by pretending that the "war on
| drugs" can be won. Taking drugs are part of human culture. It
| may as well be a war on human behavior.
|
| When you subtract the dangers of dealing with cartels and
| policing, drug use is another form of escapism. As with any
| form of escapism, it can reach the point of abuse. We should
| absolutely have a social safety net for addicts _of every
| sort_ , and it would be much cheaper than the costs of
| imprisonment and the war on drugs. Added bonus: actual
| liberty, instead of slogans on a bumper sticker.
|
| I say this coming from a long line of addicts/alcoholics,
| including myself. If our drug of choice had been available
| from the local pharmacist:
|
| - the drugs would have been cheaper and free of more
| dangerous cutting agents
|
| - gangs/cartels would not make a dime
|
| - we would've spent less time finding them
|
| - some of us would have gone to rehab instead of prison
|
| In a nutshell, even though we are poor, we would have had the
| same opportunities to get our act together as wealthy
| addicts.
|
| And no, this isn't a crazy idea. This is how things worked
| before prohibition.
|
| https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/kicking-
| ha...
| pitaj wrote:
| > Second, other life destroying poisons include: alcohol,
| nicotine, sugar, fast food, dopamine hits from social media
| feedback/gambling/gaming... are you ready for the
| government to decide your intake for those?
|
| The government does regulate alcohol ad nicotine directly.
| The federal gov subsidizes sugar, various localities tax
| it. Various politicians have made it clear they want to
| regulate or ban social media. Gambling is banned,
| monopolized, or regulated by every state government. Ever
| heard "video games cause violence"?
|
| My point is that the government has its hands in
| everything. People should be free to do all of the above
| activities. I fully support legalization of everything
| mentioned. But unfortunately it's not outlandish for the
| government to control them.
| 1_person wrote:
| > (though I think it's important for a functional society to
| obey laws, and get them changed if they aren't working
| instead of just breaking them based on personal preference)
|
| This is an unbelievably privileged position to take.
|
| Are you not aware that the country itself was established in
| the finest tradition of civil disobedience?
|
| The declaration of independence was an act of civil
| disobedience.
|
| The end of colonial empires was an act of civil disobedience.
|
| Slavery and segregation were resisted by civil disobedience.
|
| Oskar Schindler is the only member of the Nazi party to have
| been buried in Jerusalem in recognition of his civil
| disobedience.
|
| Are you really suggesting that all of these acts in defiance
| of unjust laws were morally wrong, and that everyone should
| have just waited for the law or regime to change?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| You always hear calls for "civil disobedience" or "non-
| violence" when it concerns systems that the speaker may not
| want outright support, but is highly sympathetic to. You
| never hear anyone say that US should have pursued a path of
| non-violence during the Cold War, after the attack on Pearl
| Harbor, or during the War On Terror. In those instances,
| violence is assuredly the order of the day. But when the
| villain is the West, civil disobedience is the max
| discomfort they can stomach.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The majority of people on Earth and in the US itself
| would tell you that non-violence would have been
| preferable to the "War On Terror". All of millions of
| people who have felt the brunt of the US Cold War would
| tell you the same - be they peasants in virtually all of
| South America or Vietnam; or US soldiers sent to die in
| Vietnam.
|
| Perhaps WWII is an exception to this, but it is
| absolutely in the minority. Wars of aggression (Cold War,
| War on Drugs, War on Terrorism) have never improved any
| part of the world in any way - they cause misery and
| poverty for the majority for untold generations, no
| matter what high-minded rhetoric is used to justify them.
| Regenschirm wrote:
| Thats just not how it works and never will.
|
| Our society should prevent stupid things / unknown things.
| Like lead paint.
|
| And for everything else it should make sure people from
| themselvs are aware of the risks and should have options
| which are more favoriable then drugs.
| sneak wrote:
| > _But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is
| life destroying poison._
|
| Indeed, and if you feel this way, perhaps you should seek
| penalties against those who actually wrought the destruction:
| the people who put that methamphetamine into human bodies,
| where it does the harm.
|
| I think you'll find that those people who hold the ultimate
| responsibility for this destructive act were destroying
| property that entirely belonged to them (to preserve or
| destroy as they please).
|
| If we don't have the right to own and control our own bodies,
| the only thing in the world that totally unambiguously
| belongs to us, we have no meaningful rights to own or control
| _anything_.
|
| At such a point (which is where we seem to be), they're not
| rights that are being respected, simply privileges
| temporarily afforded by the state to be revoked arbitrarily.
| bunfunton wrote:
| This is really an excellent argument. Thank you, am using
| this.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I think it would be great to remove social safety nets and a
| war on drugs.
|
| Social safety nets are just forcefully taking money from
| people creating value in society, taking a fee to keep alive
| government bureaucrats, and give the rest to people who don't
| produce value. It's an incentive to not create value and a
| disincentive to do so.
|
| If you want to donate to people in need, feel free to do it,
| just don't force the entire of society to do it.
|
| The concept of controlled substances is ridiculous and I
| don't think it needs to be justified, unless you're a
| government shill who benefits from it or some authoritarian
| person who feel like they need to impose their values on
| everyone else.
| andrepd wrote:
| You never wanted for anything in your life and it shows.
| Social safety nets aren't "handouts for lazy people". Let's
| take the obvious out and not even mention things like
| disability benefits, which exist so people who had the
| misfortune of having accidents or health problems which
| leave them unable to work and to produce value for Our
| Great Ruling Class aren't cast aside like garbage and don't
| have to depend on charity to live. Let's focus on things
| like unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.
|
| I'm glad that you never experienced hardships in your life,
| truly. But some people have. I have. Some people come from
| disadvantaged backgrounds. Others have hit rough patches.
| Some through mental health problems, substance addiction,
| or simply bad fucking luck and despite being hard-working
| simply got the short end of the stick and have no work with
| which to sustain themselves. Shouldn't we help these people
| get back on their feet? Lastly, the number of people which
| truly conform to your stereotype of "welfare queens"
| leeching off taxpayer's money are truly negligible, and
| have a negligible impact on the country's finances. If you
| truly cared about it you would much sooner worry about
| things like the MIC, regulatory capture, the capitalist
| class owning government and siphoning money for themselves
| (as amply demonstrated by the coronavirus bailouts), etc,
| rather than pick on people who are down on their luck.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Your position is fascism.
| seibelj wrote:
| You may disagree with parent's viewpoint but I would say
| eliminating the government is about as far from fascism
| as you can go. It's anarchism.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| No, it's the opposite of fascism. It's voluntarism or
| anarchy.
|
| Fascism is a totalitarian authoritarian political
| doctrine where the state is strong.
|
| I want a weak (or, even better, non existent) state and a
| society based on voluntary transactions and not on taxes
| taken under the threat of violence.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| What's to stop a mafia appearing who takes taxes under
| threat of violence, if there is no state to stop them?
| Anarchism always seems like utopic nonsense to me.
| Something like, 'I don't like being told what to do, so
| we should get rid of the state and as long as everyone
| promises not to tell each other what to do, it will be
| great'. If there is no state, there is a power vacuum.
| There is a reason why power vacuums are quickly filled.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Capitalist anarchy, which is what is described here, is
| indeed nonsense.
|
| The much more common notion of anarchy, socialist
| anarchy, actually advocates for smaller societies and
| more localized leadership (e.g. at the city level). Some
| role for a kind of state (e.g. an alliance of local
| micro-states) is often preserved, especially for military
| and diplomatic purposes.
| petre wrote:
| True. Iraq, Libya, Syria are noteworthy examples.
| Chechnya is another example.
|
| https://m.dw.com/en/opinion-russia-still-lives-in-the-
| shadow...
| greenduck wrote:
| Sure, but purely from the side of pragmatism, throwing people
| in jail isn't effective either. Treating them compassionately
| and giving them help for their problem works much better.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Also imagine saying the US has social safety nets.
| darkmoney007 wrote:
| "Unless you also advocate for the removal of social safety
| nets"
|
| Trump is actively defunding Social Security and other
| programs.
| minot wrote:
| I think you're falling in the same trap I fell in when I was
| watching jackass thinking: how is it fair that someone
| willingly puts their body in danger and we have to pick up
| the tab when they get injured and hospitalized.
|
| News flash: we already pay for these things because emergency
| rooms can't ask for payment before delivering life preserving
| treatment. Also, we already pay for a lack of social safety
| net by paying for the cost to put so many people behind bars
| not to mention an unhinged law enforcement that refers to the
| population as civilians and has a motto like "protect and
| serve" while going to the supreme Court to get a ruling that
| the police has no duty to protect.
|
| Of course, the government should try to limit drug
| distribution and sales. For example, we will still need
| strict labeling requirements. Unlabeled, improperly labeled,
| and unsafe storage conditions should be against the law. But
| it helps nobody to put anyone in prison for personal drug
| possession* or drug use.
|
| *Assuming they are not selling/distributing improperly
| labeled controlled substances.
| bnralt wrote:
| Soda creates a much bigger burden on those programs as well.
| Much of the food industry does, as well as the alcohol
| industry and the entertainment industry (encouraging
| sedentary lifestyles). These things have a much bigger impact
| than a guy selling meth on the darknet.
|
| I think as a society it is worth talking about limiting
| activities that are a net drain on society (and not just on
| health - also credit cards, advertising, the lottery, and
| much more). We don't do that, though. Instead we crack down
| extremely harshly on a small subsection, and completely
| ignore the rest.
| non-entity wrote:
| > But the guy had been selling methamphetamine too, which is
| life destroying poison.
|
| Time to arrest the liquor store owners?
| jh86 wrote:
| And don't forget bartenders!
| aaomidi wrote:
| Civil disobedience is the strongest way of bringing change.
|
| We've used it as a tactic for decades and it's been the only
| reliable force for change.
|
| There is no reason for your representative to listen to you
| in America unless you throw a wrench in the gears.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Good luck getting generation smartphone to do something.
|
| Like BLM protests proved, you will just get ex-felons
| robbing honest people and burning down buildings.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Thanks for your contribution.
|
| Just in case you don't know, there have been about 110
| nights of continual protests in nearly every metro area
| in the US.
|
| You may want to ask yourself why you're not joining in
| with them to influence the movement instead of
| complaining about it here.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Prohibition doesn't work for meth or heroin either. Making
| them freely available under doctor supervision is what works.
| Switzerland did it and an out of control heroin problem went
| away and especially important, usage among young people
| plummeted. Yes it costs money to treat a medical problem. It
| costs way more money to treat medical problems as something
| else. Let's go with the most effective solution even if "free
| and legal heroin" upsets some people's morals.
|
| Also consider that methamphetamine is not "life destroying
| poison". Addiction is the medical condition that destroys
| lives. Methamphetamine and similar drugs are also prescribed
| for medical conditions where they help people. Focusing on
| the substance is just more drug war propaganda.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Also consider that methamphetamine is not "life
| destroying poison". Addiction is the medical condition that
| destroys lives.
|
| It might not sound like it, but this is nothing but a
| tautology. Interfering with the person's life was just the
| definition of addiction.
|
| This was obviously-dumb enough that the DSM-V gave up on
| the word "addiction" entirely.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > It might not sound like it, but this is nothing but a
| tautology.
|
| Quite the opposite. Focusing on the substance instead of
| the medical condition is part of the war on drugs and
| essential for the propaganda to work.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Here's what I'm saying:
|
| Imagine two people who regularly consume cocaine. One of
| them is homeless; the other is an executive somewhere.
|
| _By definition_ , the definition of "addiction", the
| first one was "addicted", and the second one wasn't.
|
| There are arguments to be made for this kind of
| definition. But you can't use it to say "addiction is
| what destroys lives, not drugs". That's a tautology.
| Addiction is _the name we give_ to destroyed lives, not
| something that can be observed independently of whether a
| life is destroyed.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > you can't use it to say "addiction is what destroys
| lives, not drugs".
|
| Sure you can. It's perfectly reasonable to say sports
| injuries are what hurts people, not sports themselves.
| Even though by definition an injury hurts someone.
| Especially to make the point that what we want to focus
| on is reducing _the injuries_ , not reducing the sports.
|
| Everyone understands why the distinction was made, and
| flagging it as a tautology is just engaging in pedantry.
|
| But here's an interesting experiment: rewrite my point
| that "it isn't the substance that destroys lives but the
| medical condition of addiction" - without using the
| offending tautology. Maybe I'll learn something.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > But here's an interesting experiment: rewrite my point
| that "it isn't the substance that destroys lives but the
| medical condition of addiction" - without using the
| offending tautology. Maybe I'll learn something.
|
| This can't be done. Addiction isn't a medical condition.
| It is, according to this characterization, a description
| of a set of circumstances. You cannot determine whether
| somebody suffers from addiction by inspecting the
| person's behavior or reaction to whatever they're
| supposedly addicted to. You make a subjective judgment
| about whether their life would improve if they stopped
| doing it. Again, this is why the field of medicine gave
| up on using the word.
|
| Compare https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=3303 .
|
| > It's perfectly reasonable to say sports injuries are
| what hurts people, not sports themselves.
|
| "He's not hurt because a rock hit him in the head. He's
| hurt because his skull is broken."
|
| This is a terrible analysis. It tells you that the
| solution is to not break your skull, regardless of
| whether you get hit with a rock / bullet / whatever. Of
| course, that's impossible. The solution is to avoid the
| trauma that leaves you with a broken skull, not to resist
| the breaking.
|
| > Especially to make the point that what we want to focus
| on is reducing the _injuries_ , not reducing the sports.
|
| To the extent that you want to reduce injuries, you
| abandon that goal when you define the groups as
| "uninjured; no problems" and "already injured; nothing to
| be done". If that's how you see things, you're limited to
| _fixing_ injuries that have occurred; you can 't take any
| steps to _prevent_ or _avoid_ them. To do so would be to
| admit that sports might be dangerous even if you 're not
| yet injured.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > this is why the field of medicine gave up on using the
| word.
|
| From this year:
|
| "The Journal of Addiction Medicine (JAM), the official
| peer-reviewed journal of the American Society of
| Addiction Medicine, seeks Editorial Fellows. Applicants
| should have at least two years of addiction research
| experience, have an MD or PhD degree, have completed
| clinical specialty training, and hold faculty positions
| at the instructor, or assistant professor level or other
| junior faculty level equivalent. Candidates who have
| published at least 3 peer-reviewed papers, have strong
| knowledge of addiction science..." [1]
|
| > Addiction isn't a medical condition.
|
| We now have genetic markers for inherited tendencies for
| addiction, and we are starting to understand the changes
| that occur in the brain.
|
| From Harvard medical school (also note the use of the
| word "addiction" - I guess they missed the memo that
| everyone in the field of medicine gave up on using the
| word?):
|
| "It might seem strange to group gambling problems in the
| same category as a problem with drugs or alcohol. But
| addiction experts are beginning to move away from the
| notion that there are multiple addictions, each tied to a
| specific substance or activity. Rather, the Syndrome
| Model of Addiction suggests that there is one addiction
| that is associated with multiple expressions.
|
| For example, brain-imaging technologies have revealed
| that our brains respond similarly to different
| pleasurable experiences, whether derived from ingesting
| psychoactive substances, such as alcohol and other drugs,
| or engaging in behaviors, such as gambling, shopping, and
| sex. Genetic research has revealed that some people are
| predisposed to addiction, but not to a specific type of
| addiction." [2]
|
| You can provide counter evidence to my evidence, by my
| evidence remains, so the best you can say is that
| addiction as a medical condition is _currently being
| debated in the medical community_. Your claim that it is
| not a medical condition goes too far.
|
| > "He's not hurt because a rock hit him in the head. He's
| hurt because his skull is broken."
|
| > This is a terrible analysis.
|
| No it isn't. It's perfectly fine to get hit in the head
| with a rock if you can avoid getting your skull broken by
| it or avoid getting hurt by it. Softer rocks or better
| helmets are both solutions, so it is of course worth
| talking about the broken skull being the root problem,
| and how to avoid that root problem.
|
| > To the extent that you want to reduce injuries, you
| abandon that goal when you define the groups as
| "uninjured; no problems" and "already injured; nothing to
| be done". If that's how you see things, you're limited to
| fixing injuries that have occurred; you can't take any
| steps to prevent or avoid them. To do so would be to
| admit that sports might be dangerous even if you're not
| yet injured.
|
| That's a strawman. No one did that here. You can of
| course talk about sport injuries as something that hurts
| people (uh oh tautology) and as something that you want
| to prevent and how you might go about that. And of course
| sports and gambling might be dangerous even if you're not
| yet injured. No one here claimed otherwise. However,
| gambling is far more dangerous for some people than it is
| for others. Admitting that gets us much closer to
| solutions than "gambling is just dangerous".
|
| [1] https://journals.lww.com/journaladdictionmedicine/pag
| es/defa...
|
| [2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-
| addiction-2-2017...
| umvi wrote:
| > Prohibition doesn't work for meth or heroin either.
| Making them freely available under doctor supervision is
| what works.
|
| Those things can be mutually exclusive though. For example,
| you could make it so meth/heroin isn't readily available at
| the local pharmacy/gas station, yet also make it freely
| available under doctor supervision at rehab centers.
|
| I think many people (myself included) are apprehensive
| about making drugs totally legal because many law abiding
| citizens who otherwise would have never touched the drug
| may whimsically decide to try it at a rough patch in their
| life just by seeing it on the shelf at the gas station. I
| am more in favor of decriminalization, but if legalization
| really is the most effective solution I would like to see
| advertising completely banned, behind-the-counter only,
| generic labels only, etc.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > many people (myself included) are apprehensive
|
| Well yes, a lot of the discussion is around fear of what
| might happen. Why isn't anyone afraid of what already is
| happening? Illegal recreational drugs are literally a
| greater than $ billion dollar a year business in the US
| alone. I could understand this position if recreational
| drugs were somewhat uncommon and the fear was that
| legalizing them would make them more widespread. They are
| widespread already. Anyone who wants recreational drugs
| in the US can easily get them.
|
| > many law abiding citizens who otherwise would have
| never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try it
| at a rough patch in their life just by seeing it on the
| shelf at the gas station
|
| They already do. Anyone can try alcohol to get over a
| rough patch in life. I think a lot of people would be
| shocked just how low addiction rates are for addictive
| drugs. Even a drug like heroin that can cause physical
| dependence, has an addiction rate of about 12%. Let's
| turn that around. A full 88% of people who try heroin
| never get addicted. Plenty of people even become
| physically dependent on opiates like heroin but never
| become addicted. Think pain treatment and then the thing
| causing the pain goes away. People successfully withdraw
| from the physical dependence because they don't have an
| addiction problem.
|
| > I would like to see advertising completely banned,
| behind-the-counter only, generic labels only
|
| I don't find that unreasonable. Interesting how that
| contrasts to the constant advertising on TV in the USA
| for prescription drugs.
| rch wrote:
| I think it makes sense to decriminalize at the federal
| level and leave it to states to determine the appropriate
| level of local regulation.
|
| Banning corporatization, advertising, and branding of
| these substances is an intriguing idea, and probably
| necessary to make progress in this country.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This. Whatever we are doing now definitley does not work;
| drugs are destroying millions of peoples lives already,
| and also contributing to lots of violence caused by the
| black market drug trade. We've been trying "that, but
| MORE of it" for a few decades, and the problems caused by
| drugs have gotten WORSE. So, how about something
| different?
| mlyle wrote:
| umvi doesn't oppose something different, above, but says
| there the most optimal approach may be between either of
| the extremes (outright prohibition vs. completely
| unregulated, buying off the shelf at a gas station). So
| if you're going to argue with him, please be sure to
| refute something he actually advocates for.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, then umvi made the same mistake you're warning
| about, as the person they replied to wasn't advocating
| for completely unregulated gas-station drugs but rather
| "Making them freely available under doctor supervision."
| They didn't even respond to the parent.
| mlrtime wrote:
| It difficult to even start talking about decriminalizing
| all drugs because it immediately turns into hypothetical
| situations about "buy heroin at 7-11 across from a
| school". Nobody is advocating that position, no need to
| bring it up.
| luckylion wrote:
| > because many law abiding citizens who otherwise would
| have never touched the drug may whimsically decide to try
| it
|
| They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially
| accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them (and that's
| usually not what people ask for when they talk about
| legalization).
|
| Consider LSD. It's illegal, heavily so. But there's
| 1P-LSD, it's a "research chemical" and very similar to
| LSD. It has been legal for a few years (and still is in
| many countries) and has only been made a controlled
| substance in parts of Europe last year.
|
| If illegality was what kept people away from drugs, you'd
| expect to have seen a lot of normal people tripping in
| the last year. But you haven't (okay, maybe you have, it
| would explain a lot of things, wouldn't it?), and it was
| really only used as an easily obtainable and legal
| alternative to LSD by people who want an LSD-like drug
| because they know LSD.
| umvi wrote:
| > They likely wouldn't. Most drugs aren't socially
| accepted, the gas station wouldn't stock them
|
| I don't know, I'm still not convinced. I think
| legalization is an important step on the path to social
| acceptance.
|
| Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage
|
| These things used to be socially unacceptable and
| illegal, but they are now socially acceptable and legal
|
| Some drugs might not be socially acceptable _right now_ ,
| but I would argue legalizing them would help them
| _become_ more socially acceptable. I admit that
| legalization may only be partially causal though (i.e.
| social acceptance was mounting before legalization). And
| convenience stores would certainly stock drugs if there
| was demand and they were allowed to.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay marriage
|
| > These things used to be socially unacceptable and
| illegal, but they are now socially acceptable and legal
|
| And you don't get Marijuana or an abortion at the gas
| station. But you might be able to get gay married at a
| gas station in Vegas ;)
|
| I don't think they're anywhere close to socially
| acceptable yet, outside of young and very progressive
| people. You're not going to talk to your manager at a
| bank about getting an abortion or smoking weed, but you
| can absolutely talk to them about smoking cigars or some
| new whisky. They're less ostracized, I'd say, but I see
| your point.
|
| I'm not sure it's legality and availability changes
| frequency. Abortions aren't becoming more common, they
| peaked in the 80ies (in the US) and have been falling
| since. I don't know the current numbers, but a few years
| ago they recorded the lowest numbers since they started
| recording them in the early 70ies.
|
| > And convenience stores would certainly stock drugs if
| there was demand and they were allowed to.
|
| If they were socially accepted at the level of Alcohol,
| maybe, but that'll take decades if not centuries. There's
| a demand for sex toys, and they're legal, but convenience
| stores don't usually have them stocked. It's changing,
| but very slowly, because society is _much_ more socially
| conservative than Hollywood and media companies reflect
| back, and most people don 't want dildos and life-size
| sex dolls presented where they shop with their children.
| I believe the same is true for drugs.
|
| Also, there's no reason why they wouldn't be sold in
| special stores, and that's a big plus for legalization:
| you can regulate what is legal. You can put age
| restrictions on what's legal. And, from a state
| perspective: you can tax what's legal.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I think legalization is an important step on the path
| to social acceptance. Examples: Marijuana, abortion, gay
| marriage_
|
| Social acceptance among whom? Half of the country votes
| for a party that made reversing _Obergefell_ , the
| Supreme Court case that made gay marriage legal in the
| US, part of its party platform[1] in 2016 and 2020:
|
| > _Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary_
|
| > _Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage
| between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a
| free society and has for millennia been entrusted with
| rearing children and instilling cultural values. We
| condemn the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v.
| Windsor, which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to
| define marriage policy in federal law. We also condemn
| the Supreme Court's lawless ruling in Obergefell v.
| Hodges, which in the words of the late Justice Antonin
| Scalia, was a "judicial Putsch" -- full of "silly
| extravagances" -- that reduced "the disciplined legal
| reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the
| mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie." In Obergefell,
| five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of
| their legitimate constitutional authority to define
| marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court
| twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond
| recognition. To echo Scalia, we dissent. We, therefore,
| support the appointment of justices and judges who
| respect the constitutional limits on their power and
| respect the authority of the states to decide such
| fundamental social questions._
|
| > _Our laws and our government's regulations should
| recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman
| and actively promote married family life as the basis of
| a stable and prosperous society. For that reason, as
| explained elsewhere in this platform, we do not accept
| the Supreme Court's redefinition of marriage and we urge
| its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or
| a constitutional amendment returning control over
| marriage to the states._
|
| [1] https://gop.com/platform/
| tchaffee wrote:
| You have the causation reversed. Marijuana, abortion, and
| gay marriage were all legalized because they became
| socially acceptable while illegal and the laws no longer
| reflected the values of society.
| umvi wrote:
| I admitted as such, but wouldn't you say the legalization
| gave an additional boost to social acceptance? Social
| acceptance isn't a yes/no, it's a 0-100% based on the
| fraction of the population that accepts it. And if
| marijuana was at, say, 50% acceptance before
| legalization, I would imagine (I'm just making these
| numbers up) legalization boosted it to 75%.
| tchaffee wrote:
| No, I don't think you've nailed causation of social
| acceptance. In Switzerland after they legalized heroin
| and decided it was not a legal problem but a medical
| problem, heroin use plummeted among young people. It
| became socially unacceptable.
|
| Abortion is tricky because you can be against abortion
| but in favor of the right to choose. I know many people,
| even Christians, who hold this stance. We do know
| abortion rates go down when abortions are made legal. So
| that would seem to perhaps point to the laws not having
| much to do with social acceptance around abortion.
|
| As far as marijuana we could use real numbers. Only 8% of
| Americans think marijuana should be illegal. So no I
| don't expect a big jump with legalization. I would
| imagine the number of people who find it socially
| acceptable to go from let's say 92% to maybe 93%. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/11/14/americans-s...
| lixtra wrote:
| > Switzerland did it and an out of control heroin problem
| went away and especially important, usage among young
| people plummeted.
|
| You still go to prison in Switzerland for selling heroine
| on the street. Also there still is a heroine problem though
| arguably smaller than it used to be.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > You still go to prison in Switzerland for selling
| heroine on the street.
|
| And yet it was widely available on the streets back when
| it was illegal, and now it's hard to find on the streets
| and it's still illegal. So what changed? Clearly it was
| not the law that fixed things, right?
|
| > Also there still is a heroine problem though arguably
| smaller than it used to be.
|
| A tiny fraction of what it used to be. Since I would
| consider that success, I don't get your point? I very
| much doubt anyone is expecting addiction to disappear?
| The point is that it costs tax payers far less when you
| fix the actual problem instead of trying to treat medical
| problems as if they are a legal problem.
| alex_young wrote:
| In Switzerland there are legal injection sites where
| addicts medicate with medical supervision and controlled
| dose.
|
| Very few people are incarcerated for dealing because
| people with this problem have better and safer
| alternatives than street scores.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Meth isn't life destroying poison sorry to inform you. I take
| 10mg for ADHD a day and it's saved my life when all other
| alternatives have failed. I would argue the bad cases you've
| seen are from people with no self control. Why should the
| government be able to tell you what you can and cannot put
| into your own body? Better, let people do what they want as
| long as they don't hurt anybody else and educate them.
| ketophp wrote:
| 2.5 mg methamphetamine daily saved my life.
|
| Compared to dexamphetamine:
|
| - It has less cardiovascular impact (no cold extremities,
| no excessive sweating, less "fight or flight")
|
| - It has a lower impact on sleep (I can take a nap while
| under the influence)
|
| - It lasts longer (9 to 12 hours, compared to 4 to 6)
|
| - It makes living a balanced live easier (dexamphetamine
| would feed perseveration, meth makes switching tasks much
| easier)
|
| - No noticeable comedown
|
| Some of the downsides of methamphetamine include:
|
| - A much higher abuse potential (however, I have never felt
| the need to exceed my daily dose. I want to live a normal
| live, not experience some shallow euphoric bliss.)
|
| - It is unclear what the neurotoxic properties are in
| therapeutic dosages.
|
| - The social stigma
| bunfunton wrote:
| Glad to see somebody else benefiting. Agree with most of
| the above, I do believe therapeutic doses are well
| studied and tolerated since this was frontline treatment
| a few decades ago.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It certainly can be good, it can also be a harmful
| addictive drug.
| jonquest wrote:
| I challenge to do a google image search for faces of meth
| and come back and say that again with a straight face. That
| stuff is a poison that destroys both mind and body. If you
| think self control is enough to keep that stuff from
| rotting your face, making your hair fall out and keep
| yourself from going crazy you are foolish. Comparing it to
| ADHD medications is plain and simple stupid. If you think
| meth is the drug you need to focus you already need
| professional help because there are lots of stimulants out
| there, even illegal, that have nowhere near the side
| effects and consequences of meth.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Stop it with the hyperbole, as you clearly have no clue
| what you're talking about.
|
| Methamphetamine is routinely prescribed for the treatment
| ADHD (also obesity and narcolepsy, amongst other off-
| label uses), and is sold under the brand name of Desoxyn
| (in the US). Meth IS medication!
|
| On that note, maybe don't believe everything you read
| about drugs online.
| pitay wrote:
| I may need to clear up a misconception of mine, so here
| goes.
|
| Isn't it Dexamphetamine that is the routine treatment for
| ADHD? As far as I understood, methamphetamine has much
| stronger effects than dexamphetamine, also meth been
| prone to cause more adverse effects and have more
| neurotoxicity than the dex counterpart?
|
| Maybe I'm completely off base here.
| bunfunton wrote:
| dexamphetamine / dextroamphetamine works well but over-
| focuses me (could watch paint dry) and causes depression
| + robotic behavior after a few days. Every med is
| distinctly different, even different isomers of the same
| chemical.
| pitay wrote:
| Yeah I mentioned it because I got put on dexamphetamine
| once. Couldn't stand it personally, couldn't sit down or
| keep still, and made me more annoying I think. Totally
| understand that even chemically similar medications can
| be very different to each other.
| Lazare wrote:
| Dextroamphetamine is a common first line treatment for
| ADHD, but methamphetamine is a second line treatment.
|
| A lot of the information about methamphetamine is,
| bluntly, propaganda. For example, there seems to be
| nothing about methamphetamine that is uniquely harmful to
| teeth, but "meth mouth" is a common trope. When taken
| orally at therapeutic doses it's not clear
| methamphetamine is any more harmful than
| dextroamphetamine, but it's certainly possibly it has
| more scope for abuse. It's certainly dangerous at high
| doses! Unfortunately it's hard to find hard data and not
| drug war propaganda.
| pitay wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. Is second line treatment, what is
| heard from others may be derived from drug war
| propaganda, got it. This clears things up nicely. Thanks.
| jijji wrote:
| i think the OP is talking about crystal meth, not ritalin
| or adderall. Ritalin and Adderall is not what "faces of
| meth" depicts, as it depicts long term use of smoked
| crystal meth addiction.
| ohyeshedid wrote:
| This is correct, also part of the nuance that's often
| missing in these kinds of discussions. Pharmacy grade
| drugs are a different beast than the street drugs. From
| packaging to usage, it's two sides of the same coin.
| a2h wrote:
| Perhaps they are talking about Desoxyn. FDA approved for
| treatment of ADHD. Not saying that it isn't bad but just
| pointing out there is a comparison to ADHD medications.
| bunfunton wrote:
| I was, but can switch out with crystal if needed. Almost
| as pure.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Actually I've tried most all of the alternative stims and
| they all affect me worse in all areas of life. Meth is a
| drug used to treat ADHD and is FDA approved for this
| reason.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Back in the mid 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a few
| months. It was a big outfit building tip up buildings like
| box store type, maybe 50 guys on site.
|
| Everyone (I think) did meth except me and one other guy, a
| Native American. It was expected. The pace was set by meth.
| Lunch was about 10 minutes. Often we would get to work like
| 3AM for pours. I lasted like 3 months and couldn't handle
| it any more.
|
| After awhile guys would burn out and not show up. No big
| deal, replace them with another guy. I saw my supervisor
| later at a restaurant. He told me how he had tried at one
| point tried to commit suicide. The resulting impacts on the
| former employees lives (and the lives of their families and
| associates) wasn't the companies problem so long as the
| building went up fast.
|
| That company is still around too. No, not going to name and
| shame.
|
| While I'm generally in favor of people being allowed to put
| whatever they want in their bodies there is significant
| moral hazard and danger. Particularly with drugs like meth
| and heroin.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| My doctor wanted to prescribe me benzodiazepines for
| depression / insomnia / brain shakes but, after seeing what
| withdrawal from legal benzodiazepines looks like, I
| refused. Illegal weed keeps me sane and let me sleep, but
| go and explain that to lawmakers...
| tchaffee wrote:
| Good choice. Benzodiazepines screw with brain chemistry
| like no other drug I've seen people use medically or
| recreationally. As one friend put it about his Xanax:
| "I'm not sure where the anxiety goes when I take Xanax,
| but I think it goes to the gym considering how strong it
| is when it comes back". My guess is that 20 or 50 years
| from now we are going to look back on the widespread
| prescription of benzos as a really bad idea. Hopefully
| the legalization of cannabis continues to accelerate so
| people like yourself don't have to risk legal
| consequences for treating a medical condition.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Just as a counterpoint I can handle benzos fine. Some
| slight rebound anxiety if I use multiple days in a row.
|
| Weed on the other hand will send me one a 1 month train
| to hell smoking every day falling deeper and deeper into
| a depressive haze and there's nothing I can do about it.
|
| Everybody is different, I guess.
| tchaffee wrote:
| Thank you for giving a counter example of how useful some
| of these drugs can be.
|
| > I would argue the bad cases you've seen are from people
| with no self control.
|
| Please reconsider this position. It is outdated and goes
| against all recent evidence about the science of addiction,
| and the chemical changes that occur in the brain to cause
| addiction. Addiction is a medical condition. It has as
| little to do with self control as having cancer does.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Yes that is fair. I think the stats are something like
| <10% of people that use meth are addicted.
| umvi wrote:
| "self control" is a nearly meaningless phrase when used in
| the same sentence as drugs
| bromonkey wrote:
| Nah mate, you just aren't informed or experienced on this
| topic.
| umvi wrote:
| No, I understand that _some_ people can exercise self
| control with drugs. But there is a certain, non-
| negligible % of drug users that are _physically unable_
| to exercise self control once they 've experimented with
| the drug.
| belorn wrote:
| > Why should the government be able to tell you what you
| can and cannot put into your own body?
|
| The answer to that question that I see is that the
| government is responsible to step in when someone else get
| hurt under humanitarian obligations. If you make someone
| responsible for an outcome then they will likely want to
| implement rules to reduce their own risks.
|
| The rules should of course be proportional to the risk and
| balanced. It make sense that drugs and driving should not
| be combined and which outcome can't be fixed afterward.
| Parenting and drugs are also a pretty problematic area, but
| it is difficult for the government to make a law against
| that combination without banning drugs completely. If
| people took drugs while working with heavy equipment, makes
| decisions that impact people, work within health care or
| education, then there is an additional increased risk that
| the government is expected to manage.
|
| ADHD medicine, especially the non-self medicated versions,
| have the opposite effect for the government. It reduces the
| risk that they have to step. If all the other alternatives
| have failed and you found a solution that do work then that
| is good and the law might then need to change to
| incorporate that success. It doesn't however change the
| reason why the government might still want to tell you what
| you can and cannot put into your own body.
|
| Where I live we also have universal health care and meth
| stresses the heart quite a lot. The result is that when the
| heart start to fall apart it is the government that has to
| pay for repairs, and those are often quite expensive
| surgeries that need to be redone every few years. I am no
| doctor so I can't answer if 10mg is small enough to be
| safe, but if I was taking it I would find a doctor and do
| regular heart checkups.
| bunfunton wrote:
| Governments shouldn't be responsible for the outcome of
| their people, the individual should. This is the
| perspective difference we share. It's really a choice
| between individual freedom despite possible negative
| stats "addictions" vs less freedom and more government
| control while optimizing number of addictions. I value my
| personal freedom and see no reason why the government
| should pay for healthcare. In the USA, they caused this
| distorted market to begin with (see also student loan
| bubble)
| tchaffee wrote:
| The vast majority of countries where healthcare is both
| far cheaper and more effective than in the US have
| government provided healthcare. Most of those countries
| also have affordable or free higher education. So the
| smoking gun would seem to point at US style capitalism
| and lobbyists rather than government services themselves.
|
| "It doesn't work in the USA" is increasingly very poor
| evidence when it does work many other places, and often
| has for over a half a century.
| belorn wrote:
| I understand the idea in theory but have a much harder
| time in practice to not want the government to take a
| final responsibility. If a child parents can't take care
| of them it make humanitarian sense that the government
| step in. We should not punish children because their
| parent won't take responsibility for the outcome of their
| own behavior.
|
| Similar, I would want the government to step in and pay
| for healthcare when a victim get hit by a car driven by
| an uninsured driver. It is not fair to let the victim die
| just because someone else were unable to take
| responsibility for their own faults.
|
| So to make a general theory, people should be responsible
| for their own actions when there is a high likelihood of
| repayment for wrong doing. For those things individual
| freedom is positive. For other actions which is
| irreversible and where individuals will sometimes be
| unable to take responsibility, and we expect the
| government to step in, then individual freedom may be
| balanced against risk.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Per the article, this guy also sold methamphetamine in large
| quantities on another site, so it isn't just about marijuana.
| ykevinator wrote:
| I totally agree. Consenting buyer and seller, this is a
| leftover from the Mayflower (no dancing kind of thing). At some
| point the world should just stop wasting money on preventing
| things that humans want. Prostitution, pot, etc., will never be
| stopped because people want to buy and sell it.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Think you meant to say legal
| syspec wrote:
| > We know, thanks to documents from other Operation Dark Gold
| cases, that Porras had used a money laundering service controlled
| by Homeland Security Investigations
|
| Geeze
| modin wrote:
| > The pictures included closeup pictures of Porras' hand with
| visible fingerprint ridges.
|
| I thought via the title that they fingerprinted the lens used to
| take the photograph, not that there was literal pictures of
| fingers.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Of course as a SW engineer you think any kind of digitally
| embedded fingerprint first.
| modin wrote:
| Not digitally embedded as EXIF since it was uploaded to Imgur
| which AFAIK strip those out, but more like lens scratches and
| sensor noise, similar to [0].
|
| [0]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1634362
| heelix wrote:
| I strongly suspected that is what they did too. Got to wonder
| if they used the EXIF data to find him - linking photos of the
| pot and other social media/etc public shots, then used the
| fingerprints as parallel construction.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Imgur strips exif by default. I agree it sounds like parallel
| construction.
|
| The article mentions they compared his finger prints to those
| from the picture. How did they know to check against his
| prints? Sounds like they already knew who it was, by means
| that aren't admissible as evidence.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Imgur certainly doesn't display EXIF by default, but are
| you sure it doesn't retain it such that it could be
| obtained by a warrant?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| If I were them, I wouldn't save it just to reduce my
| warrant workload.
|
| Kinda like 4chan and DMCAs: there's no point since it's
| usually deleted by the time it's submitted anyway.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Maybe they were supplying his meth.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| It was interesting the amount of redactions in the documents
| and the plea deal, as well as law enforcement operating as
| the launderer.
|
| I, too, thought parallel construction.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Well they also mention in the article that the drug dealer
| also sent bitcoin to a money laundering service run by
| Homeland Security, so his OpSec was probably as leaky as a
| noodle strainer.
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