Pants-of-dog wrote:I have no idea if the climate in the US is good for growing coca plants.
Neither do I. The US does have vast diversity of weather and there are multiple varieties of coca plants that thrive under different conditions. In addition, a hypothetical legal coca plant might benefit from the bio-technologies that we currently use in most of our crops. So an educated
guess is that a combination of all those three might yield a suitable growable plant in US soil.
As I understand, the real work comes with processing. I do believe, in the event of legalization, we would want to keep processing inside this country. I think this way there can be regulation (make sure poison do not make it to the drug, even potency, etc).
A scenario where drugs are legal in the US, but illegal in latin america probably won't do much to help them anyway.
A scenario where drugs are legal in the US and at least manufacturing is legal in latin america could lead to potential skirmishes in which the cartels terrorize legal manufacturers or even tries to taint legally produced "merchandise" in order to incite panic in consumers in the US and discourage the population from buying legally and instead buy illegal (thus not resolving all the problems associated with illegality).
But I doubt that legislators will overcome many years of being taught drugs are bad if we tell them they can make the drugs themselves.
Now? Yes (perhaps). But in order to this even becoming a possibility to be considered there must occur a dramatic paradigm shift. Once they are willing to consider this possibility, you have to consider the pros/cons. Certainly the economy benefits is a big pro and any politician that eventually decides to support this will have to point it out.
No. The main reason for the drug cartel violence in Mexico is to control the smuggling of drugs to US consumers. If there was no smuggling, there would be no need for violence. I have no idea why you think that taking away the cause of violence will lead to a temporary rise in violence.
You take a away the source of income of criminals (in many cases violent criminals). However they are still criminals (or are you also planning on forgiving them). Now they have less resources to bribe the police, to give to townships that protect them, to give them to informants or to pay for protection. Fight between themselves might also start to happen as they all try to compete for a dramatically smaller market (maybe to other countries, etc). In any event, they are still criminals and they won't be happy. So I think these unhappy criminals are a recipe for a transient period of raise in violence. Maybe months, maybe years depending how quickly their markets disappear and their cashflow ends.
I am still waiting for someone to tell me why it is wise for the voters to accept a dramatically increase in drug deaths, more bankrupted families, more deadly drivers and more tax and regulation.
As compared to our very successful drug on drugs? (sarcasm). Look if you can come with a reasonable system that can eliminate drug consumption in the US sign me in, furthermore sign me in for alcohol and tobacco as well since they are just as shit. But the reality of the world we live is that prohibition does not work. People still have access to drugs, but rather than the money/resources of this illegal transaction going into helping society, they go back to drug dealers and cartel leaders. In other words, the one thing that illegalization of drugs is doing is making sure all the money from drugs go to criminals. Not just that but we also spend billions of dollars trying to prevent this, we spend billions of dollars putting people in prison for non-violent crimes, etc. The list goes on.
Like I said, if you have a magic secret plan that can realistically put a stop to drugs I am all ears.
) So I will wait until you fix it. Happy new year everyone.
- By Rancid
- By wat0n
- By Fasces
- By Tainari88