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2010-07-10 Caribbean-Latin America

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Posted by badanov 2010-07-10 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 It's like the prohibition days of the 1920s & 30s, but bloodier.

Prohibition of alcohol was a total failure as well, as I recall.

Posted by Bulldog 2010-07-10 04:14|| 2010-07-10 04:14|| Front Page Top

#2 Every time the police close a drugs factory all that happens is the price goes up.

AS bulldog says prohibition is a disaster.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2010-07-10 05:43|| 2010-07-10 05:43|| Front Page Top

#3 Prohibition is a disaster, but with a lot of these drugs and gangsters NON-prohibition is an even bigger disaster. The key is removing demand, but nobody seems to be able to figure out how.

Posted by Glenmore 2010-07-10 09:16|| 2010-07-10 09:16|| Front Page Top

#4 The key is removing demand, but nobody seems to be able to figure out how.

The Portuguese have gone some way to figuring that out:

"[I]n the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

'Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,' says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. 'It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.'

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana."

Yep, the answer was to make access easier, and to remove the chachet associated with branding the stuff 'forbidden fruit'.

There's only one approach which is clearly disastrous, and that's prohibition.

Posted by Bulldog 2010-07-10 09:29|| 2010-07-10 09:29|| Front Page Top

#5 Portugeese are evil and should send more money

Posted by Black Bart Shick7973 2010-07-10 10:59|| 2010-07-10 10:59|| Front Page Top

#6 Meanwhile, the Sonora Desert is still deadly.

Year to date, the death toll is 153

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-07-10 19:58|| 2010-07-10 19:58|| Front Page Top

#7 That's right, guys -- y'all decriminalize possession, and finance the caliphatists like Al Qaeda and Hizb'allah 10g at a time. How hard can it be to stop using the stuff? Surely y'all can get drunk on beer or scotch instead, if you need to enter an altered state?

As for Prohibition, it does too work. The number of drunken children wandering through the streets went down significantly, and the numbers of adult lives destroyed by rotgut was relatively unchanged, based on what I've read. It's just that the rich were the ones who were suffering. Before, it had been the poor whose drink was diluted by everything unhealthy, just as the food supply was. Britain led the way with food standards laws, America's FDA followed later, if I recall correctly; but before that flour was often diluted by sawdust, spices by lead powder, unless one went to the most exclusive suppliers. I have a reissue of a late 19th century guide for the gentlewoman housewife, which gives instruction on how to determine which foodstuffs had been unhealthily diluted, and what the common diluents were. It's no wonder the poor were described as naturally lazy and shiftless -- they were being systematically poisoned!

What we know about the resentment of Prohibition, is due to how greatly the rich and literate disliked take the risks to health and sanity that the poor had heretofore suffered alone.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-07-10 20:20|| 2010-07-10 20:20|| Front Page Top

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