For 'soft' drug users

[Brian Ellis]

If just one person wants to "promote" him/herself to a poppy-based drug, such as heroin, he should look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8688539.stm and reflect whether he wishes to sponsor this kind of misery. If there were no market for these narcotics, these poor people would not have the opium/morphine/heroin/what-have-you to drug their babies (genuine supervised medical use of derivatives excepted, of course).

IMNSHO, this report is a real shocker.

[Umfriend]

Meh. If production, sale and use were legalised and controlled, Afghan producers would be pushed out of the market easily. It's the illigitimization of heroin that makes it so profitable to grow it in a country where law-enforcement is hardly existent.

Heroin has been around for well over a millenium and has been declared illegal less than a century ago. Guess as of when it became really profitable to run a drug operation.

On a side note, just today an public letter has been published by a group of people (among whom ex-politicians who I typically disagree with) making exactly the argument that I've made for ages and here more recently (I seriously believe they read that thread and concluded I was right).

Too bad it is in Dutch (http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article2546259.ece).

Amoung the things they write (translated as best as I could):
"legalisation of cannabis products would possibly save 183 mln euro and raise 260 mln euro in taxes alone" according to a government workgroup on safety.
"Between 27 and 33 percent of all prison years is due to drug laws"
"In 2006, three quarter of over 300 investigations into serious forms of organised crime where directed at trade of production of drugs - And this pertains only directly to drug laws. Bribery, corruption, money laundering, infection of real-estate sector, drug gang wars and illegal arms trade are excluded from that, let alone the international consequences such as the destruction of complete countries" - Ok, that last part might be a bit of an exaggeration but think Columbia, Afghanistan and Mexico.
"The 30 year experiment with cannabis via coffeshops is unique and has not led to more drug use, either of cannabis or others. Use and addiction of soft- and harddrugs in the Netherlands is on or below the European average and far below that in more repressive countries like France, Engalnd and the US."

Your report is a shocker indeed. What I find more shocking is the addament insistence on drug laws as they are out of, I don't know, some sort of strange moral/ethical view. The reflection you call for may well be asked of those who insist on maintaining such laws, especially given that experience so far has so overwhelmingly shown the adverse effects wihtout any expectation of improvement in the near or far future.

[Jammrock]

Nice try. I don't buy the argument.

Mega-corps would exploit the cheap labor and existing poppy fields of places like Afghanistan which would make the situation twice as bad. They already do it with common groceries and regular food stuffs, what makes you think it would change if opiates were legalized?

Furthermore, if opiates were legalized corporations looking to cash in would have two options:

1. spend the cash on building a completely new infrastructure, in potentially more expensive nations since places like Afghanistan already have some of the cheapest labor in the world and the right kind of land to grow opiates.

2. use the existing infrastructure in third-world nations that can guarantee huge profit margins because of cheap labor and warlords who will sell cheap to overseas corporation to keep from going out-of-business.

Let's think about which one a mega-corp would choose...hmmmm. The one that offers big profits or the one that doesn't?

As for "when it became profitable", once again, read about the opium wars and opium dens of the 1800's to early 1900's. Opium has been profitable for well over a century and long before it was illegal in most places. Making it illegal merely changed the hands the money went to.

[Umfriend]

I'm working on catching up on the Opium Wars in the little spare time I have. So far, I remain unconvinced that it is relevent to contemporary times.

I wonder whether it is your intention to compare (or even equate) mega-corps to druglords? Let's assume, for arguments sake, that shoes were an illicit apparel but that, darn it, people in remote countries made them, wore them and that they were brought to us by shoe-trafficers. After legalising it, a mega-corp like Nike might set up shop there. Given that Nike is a legit entity, they are influenced by local and home-country laws, public opinion and (potential) customers. All these thing may not lead to an optimal situation indeed, but I'd bet you that the local population would be better of in terms of wages, labor-situation, health care, education and whatnot.

Secondly, I am not at all convinced that production would have to increase in such countries. Tarrifs may give an advantage to domestic production (just like with a lot of other agricultural production) and crop yield in the west are so much higher. There was a time where geography largely determined where one could grow certain crop but that is mostly not relevant anymore (as an example, the Netherlands produce about one-third of the globally exported cucumbers and chili. I assume marihuana production in the Netherlands is second to none in terms of quality (aside from, possibly, use of chemicals during growth made possible by not regulating this industry of course).

So yes, cheap labor may cause production in poor countries where it should be legal to grow it for a corp to be able to do business there. Warlords would, obviously not come into play. This in contrast with the current status quo.

It appears to me, so far, that indeed the opium trade during the 19th century was rather profitable. Mind you, it was forced on the Chinese (something I do not support) and controlled by state monopolies as far as possible. It strikes me that you try to invalidate my argument for legalisation of drugs (under conditions, I hope that may be clear) by juxtaposing a situation where a sovereign country acted as drug trafficer in another wheras I would say that the English of that time rather are better comparable to illegal drug trades with shitloads of gunpower. Think a huge Mexican gang controlling and enforcing a drug operation in the US.

[Jammrock]

I love your optimism about corporate and government responsibility, but I don't agree with your assessment. I'm far too cynical.

Not comparing druglords to corporations. Legalization would legitimize druglords and warlords which would simply allow them to become business partners to corporations with the established distribution channels in first-world nations where opium was legalized. The drug/warlords already have the expertise, infrastructure and cheap, skilled labor to produce the needed product without the need to spend capital on overhead, infrastructure and development of new opium fields. That makes using the now legitimized war/druglords cheaper to use. Growing in developed nations would add a premium to the price to pay for higher labor costs, education, health care, etc. Thus the primary growers would still be the current growers, like those in Afghanistan, as they would provide the best profit options for their first-world corporate partners.

Legalization would in all likelihood increase global demand for opiates which would, I believe, turn more third-world agriculture toward drug production. While this may "logically" seem like a good way to help developing nations by pumping in industry, their competitive edge depends on cheap labor which would not, or at least very slow, improve their condition. This would also increase the locals abilities to obtain cheap, high-grage opiates and potentially make their addiction condition worse than it already is.

Tarrifs do little block imports these days. There's always a way around tarrifs, especially with high profit items and legalized bribery (i.e. lobbying). Place a tarrif on opium in one form and they'll ship it in another form or a raw form that's not heavily tarrifed and process it locally.

I think you have your "who controls who" backwards on the opium wars thing. I'm sure our British fellows will correct me if I'm wrong, but the trading companies pretty much ruled the British Empire during the period of the Opium Wars, and probably long before then, primarily the East India Company until they went under. They were the ultimate "mega-corps" with very strong controls in the government. They were the ones that pushed Britain into the Opium Wars to protect their profits. To think that much has changed in the government to corporate relationship is rather naive. Corporations still control much of the world governments, they are just not as open or blatant as they may have been in the past. If drugs are legalized corporations that stand to make huge profits off the legitimized drug trade will be right back to their old tricks. Profits are profits, and unlike Nike shoes, addicts don't care if a 10-year old picked their opium at $1 a week with no health care or educational benefits as long as they can get their next fix. And if the customers don't care, the corporations sure as hell won't.