Monterrey police find 49 bodies in bags

[soopaman2]

So is it the citizens (USA) fault for liking dope. The Mexicans love to blame us.
Or the fact that most the Mexican cops can be bribed?

I got pulled over for being a gringo, in my younger days, it cost me 50 USD to not be arrested for being white. The cop asked me in English for "a taste to go away" (late teen expedition to Tiajuana)

And that was in a tourist area, 10-15 years ago, before all the cartel crap was in the forefront.

So don't go there.

St. Thomas is better, I was there a few months ago, wonderful, and the natives don't hate you for your skin color, or ethnicity. (or try to scam and rob you)


EDIT: Pretty pic of the Berlin wall Penguin. Great Idea, except you Germans (soviets) didn't have enough artillery and mortars, too few landmines. Mexicans are more crafty than east Germans. You should see what the Koreans did to the dmz, for lessons on border security (sadly we don't use landmines anymore, but we still use napalm..just saying)

[Stealhead]

I am not so sure that St.Thomas is all that safe actually:

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/07...-in-st-thomas/

http://virginislands-guide.info/travel.basics/crime/

[soopaman2]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

I am not so sure that St.Thomas is all that safe actually:

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/07...-in-st-thomas/

http://virginislands-guide.info/travel.basics/crime/

I surely felt safer. I didn't feel like the concierge of the hotel was trying to kidnap my wife. Now Cozumel or Acupulco on the other hand, they always ask what you plan on doing while there. They poke even after being told to practice discretion.

I am a NYC boy, I can smell someone trying to rob me, and that is all I felt in Mexico during my multiple cruises/car trips there.


Not saying you're full of crap, just saying I have my preferences

[Osmium Steele]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

St. Thomas is better, I was there a few months ago, wonderful, and the natives don't hate you for your skin color, or ethnicity. (or try to scam and rob you)

Must have changed since I was there last. 20+ years ago.

Off the strip and/or away from the cruise ship piers at night was dangerous. Roving bands of 8 - 10 guys would roll even a small group in a heartbeat.

Daytime, perfectly safe pretty much anywhere on the island and beautiful.

Shop for jewelry in St. Thomas and take the hop over to St. Johns. Much safer and less touristy.

[Seth8530]

My 2 cents, I feel like we created the gang related issues by making soft drugs illegal. As someone here has already mentioned we should of took a quick glance at prohibition to see what would of come of this. I believe that if we were to at least legalize marijuana we would take a big chunk out of the pocket book of the cartels thus accomplishing 5 things.

1) less government expenditure
2) less people in jail for possessing marijuana
3) a return of one of our civil liberties
4) a serious blow to cartel income
5) smaller government

Now I wonder which of these the our senators are afraid of?

[Penguin]

Two points in addition to Seth's list:

6. controlled quality (a legal trader is also responsible for his product = less risk of toxic substances like lead dust, or hard drugs)
7. the chance to have actually less young users

Germany and the Netherlands have a similar social structure. In Germany some states have decriminalized small amounts of pot. The cops have to take it away, otherwise they would break the law themselves. If it goes to court the judge can close the case under certain requirements (1st time drug offender, minor amount, no selling in schools, no smuggling, etc)

Contrary to many myths, marijuana is still illegal in the Netherlands. I've been told it would be very hard to legalize in regards to international law. Basically it's about some WHO agreements most states have signed where they state to do anything to fight against drugs, yada, yada, yada

So what did the smart and pragmatic Dutch do? Nearly nothing! No laws were abolished, no walls of text of new legislation was written. The police just has the simple instruction not to go against small possession. The Kofie Shops (tolerated pot bars) are allowed to have a little more generous amount than a single individual.
Some 20 years ago I was on a public forum where the police chief of Amsterdam was present and answered on the question how they control the shops: "We don't control them. If a shop sells hard drugs or alcohol (!) we get tips from the scene. Then we raid and close it."
Many "control freaks" in the audience stood there with open eyes , not believing how simple and non-interfering it can be and actually work.
(Maybe the police procedure changed today, but back then they said it worked well)

The result of two comparible countries with different marijuana laws: the percentage of adolescent users in the Netherlands is in fact smaller than in Germany. One should never underestimate the attraction of forbidden fruits, especially to juveniles. I don't have any statistics about adults, but on a limb I'd say the percentage is about the same.

Just a little food for thought for the "If pot's legal, all our kids will become stoned slackers"-crew.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Two points in addition to Seth's list:

6. controlled quality (a legal trader is also responsible for his product = less risk of toxic substances like lead dust, or hard drugs)
7. the chance to have actually less young users

I think #6 is awfully naive. Legal traders have no more accountability than anyone else. They have the concept of legitimacy but if anything legitimizing things only brings it into the sphere of political corruption. What would intevitably happen I'm sure with a full stop legalization of weed is that you'd see the government create monopolies in the private sector of "legitimate" business and then you'd get all kinds of political lobbies and people applying complex modern economics to it, doing cost benefit analyses. Anybody who's ever watched Food Inc. should remember that bit about the guy who farms chickens the old fashioned way, and slaughters them in the open air using old world implements to break the neck etc etc. He had a food inspector tell him he had to change his practices because it wasn't by the code because apparently he had to be in some big steel building with hard hats and stuff. He told them to test the average bacterial count of his chickens compared to the average in those big industrial chicken slaughter houses and apparently he had no more trouble from that inspector because the bacteria count in his chickens was way way lower despite his allegedly 'unclean' practices.

Weed already has its own regulatory system. Most people have a personal relationship with the people they get their weed from. A dealer acquires business through personal connections and recommendations. Selling bad weed leads to people being reluctant to buy from him. Even weed of a low quality, not even laced with drugs, but just low quality usually gives somebody a bad rap. Start selling stuff laced with something you're not bargaining for and his business dries up. Dealers rely on repeat customers, not on selling people bad stuff in one go.

I live in BC, a pot mecca. 420 is a proper holiday here. Nobody has trouble avoiding bad weed because your dealer is your friend usually, or a friend of your friend. Start selling this stuff out of a big mega companies then you're just more likely to have it contaminated with some chemical and then nobody will be held to account cause the litigation will be a nightmare.

Sadly the process to full legalization inevitably brings these issues into the equation, but its part of the process. One thing I can say though is that I've been around weed my whole life. I knew guys who had it in their lockers at school, I've known people who dealt it in large quantities, I've known people who smoked an entire ounce themselves in a week or less. I've never once heard of someone having trouble with laced weed, not directly. Its always that its dried out and not very good. The marijuana trade is perhaps the best expression of supply and demand economics in action, a system that self regulates because of the nature of personal relationships with the vendor. As a total lefty its takes a lot of courage to say that, but its seems true. One thing though is that the bigger market gets the harder it is to self regulate. If it stays small and local, just about you and your dealer, then its easier to keep control on it. Turn it into a monopoly where you can only get your weed from a company, then the consumer and the dealer lose control. Thats the danger. Any legalization must allow for the same underground weed industry to exist or else we're going to if anything I think make weed less safe or at least more prone to corruption that you see in all kinds of food scares and such.

And for #7, who cares if young people smoke it? Heavy and harmful drug abuse is an expression of deeper issues in a person. Its a social problem. Light and recreational drug use is just an expression of rebellion that most teens goes through. Tell them they can't do it and the more they want to do it. Relax and it'll be easier to parse between guys who smoke a bit on the weekend or people who can't cope without it. Legitimize the practice of using the drug and you make it easier to address those issues.

Alcohol has all the legalized and regulatory things most people think you need to keep young people from using it and I think almost everybody has had a beer before the legal age. Its just a fact that you can't prevent people from doing things they want to do, and with things as harmless as a little crappy 5% beer or a few joints the few times yous kipped class to feel rebellious... well that's never going to stop. Addressing it incorrectly will only make dealing with the real problems harder.

[Platapus]

Nice post P Funk, Thanks for the insight. There is much to think about in your post.

[August]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

I think #6 is awfully naive. Legal traders have no more accountability than anyone else.

Sure they do. Legal sources are by definition more accountable than illegal ones. After all companies get fined and sued for producing unsafe products all the time. Try doing that to the Mexican drug cartels...

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by August

Sure they do. Legal sources are by definition more accountable than illegal ones. After all companies get fined and sued for producing unsafe products all the time. Try doing that to the Mexican drug cartels...

I partially agree with you - I'm just not convinced that those fines really matter.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that fine usually fixed amount of money (or at least have max.)? How much for example $500 million business cares of few dozen $50,000 fines?

Getting sued is totally different thing if we are talking about USA but here in Finland atleast it isn't a big deal as possible financial consequences are relatively small.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

I think #6 is awfully naive. Legal traders have no more accountability than anyone else. They have the concept of legitimacy but if anything legitimizing things only brings it into the sphere of political corruption. What would intevitably happen I'm sure with a full stop legalization of weed is that you'd see the government create monopolies in the private sector of "legitimate" business and then you'd get all kinds of political lobbies and people applying complex modern economics to it, doing cost benefit analyses. Anybody who's ever watched Food Inc. should remember that bit about the guy who farms chickens the old fashioned way, and slaughters them in the open air using old world implements to break the neck etc etc. He had a food inspector tell him he had to change his practices because it wasn't by the code because apparently he had to be in some big steel building with hard hats and stuff. He told them to test the average bacterial count of his chickens compared to the average in those big industrial chicken slaughter houses and apparently he had no more trouble from that inspector because the bacteria count in his chickens was way way lower despite his allegedly 'unclean' practices.

Weed already has its own regulatory system. Most people have a personal relationship with the people they get their weed from. A dealer acquires business through personal connections and recommendations. Selling bad weed leads to people being reluctant to buy from him. Even weed of a low quality, not even laced with drugs, but just low quality usually gives somebody a bad rap. Start selling stuff laced with something you're not bargaining for and his business dries up. Dealers rely on repeat customers, not on selling people bad stuff in one go.

I live in BC, a pot mecca. 420 is a proper holiday here. Nobody has trouble avoiding bad weed because your dealer is your friend usually, or a friend of your friend. Start selling this stuff out of a big mega companies then you're just more likely to have it contaminated with some chemical and then nobody will be held to account cause the litigation will be a nightmare.

Sadly the process to full legalization inevitably brings these issues into the equation, but its part of the process. One thing I can say though is that I've been around weed my whole life. I knew guys who had it in their lockers at school, I've known people who dealt it in large quantities, I've known people who smoked an entire ounce themselves in a week or less. I've never once heard of someone having trouble with laced weed, not directly. Its always that its dried out and not very good. The marijuana trade is perhaps the best expression of supply and demand economics in action, a system that self regulates because of the nature of personal relationships with the vendor. As a total lefty its takes a lot of courage to say that, but its seems true. One thing though is that the bigger market gets the harder it is to self regulate. If it stays small and local, just about you and your dealer, then its easier to keep control on it. Turn it into a monopoly where you can only get your weed from a company, then the consumer and the dealer lose control. Thats the danger. Any legalization must allow for the same underground weed industry to exist or else we're going to if anything I think make weed less safe or at least more prone to corruption that you see in all kinds of food scares and such.

And for #7, who cares if young people smoke it? Heavy and harmful drug abuse is an expression of deeper issues in a person. Its a social problem. Light and recreational drug use is just an expression of rebellion that most teens goes through. Tell them they can't do it and the more they want to do it. Relax and it'll be easier to parse between guys who smoke a bit on the weekend or people who can't cope without it. Legitimize the practice of using the drug and you make it easier to address those issues.

Alcohol has all the legalized and regulatory things most people think you need to keep young people from using it and I think almost everybody has had a beer before the legal age. Its just a fact that you can't prevent people from doing things they want to do, and with things as harmless as a little crappy 5% beer or a few joints the few times yous kipped class to feel rebellious... well that's never going to stop. Addressing it incorrectly will only make dealing with the real problems harder.

First of all: I'm no fan of "scientific economics", I see it as voodo mathematics which can basically reduced to the formula Income>Expenses = good. So I speak of very basic concepts, but may sometimes use the wrong economic lingo.

However doing a "cost-benefit analyses" is no modern pseudo-science, but something every entity that participates in economic activities does, all the time.
The customer does so:"Shall I buy the dry homegrown for $5 or the Nepalese for 15?" So does every grower:"What resources do I have to invest? What's the risk? What's the profit?", with profit not neccessary meaning monetary gain, but also the profit a subsistence economy can provide.

Speaking in submarine terns: to regard the distribution of hemp mostly as a network of friends, is like watching the world only through the scope . It is a product in a capitalist society and therefore is an industry, with all the shady stuff included that is also going on in legal business.
The grower is not always your friendly Detlev Dreadlock, who loves his hemp, put's in his best effort to receive an outstanding quality and grows because "Man, everybody should get stoned!" but it is also grown by people who regard it as a cash crop. There are people in it just for the profit: growers, distributers, merchants.

My Amsterdam Kofie Shop example was actually about control by the customers with little interference by the state. Well, not entirely correct, as the shops also have to fulfill fire, safety, work, tax codes that every other business over there has, but in regards to the illegal product the control is a minimum.

We don't have to (pipe) dream about it: as soon as as pot becomes legal, we'll have big tobacco jumping into it, advertising with the Camel Dude, willing to walk miles through the jungle just to get a puff. Fact is also big business is already there. Medical marijuana is an unknown term in Germany, giving THC to people with serious medical conditions is not. How does it get distributed? In the form of a synthetic, manufactured in a patented process. Sold for costs where a dose costs more than even the inexperienced rich kid would be willing to pay for an ounce of BC's finest. Payed by everyone with an health insurance – an example of an already existing state-controlled monopoly. And what's a better example for unregulated big business than the Cartels?

Why would the regulation mechanisms you wrote about suddenly disappear if hemp is leagl? The customer would still have the same sanctions that you mentioned. He can boycott a merchant, inform others about a bad/dangerous product, he can demand a refund, put cockroaches into the dealer's house in case of a dispute, etc. In addition, when trading with a legalized business he also has some more options.

"Dealers rely on repeat customers, not on selling people bad stuff in one go." this is also true in the legal economy. A trader assures quality by his good name, a brand so to speak. Despite becoming fewer and fewer there are still some brands out there who put an emphasis on purveying high quality products.
Your sentence applies even to our beloved mega-corporations. Part of Mickey D's success is that it assures the same standard to its customers, A BigMac is made of the same ingredients in Boston and Bangladesh, the "quality" of the product is the same, worldwide. Or just look at the "New Coke" disaster in the 80s , a huge failure, despite all the huge financial efforts to push it into the market.

The Food Inc. Example, (haven't watched the film) is actually an example that works both ways. If I ate chicken, I wouldn't care if the slaughterer wears a hard hat, but care for an unconterminated product. Most have neither the training nor the resources to check food for bacteria or weed for poison. It's good that there are experts who do so and don't rely on Joe Farmer's honest eyes but actually test it. Hell, if all my taxes would be spend on stuff like health inspections, which provides a sensible service that benefits the people, I would't bitch so much about government.

Here's an example that the leaded weed is no single anecdote, but actually a problem in Euroland http://drugscouts.de/de/page/aktuelles-zu-blei-im-gras(site's in German only ). Drugscouts is no yellow press paper, but a non profit organization by and for the "scene". Being run by people who don't preach but know theirr stuff and want the people to have a safe trip. Those guys test drugs, offer help when something goes wrong, they provide infos about bad stuff. - just check out all the nearly daily warnings about bad Ekstacy they have on the top, bad drugs are no side problem. It is the reality, because of it's illegality, people buy it on the street without always knowing the dealer in person. As good of an example drugscouts is for self-organization, after all it is still a very limited control, only working in reaction to the problem.

I can give you an example about a legal business which is run like a network of friends, I cut it out for keeping the test here shorter, but your perception of the hemp trade is an idealized version. It's how it be should be run, no question about that. I'm with you in the fear that part of the culture will go down the drain in case of a legalization, but I don't think it will result in a less safe product.

I'll address the next issue a lil shorter :
"Who cares if young people smoke it?" People do, parents, friends. If I may be so bold: I'll crap a huge pile on people who smoke it for rebel reasons. Smoking pot is as rebellous as wearing Jeans. If people smoke only for this reason, or the excitement of the forbidden, they shouldn't smoke at all.
I don't think that pot is for everyone. As a little band once sang"some people don't take no ****, maybe if they did, they had half a brain left". This also goes vice versa.
Glorification is the ugly sister of Demonization.

[August]

I don't see any push for legalization from business because they won't be able to make money on it. Anyone can grow pot plants with a minimum of knowledge and training. It is after all a weed.