Chantal

Dead right.

But criminals - dangerous ones like him - sometimes travel for years without their passport being swiped or checked against international databases.

(Probably because they're wearing yellow hats. Or look too much like terrorists to be suspected of being anybody dangerous. Or there are simply too many people to process)

I know, I know. I'm rambling. I just wanted to say that you may know you're innocent of anything, but screeners and customs officials can't know that. So - they do 'random' checks. One day, it'll be everybody wearing a yellow hat plus everybody with a beard, or women over 40, or... whatever, y'know, makes it... random.

Sure, some 'groups' will get more attention than others. Such as doing checks right off the plane for incoming flights from some places, before anybody can get rid of what they're carrying or be given a 'new' passport before reaching customs.

Is it worth fewer random checks just to make travelling easier? From a personal point of view, it would be SO NICE (large aircraft arriving in very small airports = patience is requred, big time).

But the risk is that the bad guys feel that taking a chance is worth it. And many times, they know precisely those airports or fronter posts where their chances are best of all.

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Argent Stonecutter

The best thing they could do to help the TSA do their job would be to give up on the "war on drugs". Legalize, regulate quality, provide counseling and therapy, treat it like a public health problem.

Chantal

Fine, if it's for personal use. I agree. In parts of the world coca leaves are as common as any other commodity.

Now define 'personal use' and trafficking. Organised crime gangs would still try to bring in quantities to sell, circumventing what is 'allowed', and use the money for other types of crime.

Crime is interconnected. You can't win. Where there's money to be made at the cost of harming others, people will do it.

We're not a very nice species.

Right now, I rather wish I'd gone into landscape gardening

Lordfly Digeridoo

Because as we all know, the Mafias today are just as powerful as they were during Prohibition.

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Chantal

More so, because, y'know, globalisation? The Mafia - just one network. Then you have the ethnic Albanians, the West African crime groups, the Maras in central America... I could go on. All of them have ramifications everywhere. They play in every field: from extortion to human trafficking, from people smuggling to drugs trafficking.

A criminal organisation can operate in one country, hold passports from several others, bank in another, have a base in yet another. There's this thing called the Internet...

But just ignore me. Keep the blinkers on. Terrorism only affects America and the UK, and organised crime happens 'elsewhere' and is perpetrated by 'other Terrible Foreigners'.

Please sleep well. Remember to blame the TSA for upsetting your serenity when you travel, not the criminals.

Don't, whatever you do, worry that people somewhere in the mists of 'elsewhere' are being abused, traded, killed.

Argent Stonecutter

No, I mean legalize it, just like any other commodity. Treat it no differently than tobacco and alcohol. You get peple smuggling cheap cigarettes through customs, but you don't get people smuggling packs of cigarettes in dead babies to do that.



Not they wouldn't, any more than R J Reynolds or Anheiser Busch does. Because when it's not illegal, it's cheaper and more effective to operate legally. If the cartels don't TURN legitimate, they will be outcompeted by companies that do.

Precisely. So quit making it a crime, and it won't go to subsidize crime any more.

Tyche Shepherd

But they do, there is a huge organised crime involvement in the smuggling of cigarettes (and to a lesser degree alcohol) right across Europe. With large differences in tax on tobacco between EU countries and low border controls, the arbitrage is very significant and lucrative for criminals. In Germany for instance , it's estimated that tobacco smuggling is the 2nd largest criminal activity in value at around 0.5 Billion euro a year, The largest is illegal drugs trade.

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Argent Stonecutter

That kind of supports the theory that tobacco is a bigger problem than currently illegal drugs. Massively cutting down the illegal profits from currently illegal drugs, by legalization, so that it dropped to number two would free up enormous resources for law enforcement.

Taco Rubio

When I landed at an airport in Mexico, customs had a little street light. You'd walk up single file, and if you got a green light you moved ahead to where they checked your passport, if you got a red light, they opened everything you had.

Now is it probable that there's a guy who pushes a button to make the light go red? Yeah it is probable, but we didn't SEE that guy, which made it feel a lot more random, and I didn't mind it when I got the red light because I could see many others on the same plane who didn't.

Colette Meiji

Throughout most of human history various drugs were legal. Overall drug use was manageable. Prison populations on a whole were low.

Today many drugs are illegal. Prisons are filled to bursting even though violent crime rates are down.

Yay War on Drugs.

Chantal

No, it wouldn't free up that much. Don't kid yourself. You're not the first person to raise that idea but... no.

The criminals would still be smuggling drugs to places where it's not legalised, or cheaper copies or fakes of what you can get 'legally'.

There would still be drugs labs to find, networks to disrupt. Cultivators aren't going to produce only for legal sources if they can grow more and get more profit by selling a bit extra.

Also, people will smuggle anything where there is profit to be made. People, small arms, cigarettes, exotic wildlife....

Cut off one activity, they find another. Cut off one route, and another one springs up.

Taco Rubio

I want a smoking midget with small arms riding a puma, who do I contact to get one?

Argent Stonecutter

Of course I'm not. People have been pointing out this problem with prohibition since before Prohibition, and Prohibition and its repeal proved them right. People have been arguing that we need prohibition before Prohibition, too. They're well funded, popular, and effective at spreading the myth that prohibition is necessary... but that doesn't make them right.

Prohibition pretty much *created* large scale organized crime. The war on drugs *maintains* organized crime on a scale that simply wouldn't exist without it.

Indeed, there would still be money in illegal drugs, but there would be orders of magnitude LESS money in it.

Sure. There's still going to be *some* profit. But there's no more profit than there is demand. If the demand is reduced, because it is being satisfied legally, then profit is reduced, and traffic is reduced.

I'm not talking about cutting off the activity, I'm talking about reducing, by orders of magnitude, the demand for the activity.

Jesse Barnett

We are in the middle of a modern day prohibition in the US. It is ludicrous that they are dropping controls on marijuana and artificially prohibiting tobacco by taxing it to death. This has made it a very lucrative target for organized crime.

Cigarettes are under $4 per pack here in Virginia and yet $6-$8 in some other states. In NY City it is around $10 per pack. That is a fairly attractive return. All in the interest of "making" people stop or at least that is the excuse. Roll Your Own tobacco they just raised taxes on in April, it went from $1.50 per pound to over $20 per pound.

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Trout Recreant

Just get a regular midget with small arms riding a puma and light him on fire. Once he burns down a little he'll start smoking nicely.

Colette Meiji

Based on what?

Our one true Data point is the passage and then the repeal of Prohibition. The series of events associated with that ban and ensuing "war on booze" would directly contradict your argument on this.

Prohibition was a colossal failure.

The "War on Drugs" is a colossal failure. It s reaching a breaking point in the border towns in Mexico.

And not just there, here in the US we can't afford to maintain all of these prisons which have ever increasing percentages of Drug Offenders.

All because "we" have decided its acceptable to get stone drunk, but not just simply stoned.

Chantal

I sympathise with the issue in the US, but... it's broader than that.

Make drugs legal, and you'd still need resources to control quality, quantity, and there would still be illegal sources. Another possibility to help with the prison overcrowding is to use a 'fines' system (based on your 'normal' income) for some crimes, for sentences below 6 months. It's working pretty well in Switzerland, but it would need massive resources (and the necessary legislation) to set up. Resources... are always stretched. Everywhere.

As for drugs: consumption in the US is down for some drugs because it's harder to bring in, but the crops are doing splendidly. Since they had better agricultural techniques in Afghanistan (wonder how that happened), the opium (heroin) yield is booming. And if the US has tighter controls, it will go elsewhere.

Some traditionally 'transit' or even source countries are now becoming user countries. Labs for refining coke or heroin or for making synthetic drugs are springing up in 'less developed countries' as their technology improves.

And the new 'user' countries often don't have the resources to regulate quantity, or quality, let alone to draw up legislation to handle the whole issue.

Drugs are, I think, going to be a good source of revenue for a long time to come. At least until enough countries legalise them to the point that there isn't enough money to be made from growing, processing or shipping them illegally. I don't hold out much hope of this happening any time soon.

I know - I'm a bore. But the drugs trade is an international one. America is just part of it. If there is less money to be made there, then there will be more to be made elsewhere.

Chantal

Like Colette, you're seeing this from the US point of view, which is fair enough.

But organised crime didn't spring up from drugs / booze alone. Money laundering - got easier thanks to the Internet, like just about every form of crime. Human trafficking - people always want a better life. Arms trafficking - conflict happens, and is based on money or religious / ethnic condiitons. Counterfeit medicines - doing very well thanks. Yay cheap viagra. All operated by organised crime.

Legalise drugs - I'm all for it, personally, if it was done everywhere, and with quality controls. But as long as some countries don't (because they don't have the resources), you won't solve anything. If the drugs trade was made more difficult in the US, then watch out for a boom in cybercrime or other crime areas.

Criminals are, sadly, flexible.

Argent Stonecutter

It frees up resources where it's done, so that's no excuse.

It's largely the US that is holding up legalization. It's the US that's forcing third world countries to waste resources fighting drug lords.

The war on drugs, led by the US, transfers resources from crime fighting to criminals. Sure, legalization would force them to switch to less lucrative crimes... but that's the point, they ARE less lucrative crimes. They get less money for more effort and more risk. Meanwhile, the cops have more money to fight them. There is no actual downside.

Fade Languish

You are unfortunately, right about this.

Fade Languish

There are plenty of other lucrative crimes, and they're not all really any less lucrative than drugs, nor necessarily particularly more risky either in execution or consequence. Not that I don't think legalising drugs and creating safe, accessible, legal supplies everywhere is a good idea, but more for the sake of ordinary users, but they will happily shift to some other activity, and often already are doing that as well anyway.

Colette Meiji

Reduce the total money available to the criminals and you reduce the number of criminals.

Kind of like a crime recession.

Chantal

Heroin (from a public souce you can find yourself...):
Europe remains the primary market for heroin, accounting for one-third of the world’s opiate consumption. Despite the increased production in southwest Asia, the European demand for heroin appears to be stable. Southwest Asian heroin supplies consumers across Europe, Central Asia, Russia, where demand is increasing, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Reports indicate that Iran has a persistent heroin abuse problem as well, and serves as a critical transit point for heroin destined to Europe. Estimates suggest 2 million Iranians are drug addicts, with 1.2 million addicted to heroin.



Cocaine:
The United States remains the world’s largest cocaine market. Information from abuse indicator programs suggests a moderate drop in demand for cocaine, most notably among young adults, although overall demand remains stable. Although the use of crack cocaine continues, most crack cocaine is produced in small quantities in urban areas due to the severe criminal penalties associated with possession of the drug.
Seizures in Europe have increased over the last several years, confirming the maturation of the cocaine market in Western Europe. Recent reports, particularly from northern countries, suggest young adults are increasingly using cocaine rather than amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). This change in drug abuse patterns is likely the result of the increased availability and lower price of cocaine, as well as government campaigns against the use of ATS. Eastern European countries do not appear to have a significant problem with cocaine trafficking and abuse at this time. There are initial indications, however, that Eastern and Southern European organized crime groups are involved in the distribution of cocaine around the world, and a cocaine market may be developing in Eastern Europe.
Countries in Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and parts of Africa are reporting rises in cocaine abuse. Also, production and transit countries and neighboring states in South and Central America are increasingly affected by the cocaine trade in terms of violence, corruption and the consequences of drug abuse.

Synthetics:
The synthetic drug trade is multi - dimensional in terms of precursor chemical availability, manufacturing equipment (both sophisticated and improvised), expertise and movement of the finished product. Since clandestine drug laboratories can be located in any part of the world, the trafficking of synthetic drugs can constitute either a domestic or international problem. No single organized crime group or region dominates the synthetic drug trade , as evidenced by the increase in seizures of both laboratories and drugs in every part of the world.


So as you see... it's really not all about the US.

Argent Stonecutter

I never said it was "all about the US". I said that the US was leading the strong enforcement regime. The "war on drugs" is a US product. If the US wasn't pushing it, there would be less pressure on the rest of the world to maintain the artificial market for illegal drugs.

And it doesn't have to be all about the US, for reducing the funds provided to the illegal drug industry from the US to have a huge effect. Other countries will follow, just as other countries followed the US into this wasteful war.

Colette Meiji

This is where this finally goes back to being on topic.

The situation on Heroin is why the Taliban were able to hang on and then rebuild. They are funding their war on Opium.

There is simply too much money in it.