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Terahertz Scanners See Inside Sealed Packages
opticsorg writes "Japanese scientists have demonstrated a system that detects the presence of illicit drugs that are concealed within an envelope. Tests to date have shown that the imaging system can successfully detect and identify a range of substances including ecstasy (MDMA) and methamphetamine. The researchers are now working with companies to develop a mail screening system that could suit use in post offices and airports."
As stupid as the war on drugs is, attempting to gain the upper hand through technology is even stupider.
For instance, thanks to the innumerable advances in creating genetically-engineered plants, we will soon see the day where the characteristics of interest in plants such as cannabis, coca, psilocybin, and opium are capable of being integrated within such ordinary plants as grass, seaweed, ferns, etc. So even if we are able to use technology to prevent drugs from coming into this country from the outside, the obvious solution for organized crime will be to make it so that the drugs can be more easily manufactured from within.
We've already seen this with methamphetimines. By working to reduce the supply and thereby increase the cost of the more traditional drugs, the market responds with a drug like meth, that is easy and cheap to produce domestically. Look at the consequences of the meth epidemic in America. It's a total disaster.
Changing the technology isn't the answer. Changing the policy is. Legalize drugs now.
Who would you rather see selling drugs? Law-abiding citizens in a legalized environment who won't sell to kids? Or criminals in a black-market environment who will?
That's the question nobody on the prohibition side seems to be able to answer. They admit that they will never be able to rid the world of illegal drugs, yet cannot come to grips with this simple question. If our drug policy is based on what is best for the children, then why haven't we legalized already? Why not start letting communities actually control these controlled substances for a change? When do we learn the lesson of alcohol prohibition? When do we recognize that there is no constitutional basis for the continuation of this goddamn policy?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
More of my tax dollars spent on projects designed to help my government go on 'fishing expiditions' to see whether or not I need to be jailed. I truly don't understand why the youth of this nation is so untrusting of government. After all, the true purpose of all governments is to vet society for undesirables, yes?
We already put more people in jail than any other country on Earth, proportionately; this apparently isn't enough for some people. When your government starts hunting for reasons to jail you, you know it's gone too far. I once read a very interesting thought on why something like this is done. The author expressed the idea that since governments cannot control totally law-abiding persons (as in moral laws), it must create enough sufficiently complex laws such that no person can possibly go through life without breaking one.
Ask a lawyer how many laws they've broken by lunchtime, if they wanted to get really technical, and I think you'll find the results extremely interesting.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
just because one drug might be a candidate for legalization does not mean that all are
Actually, it's the other way around. Just because a few drugs are potentially harmful to society, why ban hundreds of totally unrelated substances?
Most people think "illicit drugs are bad", when in fact "illicit drugs" is just a list undemocraticly compiled by the govnerment from seemingly random rules.
Here are some "drugs" that you may or may not have heard about; psilocybine, dmt, ibogaine, mescaline, salvinorin, muscimol. Can you explain to me why these drugs should be illegal? Do you think the government can explain this?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The way I see it is we're going to get decriminalization which is worse because the only way to get it will still be through the criminal scum bags which currently sell it(rather than the corporate scum bags who could sell it if it were legal). Because of this, drugs will continue to fund crime and do all of the horrible things they do now, except that all of the people who are currently massively anti-drugs(read the people making money off the war on drugs) will be able to say, look, we tried it your way and it didn't work", then we'll be back to the same old garbage.