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Round-Up Ready Coca Plants
goneutt writes "Wired reports that an herbicide resistant breed of the coca plant has been found in Columbia after years of government spraying. It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered. What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly. Does this point the way of the future for other weeds?"
>What does this mean about drug control policy and the extensive use of one herbicide repeatedly
One'd have thought someone would have learned something of the whole antibiotic resistance problem we've developed after years of abusing them without control. This kind of thing was not in any shape or form unpredictable or unexpected.
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So please leave Colombia alone. You can't even spell the country name.
Yes yes... lets start fires in the jungles of columbia
Thats a great idea. Of course it will be good for the soil and all the plants (including the coca) will grow back faster. Sure, we might kill a whole bunch of columbians, but... hey... they are columbians, not people right?
I think this is an example of what we like to call poetic justice
A few people with an irrational fear of plants, have gone around killing them, and the plants have grown resistant to their methods. Good for them.
This is proof that you really can't outlaw nature.
Maybe its time to rethink this strategy of flailing wildly at anything that we percieve as potentially bad, and consider leaving people be to grow and use the plants that they want to.
Then if there are problems with how people use those plants, we can deal with that. We can train doctors to deal with that (and we have) we can foster an environment where people feel safe telling their doctors about what they are doing, an atmosphere of open honest discussion will lead to healthier attitudes.
Harm reduction is the key. These attempts to defeat nature arn't working, and instead are just inflating prices and making criminal gangs filthy rich. Hell the cartels that produce cocaine are known to have built submarines for drug trafficing. A cost that is passed directly on to the users.
Is it really so bad that people who like cocaine use it? Wouldn't it be better to decrease its effect on their wallets so they don't need to resort to crime? Wouldn't it be better to foster openness so those with problems are easier to help? Wouldn't it be better to take the money out of the hands of criminal gangs and use it to fund education initives to help keep people from starting in the first place?
Why are we in columbia? The problem is here at home. We need to fix the problems here at home, and the answer to that is not fighting a war on plants in some other country. It means growing up and taking responsibility for our own peoples actions. It means showing them the error of their ways, and then letting them make their own decisions on the matter.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Have you ever seen a crack baby?
No, but I have watched more than one crack adult waste away and die. One of them was a beautiful little girl from my neighborhood, and a good family, that I watched grow up.
I've watched many more lives destroyed by another plant derived drug far more common than crack and quite a few die from it. Terminal cirrhosis of the liver isn't pretty. The drug can be derived from any plant and can be purchased over the counter at any convienient store.
It isn't the plant's fault, and you simply can't destroy them all anyway, at least not without destroying ourselves as well.
This isn't just some plant god gave us to smoke.
Actually, if we just smoked the plant there would be little problem.
. . . and ruins whole country's.
No, it is the fruitless attempts at interdiction that ruin whole countries. Colombia used to be one of the prime tourist spots of the world, and they've been 'doing coke' for millenia.
By the way, I've found an interesting, herbicide free, way to deal with dandelions in my lawn (another plant that some people take offense at for some reason. I was speaking of plants, remember?)
I eat them.
KFG
Or maybe if it was legal, all the drug cartels would gain even more widespread power and cause more drug related crimes.
Interdiction is a modern phenomenon. Before interdiction there were no drug cartels and no drug related crimes as we know them. The one is the cause of the other. Where do the drug cartels stand if all you have to do to get a bit of coke is to buy a Coke?
You don't see a lot of 'rum runners' around these days, do you? Just honest convienient store, liquor store and bar owners.
Aside from the drunk driving/angry drunk abuser issue the most serious crime now directly associated with alcohol is a bit of obnoxious panhandling.
Where there is no black market there is no black market crime.
KFG
It also appears that the process happend via selective breeding rather than gene manipulation, but it's an outside possibility that it was engineered.
Those are both the same thing: evolution by selection. By spraying coca with herbicide either we are selecting for coca which is resistent to herbicide, or we are selecting for drug producers who are capable of gentically engineering coca to make it resistant to herbicide. Anti-drug measures apply selective pressures to the entire system of production, not just the plant.
What does this mean about drug control policy
The enforcers are likely to renew and concentrate their efforts on the point of adaptation within the adversary system, misunderstanding the scope of the problem which they confront, believing it to be a plant rather than a system of production which may adapt at any stage. My prediction: They will find a solution to the problem of resistant plants, apply it, and the system will evolve again, adapting at that point or some other.
They are playing wac-a-mole with evolution.
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