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88-Year-Old Inventor Hassled By the DEA
New submitter Calibax writes "30 years ago, Bob Wallace and his partner came up with a product to help hikers, flood victims and others purify water. Wallace, now 88 years old, packs his product by hand in his garage, stores it in his backyard shed and sells it for $6.50. Recently, the DEA has been hassling him because his product uses crystalline iodine. He has been refused a license to purchase the iodine because it can be used in the production of crystal meth, and as a result he is now out of business. A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."
Keynes is widely misunderstood. He once said that it would be better to build totally useless pyramids than to have high unemployment, but he wasn't actually suggesting that we should do that. It's obvious when you think about it, because there are a million and one productive things that could be done with the same labor. The actual idea is that it's better to pay someone to work in a soup kitchen than it is to watch crime skyrocket if you leave them to starve and they resort to theft.
If (as would seem obvious from this case) the DEA is not engaged in anything productive, you don't have to make them unemployed. You just have to eliminate their current positions and instead set them to work patrolling the streets in gang neighborhoods at night to suppress actual crime.
And that is why Portugal's approach to drugs, treating it as a medical and mental health issue, is working and ours isn't.
After all the money spent on the War on Drugs, the US still has the addiction rates that we had at the turn of the 19th century. If we only had as many freedoms.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yah but not one of particular use to terrorists as Iodine tri-whatever is too unstable to make a useful explosive. You start making large batches and it will go off randomly while drying or large parts may fail to detonate.
It's much less of a public safety threat than a gun. The expected harm caused by a man with a pistol far exceeds that of a bomber with this stuff.
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