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After Over a Year of Police Action, Dark Net Black Markets Still Growing
When the original Silk Road was shut down in 2013, it provided definitive evidence that federal law enforcement was targeting online black markets. Later, after the fall of Silk Road 2.0 and the Evolution Market's admins running off with their customers' money, you might have expected people to become more wary of dark net markets — but that doesn't seem to be the case. The number of products being bought and sold is up significantly since last year, and it's quadrupled since the original Silk Road fell. "The most enduring institution on the Dark Net is Agora. Founded in December 2014, amid the rubble of Silk Road's fall, Agora now accounts for 37 percent of all Dark Net product listings. It's a drug-heavy market with substantial supplies in marijuana, ecstasy, prescription drugs, and stimulants—and nearly any other drug you can imagine."
Black markets pop up when free markets aren't available. Legalizing drugs would do wonders for the economy. Not only do we spend a heap of money on the war on drugs: militarized police, overburdened legal system and oversaturated prisons, but then there's also the costs in terms of innocent bystanders who are injured or killed in this war. Over 70,000 people have been killed by drug cartels in Mexico alone. How do a lot of terrorists fund their activities? By selling heroin. If they were available for over-the-counter purchase at a reasonable price, like alcohol & tobacco are, it would make a whole world of problems disappear. That's not to say that there wouldn't be new problems in terms of addiction, but these problems would be minor in comparison to the ones we have now.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
yeah indeed, drug cartels have taken over in parts of Mexico and other Central / South American countries
The actual winners:
So yeah, sucks for the average citizen, awesome for the people who actually make the laws.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
IIRC, they got Al Capone for tax evasion.
The best way way to make "crime" go away is to repeal stupid laws. No victim, no crime.
The primary objective when shutting down crime is to follow the money and make the crime unprofitable.
A far simpler method is to legalize the activity so it is not a crime. The problem is not the profits of the drug dealers, but the profits from civil forfeiture, and the vast profits from the prison industry, more than $74 billion annually.
Though the public is made up of individuals and, I have seen many of them change their tune after running into some debate on the matter.
Especially when you point out to them that despite the fact that 50% of people in burn units are there for accidents involved with making meth; then you point out that addiction rates don't change (they fluctuate but trace a pretty horizontal line).... it really does get hard to justify the benefits of drug policy.
When you have a policy that can be directly linked as a major cause of the first wave of the HIV epidemic, that has skyrocketed prison populations, and created and funded violent gangs across the country.... all while....not even achieving its most basic goal.... most people do come around when presented with the onslaught of evidence that the current strategy is bullshit and bad for everyone.....
Everyone except the cartels, the gangs, and the police unions whose membership lives off hem.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You used an illegal scenario, but how about these:
Did the guy working packing at the Amazon eat a poppyseed-lemon muffin on his coffee break? Instant FP (goes for inhalers too, btw).
Did someone who handles large amounts of cash also wrap a package? There's likely trace amounts of cocaine present on the outside of the package then.
Did someone wrap a package after their macrame class or civil war re-enactment? Oils from the rope will likely cause an FP.
There are so many drugs out there that to test for all of them means you're also detecting perfectly safe items such as hemp, poppy seeds, etc. as well as traces of illegal items that just happen to be smeared over a significant portion of publicly used cash.
You know those swabs they take in Airport Security? Those don't test for the majority of drugs or explosives, only a select few. And the sensitivity is turned down quite a bit. Otherwise, anyone who had been around, say, fertilizer, would set the thing off every time they flew.
You don't go there because of the war on drugs, not the drugs themselves. The US became a much safer place when the war on alcohol was abandoned and the world will be a safer place when the war on drugs is abandoned.
Black markets create a criminal element, so it's important policy to only use prohibition when absolutely necessary (contract killing and the like). The war on drugs have killed more people and caused more economic damage than drugs ever have.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.