[rhizome]

Wait, it sounds like you're saying big drug dealers are just selling drugs to get money to, I don't know, go on murder sprees? I'm not saying violence is not a part of these kinds of crimes, but I don't think the purpose of their participation is just to enable other, more serious crimes.

That is, I don't think it's very common for someone to say "I want to sell a lot of drugs because I can't afford to kill enough people otherwise," rather than what I think is more common, "I want to sell a lot of drugs because I want to buy a house without a lot of effort."

[PhasmaFelis]

The cause-and-effect is backwards. They don't sell drugs so they can kill lots of people. They kill lots of people so they can sell drugs.

Either way, there's a lot of violence happening directly because of drug cartels, foreign and domestic.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Great, legalize drugs and that all goes away.

[rothbardrand]

For an example of this, check out Portugal that legalized and had great success.

I wonder if anyone can point to place where drugs are legalized and violence increased? Where addiction increased?

Seems absurd, yet people don't think the drug war is absurd-- they don't immediately see this takeover of Hanza as the government illegally operating a black market for weeks and thus committing massive crime, and they don't see the shutdown of the market as a further crime violating the rights of the sellers to sell something that morally and practically their buyers should be able to buy (when it comes to drugs anyway)

[Mtinie]

The legality of committing crimes while in pursuit of criminal prosecutions is interesting.

Here's a reference for your reading pleasure (though this is, I believe, U.S.-centric, so not exactly the case here)

https://www.quora.com/Are-undercover-cops-allowed-to-break-t...

[rhizome]

You might be interested in the Playpen case going on now:

https://www.eff.org/pages/playpen-cases-frequently-asked-que...

[wybiral]

> it sounds like you're saying big drug dealers are just selling drugs to get money to, I don't know, go on murder sprees

No. I'm just saying that the people upstream manufacturing massive quantities of meth and heroin probably aren't the kinds of organizations that you want to be making that kind of money.

[valuearb]

Then legalize drugs so they can't make that kind of money.

[msla]

But until that happens, don't buy from big drug sellers.

In a broader sense: We can acknowledge that there's an underlying problem, and how to fix it, while at the same time being willing to advocate a temporary fix until the underlying problem actually is fixed.

Think of it like polyfill: The underlying problem is that old browsers exist, but we can't boil the ocean and make everyone upgrade, so we use polyfills to gain the functionality we want on those old browsers.

[gorkonsine]

These laws don't usually get changed until people violate them en masse, showing utter disrespect and contempt for the laws.

Remember Prohibition? That wasn't lifted because people wrote to their Congresspeople, but otherwise respected the law and followed it. It was lifted because it was widely disrespected, and a huge black market for alcohol was created, along with a lot of brutal violence. Same goes for civil rights for black people in the 1960s. Same goes for civil rights for gay people (like legalizing gay sex, previously criminalized). People committed the crimes and got caught, it went through the justice system somehow, and either a law was passed or the Supreme Court rule on it. It took a Supreme Court case to nullify the anti-gay-sex laws when some people in Texas were prosecuted for it and it got appealed up to the supremes as a privacy/freedom issue.

[msla]

Until those laws get changed, the money from buying drugs from the big cartels funds real crimes.

Changing the laws is the long-term solution.

Not buying drugs from big cartels is the short-term one.

[gorkonsine]

Paying your taxes funds real crimes too. Should I stop paying taxes?

According to you, the people in the Underground Railroad were doing the wrong thing, and should have followed the prevailing laws on slavery, and it was wrong for slaves to rebel, even when they were being brutalized and murdered. Your position is disgusting and repugnant.

[blubb-fish]

and those chemists producing acid in Swiss university labs? are they also eating babies?

[isoprophlex]

Yes, probably, for their fresh pituitary glands..!

[rhizome]

And I'm saying that it sounds like you think "the kinds of organizations" are using drug money to enable worse crimes. I mean, it's no secret that the purpose of certain laws are to prevent anybody from making "that kind of money," but to me your comment read as if there was more to it.

[freeflight]

Because that's also the case. Big organized crime groups often have access to exactly the kind of logistics required to manufacture and smuggle drugs across large distances.

They have the muscle to stay competitive in a market where there is no state authority to give you guarantees on anything.

This isn't an outrageous claim at all, rather it's a well-known fact: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Studies/Il...

That's why prohibition is such a bad approach, it creates exactly the kind of black markets where these organizations make their massive profits.

[rhizome]

Most drug dealers are not "big organized groups." I don't know from Hansa, but I'm betting a big organized group is not likely to use them as a single point of failure.

[freeflight]

Of course, it wouldn't have been their only market, but it's among them. Even something ostensibly harmless as cannabis can finance quite questionable people and groups.

A while ago Arte France released a series titled "Cannabis", where the plot revolves around a shipment of Morrocan hashish lost on the Mediterranean sea, with the consequences playing out all over Europe. And while it's a fictional plot, it still paints a somewhat accurate picture how a lot of this business goes down.

[rhizome]

Of course, it wouldn't have been their only market

That's not how I was using "single point of failure." The failure I was speaking to was identification by law enforcement.

[TeMPOraL]

> Most drug dealers are not "big organized groups."

Who do you think provides them with the drugs?

[rhizome]

Generally? Slightly bigger drug dealers.

Selling to end users is practically a mug's game, so there is no end to the number of people wanting to act as middlemen to avoid it.

[rfrank]

> That is, I don't think it's very common for someone to say "I want to sell a lot of drugs because I can't afford to kill enough people otherwise,"

This depends very much on who you're talking about.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ana-davila/drug-cartels-where-...

[valuearb]

You are correct. Making drugs illegal has funded the creation of massive cartels who use that funding to pursue other crimes and to war against any competitors.

The solution will never be shutting down darknets and arresting people.

[rhizome]

Like I said, I'm not saying it doesn't happen.

[rfrank]

I think you underestimate the frequency pretty dramatically.