[DaiPlusPlus]

Ah - you mentioned "chain of production" so I assumed you were only referring to the production of the drug, not its trafficking.

When you include trafficking you're right - but I did mention examples in my post that don't involve any exploitation, such as pharmaceutical diversion and people who grow and supply their own drugs.

[Gomer1800]

I really don't care if people consume/purchase/make/sell drugs if the money isn't financing terrible things someplace in the world. I think the first step to making these kind of guarantees for consumers is legalizing the market for drugs.

I've got friends who grow weed and Ill smoke their stuff anyday cause I know where it comes from.

[therealx]

Most trafficking is not forced or exploitive. It's some poor person seeing a quick payday and going for it.

Beside, most drugs flowing into the US are from underground tunnel, or shipping container, or the back of a commercial truck. At one point they were buying used 747s, flying them full of coke to the US, and then just ditchiing the plane because they made way more than the cost of the plane.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> Most trafficking is not forced or exploitive. It's some poor person seeing a quick payday and going for it.

I'unno - after watching TV shows like _UK Border Force_ (which won't be unbiased, and undoubtably uses contrived selective editing to trigger some strong emotion from the viewer - either sympathy for people in crappy situations and the human-interest sob-stories, to reinforce xenophobic and anti-immigrant views about foreigners by focusing on the people the border officers refuse entry, and so on) but there's seemingly a lot of people shown who clearly were in very, very shitty situations where being a drug-mule was the least-worst option - like needing to find $20,000 quickly to pay for medical care of a loved one in a country without universal healthcare (INB4 jokes about the US).

In any event, ideally no-one should be in a position where they need to compromise their criminal record - or moral principles - to achieve at least a minimally comfortable standard of living.

[Scoundreller]

> At one point they were buying used 747s, flying them full of coke to the US, and then just ditchiing the plane because they made way more than the cost of the plane.

I think that was happening in Africa with smaller jets. Which... is not that far from Brazil. Then smuggle over-land across Africa and mix in with N. African exports/shadow boats.

[kitteh]

Who was ditching a 747? The joke from the cartels was they could afford to do that if they wanted to. Plenty of GA aircraft were ending up in fields and at the bottom of the Atlantic and gulf, though.