BBC NEWS | Americas | UN shock at Colombia coca rise

I find it hard to believe that anybody still considers eradication as a viable solution to drug problems.

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

Hey, spraying Round-Up was great for Monsanto, you nabob of negativity.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

One of the chaps that I'm working with says that in the Northwest of Ecuador you can see large tracts of land in which the agricultural potential has been devastated by spraying in Colombia.

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

Another facet of the equation is that we dump excess produce down there, which makes it almost a necessity for the farmers to grow dope. Pretty sick, to say the least.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

That's business.

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

Jeepers, you've got a problem with nattering?

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This land was made for you and me
-Woody Guthrie

I wonder. If we saved all the money we spend in Iraq in the so-called war on terror and all the money we spend in the war on drugs, and if we restored all the constitutional freedoms we've sacrificed in these two "wars", what would we do with that additional money and freedom? I would personally spend most of it on dope and hookers and probably waste the rest.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

There you go...it is always a matter of time before every problem, no matter how big or small is America's fault.
At least you are consistent.

So what are you saying, that we don't dump our excess produce down there, undercutting the local farmers, thereby giving them incentive to grow dope? Or are you just bitching because what I said clashes with your preconceptions?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

The fact that what he says is true notwithstanding?

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

no because I have never heard of it.

I wonder if there are any incentives, at a high level of government, to actually do anything about drug use. I'm not a believer in conspiracies, so I'm not given to believe that there are some back room people with an elaborate reason to see swaths of people addicted to substances, but, by the same token, I don't see any reason that the DEA or Congress would care about getting rid of drugs. The DEA would want to walk a fine line between doing enough for the public not to realize what a waste it is and actually doing something about the problem, at which point it would no longer be "necessary" (quotes since you'd be hard pressed to call it necessary now, but in this case, more people would realize it). The main incentive for politicians is the soccer mom vote, but this requires only occasional grandstanding and no actual sensible policy making. In fact, the nation by and large seems happiest with empty rhetoric regarding drug use, not wanting whatever drugs they abuse legally or illegally to really be taken away from them - just from others they perceive as threats.

And, given what I perceive to be no incentive for high levels of government to eliminate drugs, it strikes me that corrupt/indirect incentives to keep them coming might make their way into the discussion.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Your not believing in conspiracies aside, follow the drug money and you see that a very large chunk of it gets laundered through our economy. Couple that with the fact that our economy is literally addicted to this illicit cash flow and I'd say that it's practically a certainty that certain powerful interests conspire to insure that their ability to profit from drug trafficking isn't hindered.

It's called greed, Doc, and it all too frequently gets the best of us human beings.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

And when you find a formula that works...

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Taleban's '$100m opium takings'

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"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas