Um, wasn’t the Taliban opposed to opium production?
On the other hand, if you pay taxes, you’re paying to drop defoliants on Columbian farmers’ fields, destroying their coca crops and any other crops they might have. Then they join FARC and sow some more chaos. I guess you just can’t win.
Correct. I beleive much, if not most, of it is grown right here in the US of A, no smuggling necessary. Northern California and Kentucky come to mind. I could be wrong, though.
I detect a little sarcasm. Seriously - I really do find this baffling.
I agree - this is a lot like the McCarthy ‘reds under the bed’.
Why all the references to SUV’s? These are 4 wheel drives or utes arent they - based on a quick google? (please excuse my ignorance). Is it because they consume a lot of fuel? btw I thought there were just as cheap to run (fuel wise) as normal cars.
And then pot * really will * be made by evil terrorists. :eek:
Hmmm… It seems that we are quickly moving out of General Questions and into Great Debates. I have been told that most of the pot in America comes from our friendly neighbors up north, the Canadians. Does anyone have any hard statistics on where pot in America comes from?
Certainly, if there is one thing we American consumers need to do more often, it is learn about the things we buy, and what the cost of buying them really are. Not just marijuana, but other legal products like oil and diamonds. Hell, I just read an article linking chocolate to child labor and slavery.
antechinus,
Basically, there has been an ad campaign on over here, trying to link owners/buyers of SUV’s to terrorism via our dependency to foreign oil. Here is a link to the story.
Contrary to some assertions here, most marijuana available in the United States is smuggled in from other countries. As they said there:
Scroll. Palve beat me to it.
Grr… I should preview these posts…
That should be “Scroll up”
I stand corrected.
well, yeah. It certainly seems plausible that the millions of dollars that enter the underground economy by being used to pay for pot might turn as a source of funding for other illegal activity, including terrorism. But the blame for that belongs squarely on the illegality of pot, and not on the people who break the law to use it.
It’s interesting to me how much of the curent anti-drug propaganda is based on its illegality, as if that were an immutable fact of nature. “Don’t use”, they say, “because it’s illegal and you could get caught!”. “Don’t buy it…you’ll be supporting terrorists!”. While users say, “I’d better buy it rather than grow my own and stay out of the illegal market, because if I’m caught cultivating it’s a 10-year narcotics rap!”
Tobacco kills 400,000 Americans each year. That’s the equivalent of about 130 World Trade Centers. Instead of Iraq, maybe we should bomb North Carolina.
Mothchunks,
On that note, I have been a smoker for too long. I live in North Carolina now, and cannot get help with quitting, although this state has received huge tobacco settlements that are supposed to have gone for public stop-smoking assistance.
I have tried to quit now 4 times. I’m starting to feel like some kind of junkie. 
It doeth sucketh much.
I grew up just outside of Miami Fl and I have to agree with a lot of people. Yep, I remember the good old days of a $10 “lid” of Columbian Gold or Panama Red that weighed nearly an ounce but in the early 80s with Reagon’s Just Say No and Bob Martinez crackdown on the drug lords, pot became a bigger risk than the drug lords wanted to deal with. They switched to coke and things got really, really bad.
Coke costs more and is smaller so it’s easier to hide. It also fuckw with the brain cells. So then these guys who were previosuly kind of grown up hippies listening to Bob Marley and hoisting square grouper were suddenly into some guy named Jesus for the cost of their Lamboghini and on top of that, their head is all fucked up? Jesus is going to kill themanyway if they don’t cough up the dough so what do they have to lose? Shoot up a neighborhood, hook some little kids, oh and what about this great idea? We’ll get the gangs involed to dothe dirty work because they are expendable. Who cares if a bunch of Mariels kill a bunch of blacks in Liberty City as long as ican pay Jesus right? So the disease floated down hill and people too poor to buy the really good expensive coke found out they could take a little bit of coke and cook it up and make it more powerful by turning it inot crack and smoking it or freebasing. Then people got really screwed up, they were robbing their grandmas and selling their kids for that next rock but Hey, no one is smugghling pot anymore! Nope!
So what happened to the hippie guys who don’t do coke? At first they started buying fromtheir favorite college kid in Gansville but after a while the cops got helicopters and started searching out the pot fields and arresting those hippie farmers. They didn’t have time to deal with gang riots in liberty city - no sir. We got some potheads to catch.
IT’s likea doctor saying, forget about the cancer and cure the cold. Makes absolutely NO SENSE to me.
No I think it’s a remote possibility that pennies may drift into the hands of terrorists from pot but pot devalued as a lucrative business 20 years ago. But once again the authorities are ignoring the X coming in from Eastern Block countries, teh heroin from Mexico, The Coke from Bolivia, but of course we’ll show two middle aged white guys on TV talking about pot…makes perfect sense.
Damn I went off there for a minute! Thanks, I feel good!
And btw, while the connection between marijuana and terrorism is nebulous at best, the connection between tobacco and terrorism has been firmly established.
Ya know, it is funny to me how the folks who preach the dangers of marijuana with all the violence statistics are also the first ones to emphasize the difference between violence caused by drug use and violence caused by drug trade. For you folks, why do you think the drug trade is so dangerous? Do you think it would be more dangerous than the tobacco business, if legalized?
[
Ya know, it is funny to me how the folks who preach the dangers of marijuana with all the violence statistics are also the first ones to emphasize the difference between violence caused by drug use and violence caused by drug trade. For you folks, why do you think the drug trade is so dangerous? Do you think it would be more dangerous than the tobacco business, if legalized? **
[/QUOTE]
I am not sure I qualify as preaching the dangers of marijuana - I definitely don’t. But One reason I thinkthe drug trade is so damned dangerous is because it is run by cowboys with a lot of money and not much to lose. It’s so damned lucrative that they aren’t going to make that kind of money anywhere else. I think that is true from the top down to the bottom. The nickel dealers have lost hope of improving their situation and see the guys on the street corner with wads of cash when they can’t buy new jumps. If it were legal woudl it be less dangerous? Depends on what drug. As far as marijuana? I don’t see it being anymroe dangerous than alcohol. Don’t smoke and drive! But I think people are a lot less prone to smoking a joint and getting into a fight and beating their wives than drinking and having that same behavior. Would it be something else for poor people to spend their money on? Well yeah, kind of like beer and cigarettes.
As far as drugs, I know Amsterdam is quoted to death on the subject but – just abotu everything is legal there and highly regulated.They have next to zero in violent crime, since they started distributing needles in the parks the AIDS cases have dropped in half. It hink it should be legalized and taxed to support the war on terrorism. that’s a twist now isn’t it? Can you see the ads? “Do your part! Smoke Pot and fight terrorism”
If marijuana were ever legalized in any way, I think it would have to be in a tightly regulated manner; I don’t think it would be a good idea to sell it on open store shelves like so much dish soap. Rather, I think perhaps it should probably be sold like cigarettes today, in California: they keep them in locked cases and you have to ask the cashier to get them out for you. Or another way to dispense it would be over the prescription counter of a drugstore, but without needing the actual prescription to get it. It would emphasize the fact that marijuana does have risks associated with it, and that it should be used with care and treated with respect.
Under such a scheme would there be NO smuggling or black market in marijuana? Of course not. Tobacco gets smuggled from low-tax states to high-tax ones all the time. But at least you never hear of street gangs battling over the illicit cigarette trade!
Amen, mipiace.
I think the worst thing about the ads that target marijuana is that they miss the point. The most lucrative and dangerous drugs out there are the opiates and the stimulants (heroin, speed, coke), not to mention the designer drugs (X). These are the drugs that need to be demonized, not Marijuana. Focusing exclusively on pot erodes the credibility of the anti-drug message.
That said, demonization of any sort tends to undermine credibility. I would much rather have the focus be on education and rehabilitation. And this whole business of locking up people for what they choose to do with their own bodies is, in a word, immoral.
This may be the single most coherent and logical argument regarding pot and terror I have read so far. It really is that simple. Stop blaming pot smokers and start blaming your government for allowing this complete foolishness to continue. Thank you javaman for saying what I did not.
[sarcasm]
Be for real BongMaster.
Jews use SUV’s to smuggle pot, then, because they control all the money, help launder the ill gotten gains and blame it on the Muslims [/sarcasm off]
[southpark accent on] You shouldn’t do drugs mum-kay, because drugs are bad, mum-kay [/spa off]