Drug Users and SUV drivers: Do you not know or Do you not care?

Of course, your use of brain-addled is as presumptious as the rest of the OP, or purely for kicks me referring to your wife as a slut. You don’t know if I do drugs (I don’t) and I have no idea just how much of your local community your wife entertains, but hey - why let judgement be suspended till we know what we’re talking about.

So let’s try again. Your claim that all responsibility for drug deaths and the drug industry are down to users is inherently stupid. Why then should you let off the politicians who created the whole WOD fiasco, and try to blame people who are really just trying to get high, as people have tried to do through the ages? You look at a worldwide industry, generating trillions, ruthlessly exploited by governments and criminals, and you somehow manage to decide that this is created by the end user?

Let me give you one recent example of how governments control this industry. Afghanistan is the worlds leading producer of Opium. With the recent change in governement, the US and Europe had an ideal opportunity to bring this supply to an end, for as little as a $200 grant per farmer - a tiny sum compared to the estimated $40 billion spent in the war there. Instead, nothing was done, in fact any action to curtail Opium production was actively opposed. Here’s a fairly short summary for you

So once again, please try to explain why you dismiss the most obvious argument for reducing the criminal nature of the drug side - legalize it, and kill off the black market and violence that surround it.

Ah sod it, who am I kidding. You like to attribute blame for complex issues on a nice easy target, just so you can claim some vacuous moral superiority to others. The fact that your smug bullshit does nothing to solve problems, and thus perpetuates them, is of no interest to you - why try to make things better, when the current mess lets opinionated little runts like you feel good about themselves for no reason.

Cuz we’re cool!
I hope you are not trying to blame the whole energy waste on my SUV, which has had the tank filled up 5 times since April. But owning the SUV makes me evil, despite it having better milage than the Ford Fairmont i owned before. That argument is mockable, and i resent being called a terrorist supporter by some stupid hippies driving Lincoln towncars with terrible mileage as well.

Oh my Fucking God…I can’ believe I read that OP and

I don’t get where the fuck you are coming from…Geezus Christ dude.

The ills of the world don’t come from drugs nor do they stem from SUV owners…get a fucking clue, I know a few that love drugs but are very strong members of society and I know more than a few of those that own SUV that contribtute to this society than you could ever fathom…holy shit, what a crock of bullshit compacted and turned into what someone thinks is correct.

Jesus Christ.

the ills come from those NOT willing to take responsibility for what they do and how they live their fucking life.

Hamlet

I had a nice response to you and it was messed up.

You are delusional, you have no fucking clue…I can say that in eight words than the long damn post I had ready for you.

Maybe tomorrow I can get into this with the SD’s BS getting in the way…but know that I think your OP is full of bullshit…so much full of bullshit that I can’t believe it yourself…good God son, life isn’t black and white, you gotta pick your battles better.

In short you need an education and not one from some wacked out liberal or some wacked person that has no concept of REAL life…real life is your friend, embrace it, know it and understand that it’s not what someone has allowed you think to be truth.

a) I know weez cool. Word.

b) Obviously you’re not a part of the problem. A lot of people in this country drive huge SUVs to work. By themselves. Everyday.
I’m seriously asking questions here - I’m not trying to imply anything. If SUVs aren’t to blame with our country’s disproportionate energy usage, what is? Why do we use so much oil here?

Slacker: Because people drive the quarter mile to the 7/11 no matter what kind of car they drive. It’s the same reason we have so many fat people. If you live in New York City where everyone walks you see a MUCH MUCH MUCH lower than the national average number of fat people.

Erek

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gary Kumquat *
Let me give you one recent example of how governments control this industry. Afghanistan is the worlds leading producer of Opium. With the recent change in governement, the US and Europe had an ideal opportunity to bring this supply to an end, for as little as a $200 grant per farmer - a tiny sum compared to the estimated $40 billion spent in the war there. Instead, nothing was done, in fact any action to curtail Opium production was actively opposed. Here’s a fairly short summary for you
QUOTE]

I would like to provide you this link The damage caused by American defoliants in Columbia

While very interesting, that URL kind of steers away from the discussion, as it advocates the exact kind of imperial abuse that the world government’s perpetuate under the guise of the war on drugs.

It has also proven that paying farmers not to grow crops is ineffective as more farmers start growing that particular crop so that they will be paid to stop.

Erek

ahh shit, I fucked that link up it was supposed to be: The damage caused by American defoliants in Columbia

Aw man… another one of these flaming sacks of shit on the doorstep?

It’s like arguing with a fundamentalist (no offense, brainless morons) After enough of them you realize it’s not worth the effort.

With that in mind, I’ll respond like I did in a similiar thread by saying “FUCK YOU”.

and i’m sure this has been pointed out by now, but LSD in particular is not a chemical that gangs or other organized crime involve themselves with much… It’s usually a rogue chemist paranoidedly (wha?) selling through various contacts to his neural explorers.

and just because I guess I can’t keep my mouth shut afterall, even though I know somebody has already said this, whatever proportion of my weed purchases goes to some shady organization (hey, a lot of what I and i’m sure many others smoke is grown by the guy’s friend’s brother’s hippy neighbor in british columbia) is only doing so because it’s illegal. The simple fact that alcohol was illegal during prohibition made murderous mobsters like al capone rich as all hell. I don’t think anybody can deny how much damage that decision caused, nor could any sensible person believe marijuana (or any number of other drugs) is any different in it’s current status.

and to wrap up I hate SUV’s in every way. Go to hell you selfish pricks (yes, even you dad).

that was quite an extended translation of “fuck you”, I think

Tell me about it - I live in the EU.

What does work though is to pay farmers to produce a separate crop. Pay them to produce food crops, and distribute them to locals. Hell, pay them to produce Opium, buy it and distribute it through state clinics for addicts and users. Immediately blow the supply/demand margins of the current black economy, making it unprofitable to trade drugs. You want to end a global industry of misery and violence - make the fucker unprofitable.

Certainly makes a lot more sense than the OP. Then again the teletubbies make more sense than the OP.

I have not read this entire thread, but I’d like to offer some anecdotal comments.

  1. People who buy recreational drugs, in my experience, usually take an interest in knowing where they originate. Most people who I know avoid supply-chains that include organized crime – not only for ethical reasons, but because unscrupulous people can use unscrupulous methods that can negatively impact the product.

  2. I myself have been at the start of the supply chain for a number of things in decades past. I can offer my personal guarantee that tens of thousands of dollars of drug lucre has funded nothing more sinister a lot of dining out and frivolous purchases of entertainment products. Nobody conspired to blow up any buildings, execute any politicos, or even administer any “beat-downs.” In fact, just about everyone I dealt with would have been horrified at any number of smaller transgressions, say, for instance, eating meat. We dealt with personal friction by dropping E and talking it over.

But hey, if you need to believe that buying a bit of weed, shrooms, or MDMA is somehow funding international terrorism, whatever floats your boat. Most of the folks I knew in that regard were pacifists, and damned loud about it. I knew one guy who operated a grow-house for folks that were connected to the Hell’s Angels, and that turned out very badly. The general consensus in our peer group was “Whaddya expect if you work with people like that? They’re thugs.”

Larry: You are in BC so you’re right at the center of where lot’s of the pot comes from. So your culture of pot cultivation is severely different from what happens here.

When it comes from BC, generally it is sold to gangs, oftentimes Canadian Natives, who are the ones willing to bring it across the border. These people who bring it across the border are generally MUCH harder core than either the grower or the buyer. This is where the killing starts.

As for people knowing the origins, we were talking about hte origin of the pot we smoked tonight, and my friend said it was from the Bronx, they have grow ops up there in warehouses guarded by guys with M-16s.

I certainly know very few people that know the origins of their drugs. And you are right about acid. The drug supply chain is completely different for every single drug out there. Just watch the movie Blow for a good example of the differences between Cocaine and Marijuana smuggling. As for acid, generally it is a chemist selling it to people he knows for distribution and it rarely sees the harder core element in the supply chain. In fact, since Jerry Garcia’s death it has become very hard to get acid. According to the DEA website North America was supplied by about half a dozen people in 1999 and the word I heard on the street is that there were some massive busts, leading to a pretty much nationwide draught.

Erek

Because we produce proportionally more goods than other countries? Don’t be so fucking dense. SUV’s have been popular for relatively few years; the United States has been consuming the lion’s share of the oil supply for far longer. I can’t say that poor mileage cars aren’t part of the problem; anyone who denies that is being disingenuous, but it’s only that, part of the problem. If indeed it is a problem. Me, I think it’s merely semantics and flawed logic. I mean, if the United States wasn’t the world’s largest consumer of energy resources, it’d just be someone else. Proportional to GDP, the United States does not consume more oil than the rest of the world. The disproportionate energy use you claim is a myth. Collect your facts first, then make your argument. This is the proper way to express an opinion. You have the generally accepted procedure backwards.

Bit harsh there on a seemingly sincere question weren’t you, Beer? Based on GDP the energy usage averages out, but on a per capita basis (as your own source points out) then the energy use is still disproportionate.

A couple of threads have made me wonder…

I dislike the taste of alcohol and it rips my stomach to shreds (figureatively speaking). I like to leave my sobriety behind on the weekends as much as anyone. Without using illegal drugs or misusing legal ones, what are my alternatives? I’d love to stop supporting Evil Bad Nasty Men is someone would offer me an alternative route to inebriation…

[high school stoner voice]
Duude, someone told me once that if you dry out banana peels and smoke them, you’ll get high.
[/high school stoner voice]

Sua

You’d make a great early grade-school teacher.

Thanks for the info, though. That site makes some interesting points I hadn’t considered.

I am going to assume that you are genuinely interested in the answers to these questions, and ignore the snarkiness that follow them.

I am not ‘going after’ airlines, as you put it, because there’s no other way to travel from Toronto to Australia. There are reasonable alternatives to SUVs that will pollute less, there are no reasonable alternatives to jets. However, it is true that jets are responsible for a great deal of pollution, which is why I try to buy only things that were grown/manufactured locally (if you had read the thread you would know that), and to not fly unless necessary.

Similarly, I do complain about heating/air conditioning (did you see me ask how well your house is insulated?) I have not done so in this thread but in case you haven’t noticed this is not a thread about heating/air conditioning. Please note also that there isn’t really a viable alternative to heating/air conditioning your home or workplace, where again, there is an alternative to driving an SUV.

Since you asked, I do advocate green energy: solar and wind for starters. Deep-water cooling is, in Toronto, a greener way to cool the air in downtown buildings. There are alternatives, and yes, I think our government’s refusal to look to renewable energy is as irresponsible as any other energy glutton.

Sejal_Traurig, for goodness sake, you are not honestly advocating that if I suggest that maybe we as a society should not be so gluttonous with our use of fossil fuels, that I must also reject any use of them? I grant that we do need to use gas, we do need transport trucks, we do need personal automobiles and so on. But we do not need to use them as much as we do. Does the fact that my bike was once manufactured and trucked somewhere justify the fuel you pour into your SUV? If you need to think so in order to sleep at night, that’s fine. But you can’t make me buy it.

Yes, everyone is responsible for some pollution. Yes, I am too, and I’m happy to take responsibility for that without resorting to sarcasm or name-calling or accusations. I find I do not get the same respect from people defending their use of gasoline.

For those who are too busy to read the entire thread, and for those who purportedly read the thread and have a bit of trouble with reading comprehension, I’ll make a quick list of things I NEVER SAID:

From Tars: So thousands of cars polluting the atmosphere is cool with you, but one dude’s SUV isn’t. Nice logic, there, Spock.

From Gary Kumquat: Your claim that all responsibility for drug deaths and the drug industry are down to users …

From Gary Kumquat:You like to attribute blame for complex issues on a nice easy target, just so you can claim some vacuous moral superiority to others.

From techchick69: The ills of the world don’t come from drugs nor do they stem from SUV owners.

From Larry Mudd: you need to believe that buying a bit of weed, shrooms, or MDMA is somehow funding international terrorism.
Not only did I never say these things, I’ve never even intimated them. You guys haven’t made a fucking straw man, you’ve built a fucking straw army.

Now, let’s take a look at WHAT I ACTUALLY DID SAY:

The argument that Very Bad Things are the result of America’s policies making drugs illegal is quite attractive and used over an over in this thread. But it is akin to: “Well, it’s not ALL my fault, so you can’t blame me at all.”

**
Because you missed it the first 3 times I’ve said it? The fact that legalization of drugs would reduce the criminal nature of the drug trade, DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE DRUG TRADE AS IT IS TODAY. I can rephrase it for you in my next post if you still don’t get it.

**
You must be a graduate of Biohazard’s school of “I’m talking to a brick wall.” And have you ever wondered why drug users are an easy target? Because they do share some of the blame.

Oh,

My

God

Those spaces in your post and the speciousness of your argument has completely convinced me!!! Look, I am very well-educated and I live in the real world. Now, if you want to discuss what I’ve ACTUALLY SAID, feel free, but if you want to just see your words floating on your screen, may I suggest WordPerfect.