You’re blaming it on the wrong people. Most drug dealers are poor people struggling to survive or drug addicts themselves.
The person who takes the drugs is the one responsible. People who start doing meth know it is addictive and can ruin their lives. They know they can OD, they know they can get treatment. They choose to use anyway.
It’s called personal responsibility. Nobody here would blame knife dealers for a murder, they blame the person who actually does the killing.
I had a dinner meeting in 2007 that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. I *still *haven’t been able to shower enough.
I’ve spoken to my doctor (who was the doc he spoke to) and the nurse at the Home (where mother goes to respite), the doctor dismissed my concerns on the subject because he [my brother] can’t legally do anything as he’s not listed as mother’s next-of-kin nor is he an Irish citizen, or resident or something. The nurse at the Home told me all she’d said was she thought mother was a good candidate for residential care.
Brother is still convinced that he’s started the wheels in motion to get mother put into a Home permanently. He has repeatedly said that he’s doing it for my benefit (because I don’t get along with mother and my health is failing). WTF? This is the same man who threatened to push me out of a window, why is he all of a sudden so concerned with my well being?
When challenged over his threats towards me, my brother justified what he’d said because I’d deserved it. He gave a long list of reasons why I deserved to be spoken to harshly at every turn and that threatening to kill, maim or otherwise visit grievous bodily harm on me is acceptable because it’s me he’s threatening and well “fuck you bitch, how else do you expect people to speak to/treat you?”
And yes, I am quoting him, almost verbatim.
Or when the doped up person sneaks into the bedroom of a child and stabs them to death, or eats someone’s face off, or attacks their mother because they are experiencing a bad high. Yep, no victims there.
How is any of that the fault of a drug dealer?
Directly its not, but it is certainly not victimless.
Yes, I know a lot of people who would qualify as very, very evil if the word is to have any meaning. I’ve prosecuted multiple serial rapists and serial child molesters. Some simply engage in deep cognitive distortions that what they’re doing isn’t so bad, some are deeply psychopathic and have no more conscience about raping or killing another human being than you or I would have about squashing a bug. One was formerly on the Texas Ten Most Wanted List, and two more are there right now. The very worst ones are both psychopathic and sexually sadistic; at least two of them were serial rapists strongly supsected to be connected with unsolved serial killings, and from what we know that they did do I wouldn’t put being a serial killer one inch past them.
They are in the jungle in Brazil. We used them mainly to chop bamboo.
[QUOTE=TruCelt]
I have also known amoral people who took no joy in harming others, but left a path of destruction in everyone they touched. (Many of whom defended them to the last breath.) -> Evil
[/QUOTE]
I was thinking of a friend who is like this, but I found it difficult to put into words. He manipulates everyone, literally everything he says is part of some overall plan to make you do what he wants. Everyone ends up hurt and manipulated, but many hardly even see what happened. The difference between him and a serial killer is that he has no interest in blood. It’s not particularly about hurting others, it’s just about him and other people are accessories to what he wants. He is widely loved and admired, he feigns empathy extraordinarily well. I once mentioned to two close friends who have known him as long as I have that I thought he was a sociopath. They had both thought the same thing.
Thanks elbows! 
I’ve read his book gang leader for a day, he studied the black kings in Chicago and you can’t extrapolate that to every street gang in America during every time period. In the book ‘monster’ by Kody scott (member of the 83rd street gang in LA in the late 70s and 80s) he talks about street dealers making that kind of money although the street dealers he knew seemed to cook their own crack from cocaine they bought wholesale in kilos. The dealers Sudhir talks about seemed to be those who get their rocks pre-made from higher level drug dealers. I think a $20 rock has/had 0.1g of cocaine in it, so you could get 70,000 rocks out of a kilo (assuming 70% purity cocaine bought by the kilo).
Kody Scott’s best friend and fellow gang member is serving a life sentence for murder for a killing over some fake cocaine, he paid 14k a kilo for coke that turned out to be fake. But if you are paying 14k a kilo, and getting 70,000 rocks for $20 each that is 1.4 million gross. Even if you are selling rocks for $10, that is still 700k in gross income from a kilo that may run you 15-50k.
Plus Sudhir started his studies in 1989, the crack boom was more of an early 80s issue. Point being you can’t take Sudhir’s experience with the black kings in Chicago and assume all street dealers operate under the same structure. The Black kings had a very corporate structure in their crack dealership.
The real world is far more complicated than that. I tend to believe people who believe in equality of outcomes, irrelevant of circumstances, would probably be on the evil side had they been born in a bad environment. Derision of/contempt for empathy is arguably the core of evil.
There is a difference between letting someone do something evil, and attempting to reform those who want reform, or prevent the evil acts that can be prevented, or using treatment over punishment when effective.
So you’re trying to say that a typical street dealer in the 80’s made 700k a year? Really?
You’re right that you can’t extrapolate from one gang in Chicago. But you can’t take a gang members word for it in his autobiography either. At least Sudhir’s data came from a ledger.
You cannot really get in the head of someone who is genuinely mentally ill. What is clearly evil to a normal person could seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to someone who is hallucinating, or otherwise disengaged from reality.
One of my aunts attacked a nurse.
She was in hospital, suffering from schizophrenia, and seriously believed that the woman trying to tranquilise her was actually trying to kill her, and fought her off, injuring the nurse. In her mind, it made perfect sense- in her head, it was self defence so she was in the right.
By the way, my aunt responded to treatment, but sadly killed herself a few weeks later.
I may deplore the fact that she attacked an innocent health worker, but I can’t help but sympathise with her.
Some people never respond to treatment, or never get treatment, and things horrific to any normal person could make as much sense in their heads as that did to my aunt. Mental illness can make some people do evil things, without being evil people. They certainly should not be allowed to damage others, but they can equally certainly deserve empathy.
Where did I say that, I said that my math shows a potential 700k profit if you buy a kilo of coke for 20-30k and turn it into 70,000 rocks.
Of course, you’d assume supply and demand would drive down the price, that is a massive mark up. The wholesale cost of a rock would be about $0.40.
Again, the book you reference was based on a highly structured, saturated drug market (the early 90s). I am referencing street gangs where the street dealers bought the coke wholesale themselves, made the crack and sold it in a new market (the early 80s). The income wouldn’t be the same for the two.
I believe I stated that a bit wrong and for that I apologize. I believe strongly in empathy and compassion. I don’t believe in using that to excuse evil acts or worse, as an excuse to attack and harshly judge people who condemn evil.
lol
I assume you feel the same way about those who sell alcohol?
You know only about double the amount of people who use HEROIN recreationally get addicted to those who use alcohol, right?
Yes. A psychopathic spree killer. He will never be released from prison.
Heroin makes you addicted to people who drink alcohol
Let that be a warning kiddies.
That would vary with location. There’s places where machetes are as ubiquitous as table knives; in Costa Rica they’re a basic tool.
Yeah, my mistake, I jumped to conclusions too. I just see a lot of grey areas. Dangerous people need to be segregated so they can’t harm others irrelevant of their motives (illness, evil, etc), I don’t think anyone is disagreeing with that. I think the disagreement is more about retribution vs rehabilitation and how much each should play.