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Comment by Tenoke | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but think that the series of extremely big operations by a fair amount of countries, interpol and resources can't be worth catching 230kg of drugs (which includes a lot of weed) spread over 150 sesperate vendors. The crypto $ amount is also misleading as crypto has 10+x'd quite quickly.

I wish they'd go after the operations that actually hurt people. Hell, you can walk in plenty of places in Berlin (and it's often German authorities in the lead) and spot much worse dealers than those selling online.

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> you can walk in plenty of places in Berlin (and it's often German authorities in the lead) and spot much worse dealers than those selling online

People who sell online are very different from those who sell in-person. Most come from socio-economic backgrounds where all kinds of anti-social behaviour is normalized. They are also not "professional" so to speak, and do not know the words Op and Sec. Someone who's selling acid on the net will not rob you, since they're not dumb enough to. So it's an apples to oranges comparison in my opinion.

Regardless, I do wish they would cut it out with the useless arrests. Good job, you seized a car-full of drugs and some dudes who mail drugs, do they think the global drug market has felt real hit? That unlike at every point in human history in which something was prohibited, the black market will just stop? That this actually puts a dent into the bottom-line of criminals? Even if it did, momentary weakness by one criminal group is an immediate invitation for another to expand.

This is a dangerous normalization. Realize that I am generally for decriminalization. But the myth that dark web vendors are "violence/crime free drugs" is exactly that, a myth.

There are certainly drugs which have less (but not none) of a violent pipeline (for example, lab-synthesized drugs), but just because you buy your cocaine from someone on Tor doesn't mean that there's not abuse, corruption, crime, violence and death associated with its sourcing and growth.

I think comments like this, or beliefs like this are a sort of feel-good mythology. Or "changing the world", or something. Superiority (though to be clear, I'm not ascribing any one of these to your specific comment). But it is a lot less grounded in reality than proponents would like to think.

You're assuming that's what I meant, but no, not at all. One does not make cocaine without violence through some degree. As you noted, somebody making acid is probably not killing anyone. But association with a criminal gang, even just through trade, definitely morally implicates them more than street dealers.

That said, they will not break my door down to try and rob me. Street dealers have done that in the past. This is a selfish perspective sure, but street dealers are generally a much bigger danger to me than being murdered by Colombian drug lords. This is what I meant by "apples to oranges".. organized criminals are much worse morally (the law agrees here), but pretty unlikely to actually do anything to you, since they are organized and do not wish to attract attention.

Is there anything stopping us from having conflict-free organic fair-trade cocaine other than government actions and prohibitions making that impossible?

If Colombia/Bolivia/Peru could collect an export tax or royalty on it before loading into the hold of a DHL cargo jet, I think their cartels would get disappeared overnight.

Right, absolutely. Decriminalization or outright legalization has some benefits in this world.

Biggest issue I see there is that you still have to deal with corruption or infiltration by those elements too, who want their pound of flesh (and not to mention, in some of those countries, the cartels have the willingness, and the equipment and ability, to go to war with the police/military to keep their operation going).

The police and military will always be poorly resourced for battles that are a cost centre instead of a revenue-generator/protector.

Unlike marijuana, these countries have an absolute advantage in that cocaine doesn’t grow like a weed anywhere you want. And it’s low yield, so greenhouses are poor competition.

> Good job, you seized a car-full of drugs and some dudes who mail drugs, do they think the global drug market has felt real hit?

There's a great interview on YouTube with a former drug enforcement officer, whose department spent 7 months to bust a large drug ring. He said it took two hours before other dealers had moved in.

I believe I know what you're referring to but can't find the link anymore now.

The main takeaway for me was that by busting a major drug ring, you are only helping the other major players b removing competition. They will fight each other (brutally!) to take over what was left behind by the now defunct ring, and instead of two or more large drug rings, you now have one massive monopolistic drug ring, and everyone is worse off.

I'm not sure what a solution here is. The more you fight organised crime, the more they fight back, and the situation escalates and becomes more violent to everyone involved. Perhaps decriminalisation along with better support infrastructure for victims and addicts could help?

Well, some black markets have been successfully disrupted.

It’s hard to get relatively-safe but difficult-to-smuggle opium and heroin due to supply disruption, so now the market has almost entirely shifted to fentanyl which is easy to produce and ultra potent (therefore easy to smuggle).

Yay?

It is not relatively hard. It is super easy, barely an inconvenience. And fentanyl is old and busted, Iso is the new hotness

For testing strips you can just go to dancesafe.org and get a kit

Sidenote: dancesafe and erowid were heavily funded by one of the earliest Microsoft employees

My question is why we keep doing the same thing while expecting something to improve.

It's not like law enforcement hadn't heard of criticism against the drug wars before.

> My question is why we keep doing the same thing while expecting something to improve.

An existential dilemma: these institutions need to justify their budgets and positions. So, headlines are the currency they trade in and this 'high value' bust results in good PR for their agencies/departments, but still imparts low value to Society over all.

It's quite clear their are bigger fish to fry if the goal was to reign in on illicit dealings, be it from the Panama papers to the Paradise papers it's clear that illicit trafficking of funds is done not with Cryptocurrency on the DNM, but rather through traditional institutional banks.

But, the selective application of the Law and a tiered justice system ensures that laundering money for cartels is met soley with a fine, whereas charges like hosting a website (SR1/ Ross Ulbricht) can get you 2 life sentences.

> spot much worse dealers than those selling online

It's possible to combat both online and offline drug trafficking. What do you think will happen when word spreads that darknet trading is way safer than offline?

More people would sell and buy online which will reduce the number of problematic irl interactions.

>What do you think will happen when word spreads that darknet trading is way safer than offline?

Isn't that more or less already common knowledge?

Drugs are a great way to raise cash for other criminal enterprise, the same way you have to mine ore early on in Red Alert. Maybe they'd argue that they're cutting at the root here?

Don't people do weapons and human trafficking on the markets? I think it would be cool if there was more progress made on that front.

Human trafficking? No. Weapons - I guess some but they got 45 weapons total from a big operation and over 150 places busted and who knows how many of those were even for sale. At any rate, some of the previous markets busted (not sure about this one) didn't even have a weapons section let alone a human trafficking section. It's clear from the releases, funding sources, targets etc. that weapons are a bonus not a main target.

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