No way, "high-end marijuana". Crazy. Extremely dangerous!
In all seriousness... does anyone think the present-day prohibition racket isn't just as corrupt as what was going on in the 1920s? Drug Enforcement Agency... who do you think they're enforcing for?
It's almost impossible that it wouldn't be that corrupt. There is just too much freaking money involved, the stakes too high, for massive numbers of people to not be on the take.
Prohibition is basically a price-fixing scheme, and makes illegal drugs obscenely profitable. Years ago I knew a friend who got into it, and he made over $20,000 in one weekend by simply driving a car across the border once. (He ended up getting in trouble unfortunately, though he's much better now and no longer involved.)
If a person is willing to put up with the risk, there are few more profitable businesses.
I've heard recent figures around $400 billion per year globally. So you've probably got cartels that were they legitimate businesses would be on the Fortune 500.
With profits like that, large-scale operations have a lot of money to throw around to bribe cops, judges, government officials, etc. So as a result, the large cartels end up with a privileged position. Smaller operations that cannot afford to have such people on their payroll get targeted preferentially.
Look into the history of bootlegging in Chicago in the 20s. It's the same kind of thing.
The horrible thing about prohibition is that it's such a potent force for institutional corruption. The naiveté of the soccer moms that support it is disgusting. They all need to be beaten with a reality stick.
Look at Mexico. They might not run the country yet, but they're giving it a go for sure.
And how exactly does a corrupt judge work given the appellate process?
http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/police_corruption_repor...
and
http://articles.cnn.com/2006-11-02/justice/sheriff.indictmen...
and
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/11/1107.html
It's not hard to see the source of the temptation...
Seriously? I can think of a handful of cases, let alone methods, without even resorting to Google.
A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament.
The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.
The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects."
It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.
It also said the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) logbook registered that the plane had traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo.
It said the FAA registered its last owner as Clyde O'Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida. Extraordinary rendition has been harshly criticized since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
link - http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQE...
Why would they want to? It is easier just to pay to get politicians elected and then own them for life. See Mexico for an example.
Its the same reason Apple does not want to own music labels. A lot of work with poor returns.
What about the theory that these countries actually believed that banning these substances could increase the health of the country? For example, the christian women and Henry Ford were against alcohol and actually weren't corrupt bootleggers trying to make money by selling moonshine.
I'm not saying corruption isn't there, of course there's corruption - police are people too. There is corruption. It doesn't make everyone corrupt and it doesn't mean the _reason_ drugs are illegal is because of corruption. That's silly.
As api points out, there are also drug rackets and cartels that sell the nominally illegal stuff. Those guys can bend cops to eliminate their competition as well.
Having seen people who smoke a lot of marijuana and people who drink a lot of alcohol, I can say with absolute certainty that alcohol is a far more dangerous drug. Ever known a hard-core alcoholic? That stuff eats your soul. It's at least on par with heroin.
Look at the Stanley cup riots last year - can you imagine the carnage if they had all been out of their skulls on BC-bud rather than beer.
Then I stopped watching TV commercials.
The majority of the countries on this planet have similar drug policies to the US. They aren't all corrupt and in many countries the policies are quite effective. So to rant on like a crazy person about corruption and conspiracies just makes you sound unstable. There are many practical areas that the US can focus on like better border controls rather than opening up the can of worms that is legalising all drugs.
I only know of Singapore, where drugs carry a death penalty, and that's far less ethical than any kind of drug trafficking.
Also: I find it kind of amazing that there are still people naive enough to call me a paranoid conspiracy nut or "unstable" for suggesting that... gasp... there might be corruption in the world.
A paranoid conspiracy nut is someone who thinks that the world's leaders are shape shifting reptiles or that everything is run by a secret cabal linked to some kind of ancient secret society. I'm just suggesting that a large-scale illegal business with profits in the hundreds of billions and cash flow probably near $1 trillion might have an interest in putting a few people on the payroll.
Corruption was not the reason drugs became illegal and it's not the reason drugs are still illegal.