U of I Drug Bust

[Balta1701]

They may have been investigating Pablo Escobar on a tip that he was running kilos of cocaine out of Bromley Hall, but all they ended up with after a year and gosh knows how much $$$$, was two dozen college kids and 180 grams of pot. If you can't label Operation Thunder Strike a piddling drizzle after that, when and how does law enforcement ever get held accountable for how they spend our tax (and in this case tuition) dollars? Do they get a total pass based on noble intentions?

This is of course part of the problem that entities like the police (another example is schoolteachers) always have to deal with in cries for accountability. Let's assume that the whole thing was a well-intentioned mistake. Naturally, there's calls for accountability. But if we assume they thought they had something a lot bigger...what do they do the next time someone tells them about a major drug smuggling ring? Do they investigate it fully or do they back off completely? Maybe that one is actually Pablo Escobar.

 

Police run in to this all the time when they pull their weapon and fire. There's always an investigation, if someone makes a mistake and a person dies there's always going to be calls for accountability, but you also don't want the police so scared to do their job that they get hurt or they're rendered ineffective by the fear of prosecution later.

 

I don't have a solution in this case and haven't given it enough thought to form an opinion...just wanted to throw it out there.

[lostfan]

Since we're on the subject, Time did a really good article last week about the effects on decriminalization of all drugs in Portugal. Not too long of a read, well worth your time (no pun intended).

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,...1893946,00.html

[NorthSideSox72]

IMO, there is a huge difference between legalizing marijuana, and legalizing hard drugs like coke and meth. This is for at least two reasons:

 

1. Cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. are much, much more addictive than mary jane could dream of being. This lures people into unhealthy lifestyles, and we all pay the bill.

 

2. Marijuana doesn't create the public safety issue the other drugs do. Simply put, does a guy stoned on a joint scare you? Of course not. Does a guy up on an 8 ball scare you? It probably does, and should. A person on hard drugs is a danger to others. A pot head really isn't.

 

 

[WHarris1]

f***ing laughable that thats all they came up with in these busts, hahaha

[StrangeSox]

IMO, there is a huge difference between legalizing marijuana, and legalizing hard drugs like coke and meth. This is for at least two reasons:

 

1. Cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. are much, much more addictive than mary jane could dream of being. This lures people into unhealthy lifestyles, and we all pay the bill.

 

2. Marijuana doesn't create the public safety issue the other drugs do. Simply put, does a guy stoned on a joint scare you? Of course not. Does a guy up on an 8 ball scare you? It probably does, and should. A person on hard drugs is a danger to others. A pot head really isn't.

 

That's why I'm in favor of legalizing pot and decriminalizing everything else.

[Balta1701]

IMO, there is a huge difference between legalizing marijuana, and legalizing hard drugs like coke and meth. This is for at least two reasons:

 

1. Cocaine, heroin, meth, etc. are much, much more addictive than mary jane could dream of being. This lures people into unhealthy lifestyles, and we all pay the bill.

 

2. Marijuana doesn't create the public safety issue the other drugs do. Simply put, does a guy stoned on a joint scare you? Of course not. Does a guy up on an 8 ball scare you? It probably does, and should. A person on hard drugs is a danger to others. A pot head really isn't.

The question in reply is...how much of the additional danger associated with a person on harder drugs is related to the fact that those drugs are illegal? They're more addictive and we pay the bill...but which bill is higher...the bill associated with the illegal trade of those drugs + the cost to society of locking away those people + all the other costs of keeping them illegal, or the costs to society of providing treatment along with the negative costs of people using the things in the case of widespread legalization?

 

Really have no idea which is the case, but that's the counterpoint there...people are doing the things anyway, and if we're worried about unhealthy lifestyles, having them do the things illegally, where it can feed things like the Afghan war, the Mexican wars, gang revenue, etc., may make society a lot worse.

[NorthSideSox72]

The question in reply is...how much of the additional danger associated with a person on harder drugs is related to the fact that those drugs are illegal? They're more addictive and we pay the bill...but which bill is higher...the bill associated with the illegal trade of those drugs + the cost to society of locking away those people + all the other costs of keeping them illegal, or the costs to society of providing treatment along with the negative costs of people using the things in the case of widespread legalization?

 

Really have no idea which is the case, but that's the counterpoint there...people are doing the things anyway, and if we're worried about unhealthy lifestyles, having them do the things illegally, where it can feed things like the Afghan war, the Mexican wars, gang revenue, etc., may make society a lot worse.

How dangerous some dude kicked up on goofballs is has zero to do with the fact that it is illegal. He's a danger to others.

 

[BigSqwert]

How dangerous some dude kicked up on goofballs is has zero to do with the fact that it is illegal. He's a danger to others.

He's a danger whether we call it legal or illegal. He's still kicked up on goofballs either way.

[NorthSideSox72]

He's a danger whether we call it legal or illegal. He's still kicked up on goofballs either way.

That's my point. That's why they should remain illegal, and laws should be enforced, to keep those guys off the street to the extent possible. Heck, use some of the marijuana savings to go after the hard stuff.

 

[Balta1701]

He's a danger whether we call it legal or illegal. He's still kicked up on goofballs either way.

Here's my point...let's assume for a moment that the number of people high on goofballs goes up by 50% if it's made legal.

 

At the same time though...the fact that it is suddenly legal means that the stuff can be grown, shipped, sold legally. And hell, taxed. Suddenly the Taliban loses their main source of funding. Suddenly the L.A. gangs and the Mexican cartels are broken because the money flowing through them is rapidly shifted to legal means of production. The Mexican government suddenly is more stable and the gangs are battered and gone. Maybe crime on the street drops. The number of people incarcerated drops dramatically, while maybe more people go in to treatment, but a ton of money is saved.

 

Which one does more damage to society? There are a ton of indirect costs either way. I don't know the answer...I'm just trying to say that there are a lot of negatives not being taken in to account if you focus solely on the number of addicts.

[BigSqwert]

That's my point. That's why they should remain illegal, and laws should be enforced, to keep those guys off the street to the extent possible. Heck, use some of the marijuana savings to go after the hard stuff.

I'm a big proponent of the harm principle. Someone doing coke or heroin isn't going to hurt me.

[StrangeSox]

Here's my point...let's assume for a moment that the number of people high on goofballs goes up by 50% if it's made legal.

 

At the same time though...the fact that it is suddenly legal means that the stuff can be grown, shipped, sold legally. And hell, taxed. Suddenly the Taliban loses their main source of funding. Suddenly the L.A. gangs and the Mexican cartels are broken because the money flowing through them is rapidly shifted to legal means of production. The Mexican government suddenly is more stable and the gangs are battered and gone. Maybe crime on the street drops. The number of people incarcerated drops dramatically, while maybe more people go in to treatment, but a ton of money is saved.

 

Which one does more damage to society? There are a ton of indirect costs either way. I don't know the answer...I'm just trying to say that there are a lot of negatives not being taken in to account if you focus solely on the number of addicts.

 

The problem is your opening assumption. People don't avoid heroin because its illegal; people avoid heroin because something in their brain says "hey, injecting myself is probably a bad idea." Usage rates do not go up when drugs are decriminalized or made legal. How many people on Soxtalk avoid using coke or meth only because its illegal?

 

So you get all the benefits you listed with negligible costs. We have pretty solid emperical evidence from alcohol prohibition as to what happens--people still use, black markets are created, cartels flourish and violence increases. Repeal prohibition, and society doesn't burn to the ground as many would suggest. These drugs were legal and were widely available at one point, but we didn't have 30% of the country as coke-heads. Most of the backlash against even harder drugs like coke and heroin are based on decades of misinformation.

Edited May 4, 2009 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

The problem is your opening assumption. People don't avoid heroin because its illegal; people avoid heroin because something in their brain says "hey, injecting myself is probably a bad idea." Usage rates do not go up when drugs are decriminalized or made legal. So you get all the benefits you listed with negligible costs.

I tried to do it as a worst case scenario. It's entirely possible some people do avoid harder drugs because of the illegality. In the best case scenario you're right, and there are no negative consequences at all to blanket legalization. But it's a hard sell on that point to me...it's entirely possible that demand could increase once the threat of law enforcement goes away, or once companies exist who are turning a profit based on usage suddenly find that they have the money to encourage people to use the stuff and get hooked.

[lostfan]

The problem is your opening assumption. People don't avoid heroin because its illegal; people avoid heroin because something in their brain says "hey, injecting myself is probably a bad idea." Usage rates do not go up when drugs are decriminalized or made legal. How many people on Soxtalk avoid using coke or meth only because its illegal?

 

So you get all the benefits you listed with negligible costs.

The Time article I posted a few posts back basically says that. Decriminalizing drugs in Portugal has made usage go down, not up.

[Balta1701]

The Time article I posted a few posts back basically says that. Decriminalizing drugs in Portugal has made usage go down, not up.

Different societies handle things differently though. Just because Portugal saw rates go down doesn't mean that in the U.S. case they might not go up...especially if the market develops in certain ways.

[StrangeSox]

I have a hard time distinguishing against the anti-drug propaganda of today and the stuff of the early 20th century:

 

And just for the record, I don't smoke pot , I have never tried anything harder than pot/ alcohol and I have no desire to. I don't have a horse in this race as far as that goes.

[lostfan]

Different societies handle things differently though. Just because Portugal saw rates go down doesn't mean that in the U.S. case they might not go up...especially if the market develops in certain ways.

The article says that too.

[Balta1701]

The article says that too.

Of course it did, they spoke to Glenn Greenwald.

[StrangeSox]

Here's Glenn's paper via The Cato Institute

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080

[Texsox]

They may have been investigating Pablo Escobar on a tip that he was running kilos of cocaine out of Bromley Hall, but all they ended up with after a year and gosh knows how much $$, was two dozen college kids and 180 grams of pot. If you can't label Operation Thunder Strike a piddling drizzle after that, when and how does law enforcement ever get held accountable for how they spend our tax (and in this case tuition) dollars? Do they get a total pass based on noble intentions?

 

 

They are accountable on a wider perspective than one case. They are accountable based on the information they had and what happened.

 

Perhaps, since this is a University funded thing, that the administration wanted to prove that their campus had almost zero illegal drug use. They hoped that this would attract more students to their campus, increase their prestige amongst potential donors, etc. In that case you could call this a success. Maybe the entire thing was made up and the investigation was really just one cop, for 10 minutes every other week, standing on a corner and asking if anyone has drugs.

[clyons]

They are accountable on a wider perspective than one case. They are accountable based on the information they had and what happened.

 

Perhaps, since this is a University funded thing, that the administration wanted to prove that their campus had almost zero illegal drug use. They hoped that this would attract more students to their campus, increase their prestige amongst potential donors, etc. In that case you could call this a success. Maybe the entire thing was made up and the investigation was really just one cop, for 10 minutes every other week, standing on a corner and asking if anyone has drugs.

I understand your point regarding accountability on a larger scale; a lot of unknown things may have to be factored into the equation in order to assess overall effectiveness as a whole. On the face of it, however, looking purely at the limited facts that we know (1 year, 25 arrests, 180 grams) versus what might be hypothetically true, I'm still pretty comfortable labeling "Operation Thunder Strike" a joke based on the after the fact results, which thus will diminish any mythical "effectiveness rating" once its factored in.

 

I feel that if the government spends "a year" looking for something that basically turns out not to be there (drugs, Osama Bin Laden, WMD's, etc.), it should expect to face the music and accept the inevitable criticism of its efforts, even if that criticism is Monday morning quarterbacking in its purest form.

 

This whole thing just looks and smells like a first class f***-up, and if there's a good explanation for it (and assuming airing it wouldn't compromise future investigations), I'm dying to hear it.

[Buehrle>Wood]

They were at my dorm yesterday making a bust.

 

 

Anyways, cops have been nuts this year on the bars. They get raided seemingly every weekend now.

[RockRaines]

Legalizing marijuana in just the state of California would bring around 2 billion dollars in tax money to the government.

[NorthSideSox72]

Legalizing marijuana in just the state of California would bring around 2 billion dollars in tax money to the government.

I happen to agree with legalization, but, this statement is pure conjecture. Since its not legal now, how could you possibly know what taxes would be applied to it? Where did you get the $2B number?

[RockRaines]

I happen to agree with legalization, but, this statement is pure conjecture. Since its not legal now, how could you possibly know what taxes would be applied to it? Where did you get the $2B number?

A documentary on mendocino county in California. I believe it was based on estimation of course. For those people who arent familiar with Mendocino county, it produces alot of the marijuana supply in the US. Marijuana makes up about 2/3 of their local economy and it is estimated at about a Billion dollars a year.

 

 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/28281668/