Sciencemadness Discussion Board - The Chemical Closet part II

The Chemical Closet part II

evil_lurker - 7-5-2008 at 22:15

Hmmm looks like their website is down... wonder if they closed up shop?

MagicJigPipe - 7-5-2008 at 23:17

If so, I sure hope it was because of us!

Pulverulescent - 8-5-2008 at 04:47

'Looks like they're gone, alright!

It could be for several reasons---who kno(3)ws what happened!

They could be answering questions from LE; then again. . . . .

P

Phosphor-ing - 8-5-2008 at 05:08

Sweet. Now OU812 has to worry though. That can of RP he ordered will surely be in their records, if it was real in the first place.

stateofhack - 8-5-2008 at 06:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Phosphor-ing
Sweet. Now OU812 has to worry though. That can of RP he ordered will surely be in their records, if it was real in the first place.

I doubt it was, looked to "well placed" as in the picture, but then you never now he might be a photographer

MagicJigPipe - 8-5-2008 at 07:14

I do think he was affilliated with TCC one way or another.

soxhlet - 8-5-2008 at 07:32

Have a look at Jeff Scheidemantel case in California Supreme Court of Kern County.

There is a motion to quash, which was, within the last week, scheduled for 5/20. Also, there is a motion to traverse the search warrant.

Thechemcloset has been subtly outted in the press. The folks here have managed to establish google search links pointing directly to those behind the operation.

The Bakersfield chemistry teacher case is going to raise some legitimate entrapment questions. I’d guess that the website has been shutdown because it is only a couple of weeks from being publicized as a matter of public court records.

The Chemical Closet - Jeff Scheidemantel

ifyoucookitwewillcome - 10-9-2008 at 09:43

ref www.kno3.com and thechemicalcloset.co.uk perhaps those sites were ran by the cops who were targeting subjects manufacturing "the plague of our society." Those of you hobby folks not using chemicals to make meth should support operations like this and should have nothing to fear.

Here is what I found on the chemistry teacher in Bakersfield. Read for yourself....the charges were not dropped as someone reported. There was no entrapment..nice waste of time on those dicussions....justice was served.

Verdict "GUILTY" of Manufacturing meth in the school chemistry lab. What kind of person, hobbyists or othewise would want their child using meth or learing how to make meth at school. Check out the link youself.

www.clipsyndicate.com/publish/video/672237

FYI, I heard that about 200 other people are headed down the same path.

:cool:

METH COOKS SUCK

Polverone - 10-9-2008 at 10:28

Quote:

Originally posted by ifyoucookitwewillcome
ref www.kno3.com and thechemicalcloset.co.uk perhaps those sites were ran by the cops who were targeting subjects manufacturing "the plague of our society." Those of you hobby folks not using chemicals to make meth should support operations like this and should have nothing to fear.

Does that mean that there will be no warrants and searches if a non-drug-making hobbyist orders red phosphorus, iodine, or other "dual use" materials from sites like kno3.com? How do sting operations distinguish the orders of drug-making customers from those of mere hobbyists?

There is something to fear even if you are, as far as you know, completely law-abiding. Being questioned and searched by police is stressful even if you really don't have anything to hide. The mere existence of stringent controls on commonplace chemical reagents like iodine and phosphorus, and the knowledge that some vendors are actually sting operations, has a chilling effect. Institutional researchers and chemical vendors are burdened with additional paperwork. Some vendors will simply stop selling certain materials rather than deal with the hassle of regulatory compliance. Hobbyists without an institutional affiliation have an even worse time of it, since fewer vendors are willing to deal with individuals and those that remain are more likely to be stings.

Ordering Chemicals

ifyoucookitwewillcome - 10-9-2008 at 11:15

There are legal ways to obtain chemicals. May I suggest you avoid importing regulated chemicals from foreign countries.

Unfortunately, the meth cooks have given the hobby folks a bad rap and have made certain chemicals difficult to obtain. Please blame the tweakers rather than the police.

Start by registering yourself with DEA and then obtain your chems from legit companies within your own country.

Good luck!

"The children are the true victims."

Sandmeyer - 10-9-2008 at 11:31

Quote:

Originally posted by ifyoucookitwewillcome
Start by registering yourself with DEA and then obtain your chems from legit companies within your own country.

Hahaha, a good one...

Sauron - 10-9-2008 at 11:40

However that's a non-starter. DEA does not license amateur chemists. They license chemists who have a legitimate need to work with controlled substances. The requirements for such people to be licensed are rather onerous and include secure storage capabilities similar to what an MD needs to store narcotics. If someone who does not wish to work with controlled substances approaches DEA they will be turned away.

There is a gray area having to do not with controlled substances per se but with List 1 and List two chemicals that are not controlled substances. These require DEA notification above certain thresholds. But, you see, many commercial vendors simply will not sell (in USA) to a private individual, at all. They will only sell to government entities, institutional labs, academia and corporations. This is not a new thing but it is getting worse instead of better.

All this collateral damage to innocent hobbyists is, I agree, the fault of the drug cooks, but it certainly does not endear law enforcement to the affected, and guiltless, public, or make your job any easier, does it? Besides, meth can be cooked by a multitude of methods that do not involve red phosphorus at all.

For sandmeyer's edification this poster is only talking about the US wghen he refers to "your country" - he mistakenly thinks he is addressing an American-only audience. DEA does not register or license labs outside of USA where it has no jurisdiction. He was not addressing non-US members IMO.

[Edited on 11-9-2008 by Sauron]

Polverone - 10-9-2008 at 12:29

Quote:

Originally posted by ifyoucookitwewillcome
Unfortunately, the meth cooks have given the hobby folks a bad rap and have made certain chemicals difficult to obtain. Please blame the tweakers rather than the police.

How about I blame both? Stinking, burning, and exploding drug labs have given people a bad impression of hobby chemistry labs. The approaches adopted by legislators and police to combat drug labs have made it much more difficult to properly stock a hobby chemistry lab, even if it is odorless, neatly organized, and free of controlled substances and uncontrolled fires.

There are dozens of routes to meth, most of them don't require phosphorus or iodine, and it appears that an increasing share of American meth is imported from abroad where DEA regs don't control chemicals anyway. So from my POV cracking down on phosphorus and iodine is like most measures in the drug war. It brings a temporary decrease in production and spike in prices, then new producers are lured in by the higher prices. The downward trends in drug production that come with new controls aren't maintained over the long term, but the inconvenience to law abiding users lasts forever.

[Edited on 9-10-2008 by Polverone]

Sauron - 10-9-2008 at 20:18

If by law enforcement you mean only the police then that is a little unfair. The police do not make the laws they enforce. Legislators, invariably politicians, make those laws at local, state and federal level. The police are stuck with those laws. Rarely do they even get to influence the legislative process.

Clearly the politicians are floundering around for some means to manage the unmanageable. They have failed, and society at large pays the price (in tangible and less tangible ways.)

To our new member in Phoenix I would say: clearly the meth ptoblem in your city and country is directly related to the large numbers of undocumented aliens there who by observation come from the unemployable uneducated lowest classes of their own society and cross the highly porous US border in search of el Dorado. Some of them are happy to cook meth to get rich quick. The same politicians who write the draconian laws you try to enforce, are also floundering about the failure of the federal government to protect our national boundary, and there is a great deal of hypocrisy over the issue. We have 50,000 illegals convicted of serious crimes in federal prisons and Mexico refuses to take them back. They cost the US about $35,000 each per annum to incarcerate. That's a few billions annually. But I bet in Phoenix you are not allowed to even ask a suspect whether or not he has a green card. I know in California a cop can be dismissed for doing so in some jurisdictions such as SF.

My friends south of the border assure me that the vast majority of the wonderful people of Mexico, who are educated and have jobs, have not the slightest desire to wade the Rio Bravo.

Is this or is this not a major component of your problem in Arizona? If so then interdicting illegals may be more to the point than interdicting chemicals.

Polverone - 10-9-2008 at 21:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
If by law enforcement you mean only the police then that is a little unfair. The police do not make the laws they enforce. Legislators, invariably politicians, make those laws at local, state and federal level. The police are stuck with those laws. Rarely do they even get to influence the legislative process.

Clearly the politicians are floundering around for some means to manage the unmanageable. They have failed, and society at large pays the price (in tangible and less tangible ways.)

The legislators may dictate strategy but law enforcement has some say in tactics. It is unlikely that a legislature has ever specifically directed the police to set up sting operations that are as attractive to hobbyists as to drug cooks, pursue drug dealers with military equipment and no-knock raids, or keep officers out of uniform when testifying for the defense but in uniform when testifying for the prosecution. Law enforcement does have a choice about just how aggressive and even-handed to act in pursuit of justice.

DerAlte - 10-9-2008 at 21:48

@ Sauron

Quote:

If so then interdicting illegals may be more to the point than interdicting chemicals.

The success of the government of the US in supressing illegal immigration (12,000,000 and rising) is not exactly impressive. Neither is the supression of illegal drugs. Nor is the control over dangerous (and ineffective) legal drugs by the FDA. Nor is the oversight of financial organizations and the protection of the currency.

If you have laws, enforce them. If the laws are unjust, change them.

PC = Politically Correct = Positively Cretinous

I find today's world ridiculous. Freedom? Where? Well, here in the US we have a little bit left, but it's seems to be becoming empty rhetoric and vanishing fast.. We are offered on one side Mc Cain and his pin-up, who has been mayor of a village and governor of a state whose population is about 2/3 of the metropolitan area I live in. He's as old as I am. So the chances this neophyte gains office as president is relatively high. Or the far left liberal on the other side, equally low on credentials, even if he does happen to be highly intelligent, a rarity in politicians..

So, Sauron, how's the climate in Thailand? I am beginning to see why you are there...

Regards, Der Alte

Sauron - 10-9-2008 at 22:02

Like it or not sting ops are often very efficient and cost effective, and as long as they are, they are likely to continue.

I doubt that you would contest the fact that drug criminals are often heavily armed and violent, sometimes more highly armed than the police. AK47s cross the border northbound too. The use of SWAT type tactics and no-knock raids (with valid search warrants) help keep officer fatalities down and minimize the opportunity for perpetrators to destroy evidence and/or arm themselves for a killing frenzy.

It is lamentable that since the 1970s this situation has prevailed and sometimes innocent people are discomfitted. But the statistics on drug related violence remain and so do the long lists of law enforcement personnel who have died in the course of carrying out their sworn duties against armed, violent professional drug gangs. You would prefer they taser everyone while the bad guys hose the cops down with an Uzi?

In/out of uniform while testifying, what is this, the American Trial Lawyers Association forum now? This probably has to do with departmental policy and/or the prerogatives of the prosecutors rather than the individual officers.

You and I are on the same side in this, but I think you are overstating our case.

Stings will be around as long as they keep working. Stings will work till both cooks and hobbyists realize that something that sounds too good to be true probably isn't.

It is hard to argue with tactics that are designed to keep police officers from being murdered by felons. Do you want to blame the drug gans for being murderous animals or blame the police (again) for doing their best to stay alive while doing their jobs?

DerAlte, here in Thailand they just shoot meth cooks in the head rather unceremoniously. It may not be any more effective than the US methods but it saves on incarceration costs and really cuts down on recidivism.

[Edited on 11-9-2008 by Sauron]

Polverone - 10-9-2008 at 23:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
I doubt that you would contest the fact that drug criminals are often heavily armed and violent, sometimes more highly armed than the police. AK47s cross the border northbound too. The use of SWAT type tactics and no-knock raids (with valid search warrants) help keep officer fatalities down and minimize the opportunity for perpetrators to destroy evidence and/or arm themselves for a killing frenzy.

It is lamentable that since the 1970s this situation has prevailed and sometimes innocent people are discomfitted. But the statistics on drug related violence remain and so do the long lists of law enforcement personnel who have died in the course of carrying out their sworn duties against armed, violent professional drug gangs. You would prefer they taser everyone while the bad guys hose the cops down with an Uzi?

I haven't seen evidence to indicate that gangs or typical drug dealers are better armed or quicker to violence now than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Yet high-risk paramilitary tactics are being used increasingly even in cases where there's no reason to believe that suspects will come out with blazing Uzis if police knock. This seems to be due to increased recruitment of ex-military into police forces and increased funding available for SWAT equipment. Start handing out hammers and lots of things start looking like nails.

The downside is that police don't always get the right address or raid locations where only gun toting gang members live. More extreme tactics place civilians who happen to be badly located at more risk. I don't think police should have to meet lethal force with mere tasers but neither do I think they should escalate preemptively unless there is no safe alternative. I don't want police or suspects placed at more risk than necessary in the pursuit of justice. Tossing flashbangs into a house and breaking through the door with guns drawn is, IMO, too extreme an approach to the problem of preventing drug evidence from being flushed.

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 03:56

Clearly then, you do not have any experience in police operations over the last 40 years in New Orleans, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, Miami, etc etc. I never said the drug dealer/drug gangs were more violent than 10-20 years ago. Because 20-40 years ago they were ALREADY extremely violent and heavily armed, often with illegal unregistered automatic weapons, and the SWAT approach grew out of that, not in recent years. Likewise the police have always recruited heavily from ex-military and the Vietnam veterans were the incoming generation of police in the 60s and 70s. Before that it was Korean War veterans.

I have friends in the DEA and the police departments of most of the cities I just listed plus the former police columnist for the Washington TIMES who used to ride with the DC police to obtain material for his column.

Maybe in the Pacific Northwest they have kinder, gentler drug dealers?

Everywhere else they have the Mexican Mafia, various outlaw motorcycle gangs, the Columbians, the Haitians, the Mariel boatlift Cubans, the Jamaican posses, and the rising Salvadoran and Honduran gangs, battling each other for turf and drug profits and happy to kill police.

I'm afraid Officer Friendly is dead. The drug dealers killed him. You can mourn him or not but you really can't resurrect him.

vulture - 11-9-2008 at 11:48

Quote:

Likewise the police have always recruited heavily from ex-military and the Vietnam veterans were the incoming generation of police in the 60s and 70s. Before that it was Korean War veterans.

SWAT is supposed to be a life saving organization. How does that square with recruiting people who are trained to kill? It's easy to turn a police officer into a soldier, but the other way around is bound to create problems.

Erring on the safe side with the use of paramilitary tactis is rather unsafe in this case. Entering a meth lab by blowing out the door and using flashbangs seems like a good recipe for disaster. Flammable vapors anyone?

Blaming everything on immigrants is ignorant and does not solve anything. Drug labs, dealers and users won't be gone when the border is hermetically sealed. It's amazing how both anti socialistic rhetoric and installment of DDR like procedures coexist in the US at the time. Those who ignore history...

[Edited on 11-9-2008 by vulture]

[Edited on 11-9-2008 by vulture]

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 12:12

Who told you SWAT is supposed to be about saving lives? Some police department public relations pamphlet? I was around when SWAT first came into exitsance, and it was oriented toward counter-sniping. That is, killing snipers by using snipers. I was involved in the design and development and sales of the special rifles for this purpose just as I was for the military and I worked with LAPD SAW and many of the large urban departments.

Of course SWAT saves lives, by killing the killers.

Later SWAT got perverted into hostage negotiation and all that but that is not how it got started. And hostage negotion is always backed up by deadly force surgically applied. Cf. the FBI's so called Hostage Rescue Team, you know, the guys who gave us Waco and Ruby Ridge? Some of those snipers were old pals of mine.

Now when I think about those old friends, I hear the lines from an old Irish rebel song:

"They burner their way through Munster, and put Leinster on the rack,
In Connaught and in Ulster marched the men in brown and black,
They shot down wives and children in their own heroic way,
and the black & tans like lightning ran from the rifles of the IRA"

Sometimes you need to take lives in order to save them.

Remember "We burned the village in order to save it." ??

Life's little ironies.

By the way, vulture, we have members who live in southern Arizona, and they can tell you firsthand who is doing the meth cooking in their part of the US. They have told me, and I have told you, and you call that "blaming everything on immigrants" and "ignorant". Hey quicksilver, vulture says you are ignorant!

Vulture, who do you reckon knows more about what is happening in the US? You, or the people on the scene? Now ask yourself who is ignorant. Take your political correctness and put it someplace else. It is inappropriate, and it is simply wrong.

[Edited on 12-9-2008 by Sauron]

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 12:51

Forgive the double post but the previous one was getting too long to follow logically.

SWAT grew out of the civil unrest in the US during the 1960s, particularly the racial rioting in 1968, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Republic of New Africa, etc etc. The Mark Essex - Howard Johnson's sniper incident in New Orleans, my hometown, was a good example. I lived through all that, and I was already an adult and a deputy sheriff. So the police departments developed SWAT teams to respond, because regular cops were not trained for it and often got killed.

All police forces are paramilitary by nature, they are uniformed, have military style ranks, and are armed. So don't kid yourself.

The situation in narcotics enforcement developed similarly. During the same period and from then to the present, the narcotics traffickers began to acquire more and more firepower, and to use it, on each other in turf wars and on the police. Drug squads responded by using their own beefed up firepower, along with body armor and sometimes armored vehicles. Sound like a war zone? It was and still is. Hence the War on Drugs.

As to blaming immigrants:

Go to any large American prison and you will find the inmates are mostly black and hispanic and depending on the part of the country you will find among the blacks, immigrnt Jamaican blacks, Haitian blacks, etc all in for violent drug offences. And Hispanics, including Mexicans, Colombians, Salvadorans, Hondurans. Cubans who were prison inmates in Cuba and dumped into Florida by Castro in the Mariel boatlift.

Now you can conclude that these are professional criminals and narcotics traffickers who don't care how many people they have to kill, or you can remain mired in myopic political correctness and conclude that US courts are racially biased.

By the way I have a lot of Dutch friends and they tend to blame the South Moluccans and the Surinamese for a lot of your country's woes.

Now, I know nothing about Holland so I shut up.

So what the hell do you think you know about the USA?

Have you ever lived there?

Have you ever worn a badge and a gun there?

No?

Well, you are still entitled to your opinion even if it isn't worth very much.

chloric1 - 11-9-2008 at 13:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Polverone

There are dozens of routes to meth, most of them don't require phosphorus or iodine, and it appears that an increasing share of American meth is imported from abroad where DEA regs don't control chemicals anyway. So from my POV cracking down on phosphorus and iodine is like most measures in the drug war. It brings a temporary decrease in production and spike in prices, then new producers are lured in by the higher prices. The downward trends in drug production that come with new controls aren't maintained over the long term, but the inconvenience to law abiding users lasts forever.

[Edited on 9-10-2008 by Polverone]

IMHO this cycle Polverone touches on is actaully a genius idea. Regulate chemicals in the USA which pressures international smuggling hopingn for higher profit margins, in turn clalling for more legislation. Ths war on drugs as well as the war on terror is perpetual. These are vehicles to usher in a fascist police state. Have you been seeing more jobs and college coares geared towards Forensic science in the last couple years? I "arrest" my case. (pun intended

)

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 14:08

You should get together with JohnWW and swap Trotskyite perspectives on world events. Sing The International and wax nostalgic for the Comintern. Sic transit gloria marxi.

chloric1 - 11-9-2008 at 14:20

Conspiracy theories aside, I just point to what I observe. I observe dwindling civil liberties coupled with a rapid expansion of forensicsand law enforcement in general. Sauron, what else would be a reasonable explaination?

Polverone - 11-9-2008 at 15:23

Mind that I am not in any way defending the erosions of civil liberties that have taken place in the last 7 years, but I actually think it helps to keep some historical perspective that goes beyond a decade or so. The US has been much closer to a totalitarian state at some points in the past than it is now. Violent measures were taken under both Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln to keep the draft working during unpopular wars. Vietnam was worse too in that regard and it's less than two generations removed from the present. Things have been better and they have been worse, but they've never been all that much better.

That doesn't mean that I am satisfied with or complacent about the present, but the past wasn't so golden either. If you want a better place to live you won't find it in a time machine.

chloric1 - 11-9-2008 at 16:10

Yes Polverone I see where you are coming from. I do recall hearing about during WWII that having strategic chemicals like potassium chlorate etc. hurt the war effort and they where restricted and many things needed be rationed aside from chemicals. What makes Iraq unique is that they have not done the draft this time despite it is a major war.

I am relatively young (36) and I might not immediatley be able to appreciate what happened one or two generations age but the current situation does seem different though. Unlike Vietnam, WWI Europe, etc the war on drugs, terror, liberties, is not finite but a perpetual cause for stifling oppression and a blank check for preemptive foreign policy. Iraq will fade into history only to be replaced by the next 'terrorist" state,(Iran?)

I will say that that now is the time to cherish because the policies and restrictions are mainly just annoyances for the most part. Alot of us are clever enough to cicumvent these roadblocks. However, I fear for the future as I do not wish anyone has to risk losing life and limb or freedom just based on there hobby of home chemistry.

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 21:02

The late W.F.Buckley Jr., hardly a liberal, was a champion of the decriminalization of drugs, precisely because of the dwindling civil liberties, which apalled him, as well as the absurd economics and the obvious and long term failure to produce positive results.

Sadly no one took Bill Buckley seriously and no one took me seriously when I made the same arguments on this forum last year.

The 40 year war on drugs is a failure, the supply constantly goes up, while the street price just as consistently goes down. The congressional response is to pass more laws, budget more money for cops, and prisons, and strip us of more of out constitutionally guaranteed rights.

It's time to stop and let the drugglies poison themselves as they see fit.

I made concrete proposals as to how to go about this last year and I am sure these threads are still around.

To summarize, all drugs (presently scheduled controlled substances) should be freely available at pharmacies for the asking. This need not be taxpayer subsidized. It should be done by the pharm industry as a pro-bono-publico activity required by law, as part of the cost of doing business. Why?

Because essentially every one of these drugs were introduced by the selfsame Big Pharma corporations.

Heoin from Bayer (as a cold remedy)
Cocaine from a cartel of Merck, Sandoz and a few others - look it up
Amphetamines as anorexics and stimulants by several companies
LSD Sandoz
PCP Parke Davis I think

and so one down the line.

These corporations therefore bear substantial responsibility for the introduction of these substances into society and their subsequent abuse in precisely the same way that British traders led by the East India Company introduced opium to China (as countertrade for tea!) with disastrous consequences including millions of deaths and uncounted addictions and two wars. Read about the founding of Hong Kong sometime.

In return Big Pharma gets permamently immunized, held harmless, quit claimed against all present or future liability.

No taxation on the free drugs.

The black market dries up and blows away. Organized crime looks for something better to do (smuggling Cuban cigars perhaps.) Related corruption of police and judiciary falls to zilch.

All positive outcomes I think.

Drug related crime falls. No one stealing to support their habit. No turf wars. Drug cops have to go do traffic duty. DEA agents have to go kill terrorists. Or do traffic duty. Or join the Park Police and pray someone tries to blow up the Wahington Monument (again). Yes, the snipers who riddles THAT guy were friends of mine too. Old drinking buddies.

No, the churches won't like it and the kneejerk liberals will say we are abandoning the underclasses.

Wake up and smell the P2P, people, We "abandones" those long ago, or they "abandoned" us. Not sure which.

A few caveats:

Anyone who takes the free drugs and tries to sell them is permamently barred from the program and is also jailed.

Anyone who does not get the message and tries to engage in the black market is treated...harshly.

If new drugs are introduced in an attempt to create a new black market, these are simply added to the program.

ALL of this is exempt from FDA oversight.

kclo4 - 11-9-2008 at 21:33

I think drugs should be legalized as well for much the same reasons as Sauron.

People should have the right to hurt themselves with whatever product they want.

The war on drugs could easily be won too, but they are letting their weird moral beliefs get in the way, its really not even a hard problem to figure out, I'm sure they have thought of this:

This is how to eliminate almost all of the drugs I believe:

1. Make it legal to buy, use, and process drugs.
2. Make it illegal to grow, manufacture, sell, or trade drugs.
3. Give a reward for anyone who reports a person who makes, grows, or trades the drugs.

In weeks, or months the entire black market I think would be collapsed. Who would sell drugs? Also, what crackhead wouldn't turn a person selling drugs in for a few thousand dollars? Especially when he isn't going to get in trouble for having them.

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 22:38

You are dreaming. Any proposal that maintains essentially any law enforcement component is useless. Any proposal that involves having to pay for drugs, is useless. If people have to pay for drugs they will have to continue criminal activity to subsidize their habits. No. FREE distribution is the only answer.

My proposal allows 99% or more of anti-drug law enforcement to be redirected to other priorities or disbanded.

Nor do I agree with your proposal 3 which turns people into snitches, rats, informers. No need for that. NO black market can compete with FREE drugs. Using Big Pharms to manufacture these removes the QC issue. The drugs will not be adulterated, contaminated, stepped on, whatever. If people die it will be from the drug and not from the incompetence of the cook or avarice of the dealer. Of course the user will be dead either way but after all isn't that what the self-destructive fools want anyway?

Any approach that does not reliably dismantle both the black market and the law enforcement side, is doomed. Any proposal that charges for the drugs or taxes them, is doomed. FREE means FREE.

I predict an initial upswing in usage followed by a drop from attrition and over time a sharp drop from declining interest. Drugs will drop from fashion. The romance will be gone. If it was ever there.

Maybe all those unemployed narcs can be assigned to PROPERLY policing the borders. Swell the ranks of the Border Patrol by a few thousand percent.

DerAlte - 11-9-2008 at 22:43

Sauron said:

Quote:

It's time to stop and let the drugglies poison themselves as they see fit....To summarize, all drugs (presently scheduled controlled substances) should be freely available at pharmacies for the asking.

Hallelujah! At cost +profit, @ < 1/10 (?) of the street price. Wasn't something like this tried in the UK in the 60s/70s? Why did it not work? Dutch laws are more relaxed than in the US, IIRC. How is the situation there?

Quote:

...in precisely the same way that British traders led by the East India Company introduced opium to China (as countertrade for tea!) with disastrous consequences including millions of deaths and uncounted addictions...

.. which will be the downside. It all depends on whether you believe in personal responsibility or the Nanny State. It also depends upon the k3wl factor of the ignorant (the millions?). Currently legal drugs kill far more people than illegal, in the US.

Prohibition virtually made it essential for all hedonists to break the law - and for some the same is true of the laws today. History has lessons. Remember Reefer Madness? (Laugh). Tell me, how can a weed or plant (Lophophora Williamsoni, eg) be illegal? It does not obey any silly laws made by man, only those of nature. Those laws are the laws that science (= 'knowledge') seeks to find and the ignorant seek to deny.

To deny any substance produced by nature or even producible by man is an abrogation of the freedom of the individual, and as such, against the spirit of the constitution. I believe firmly that the framers would allow every man (or woman) to go to their own personal hell in their own personal handbasket - provided, of course that they do not trample on the right of others, nor harm them in any way (old JC's message).

Bleed away, O bleeding liberal hearts! Bleat away in your pulpit, misguided preacher man (of the not-for-profit variety - the rest are beneath contempt, mere purveyors of commercial Christianity).

Le Chatelier's principle is universal in application. If you apply a constraint to a system, it reacts in such a manner as to oppose that restraint. We need less restraints to reach an equilibrium acceptable to all.

Regards, Der Alte

Sauron - 11-9-2008 at 23:24

The present system is doing nothing to protect any stratum of society from these drugs. And it is costing us a lot, not just economically. Nanny = expensive. Fire Nanny.

The US as a society is not much akin to the UK or Holland. So I do not think those experiments really apply.

Nor can direct estimates of deaths from the Chinese experience be apoplied for the same reason.

It is the indirect effects that concern me much more than the fate of the addicts.

Loss of civil liberties
Burgeoning prison populations 90% for drug related crimes
The demonstrable failure decade after decade after decade to effect anything like success.
Lastly the economic costs, a distant last in this field.

[Edited on 12-9-2008 by Sauron]

Panache - 12-9-2008 at 00:22

Quote:

Originally posted by chloric1
Have you been seeing more jobs and college coares geared towards Forensic science in the last couple years? I "arrest" my case. (pun intended

)

Actually that phenomena has been attributed to the popularity of the CSI and ilk television series. There is a direct correlation, kind of funny though, my god how crap is television.

I assume Sauron you've read 'High Society' a fiction by Ben Elton.

I couldn't agree with your position more Sauron and i have absolutely no hope we will realise anything even remotely like it being considered, i mean ffs they still have abortion as a crime here in australia, i can't bear how stupid my fellow humans are and how incapable they are of separating their emotional experiences with rational decision making.

[Edited on 12-9-2008 by Panache]

Sauron - 12-9-2008 at 00:26

One is forced to wonder what parallel effects ALIAS or 24Hrs had (also crap of course) or for that matter X Files.

Goof thing they never made a TV series out of Ghost Busters.

OMG - 12-9-2008 at 07:24

Sauron, you must have some common sense indicating to you that you are being completely ignorant in your idea about making drugs like meth freely available.

The human mind causes behavior that all leads to one goal. Seek pleasure and avoid pain.

If a drug is created that does exactly that, and it is freely available, and not shunned by society, then that would be disastrous.
If even a small amount (say 25%) of the population gets addicted, do you not think that would have a significant impact on... well... everything about that society??
What reason would people have to NOT do meth?

If 25% of the population is addicted, what percentage of the next generation of teenagers do you think would try meth? I'd guess 90%. How many of those you you think would get addicted?

I'm all for natural selection, but killing off 95% of your society just to make it more "immune" to drugs is a little crazy.

Polverone - 12-9-2008 at 08:59

Quote:

Originally posted by OMG
Sauron, you must have some common sense indicating to you that you are being completely ignorant in your idea about making drugs like meth freely available.

The human mind causes behavior that all leads to one goal. Seek pleasure and avoid pain.

If a drug is created that does exactly that, and it is freely available, and not shunned by society, then that would be disastrous.
If even a small amount (say 25%) of the population gets addicted, do you not think that would have a significant impact on... well... everything about that society??
What reason would people have to NOT do meth?

If 25% of the population is addicted, what percentage of the next generation of teenagers do you think would try meth? I'd guess 90%. How many of those you you think would get addicted?

I'm all for natural selection, but killing off 95% of your society just to make it more "immune" to drugs is a little crazy.

But the historical evidence is against 95% addiction rates. Before 1908 or so in the United States, opiates and cocaine could be freely sold yet dependency rates were nowhere near 95%. It is also worth noting that habitual use does not necessarily mean the person is going to drop dead or become unable to hold a job. The intrinsic illegality of drugs and the accompanying black-market prices make it much harder to be a functional addict. If cigarettes cost $3/day and employers let smokers have regular breaks to get a fix without shame, but one's illegal drug costs $100/day and must be consumed in utmost secrecy, it's much more likely that the illegal drug user will be a bad (mysteriously absent, thieving, and/or distracted) worker even before you consider differing physiological effects.

It's also premature to presume that free availability of meth or heroin would mean everyone would use such drugs. Cigarettes are even more freely available than alcohol, but smoking rates have been falling for decades. If other drugs were treated like tobacco (warnings on packages, little or no advertising permitted, government propaganda to discourage smoking without actually making it illegal) I think it quite likely that most people wouldn't use drugs with such bad reputations in the first place.

According to the US government's own data, less than 10% of people who have ever used highly reinforcing drugs like heroin, meth, or crack cocaine have used them in the past year. These are obviously people who know how to get such drugs despite prohibition and had an interest in trying them at least once. But most don't go on to become habitual users.

In short, I agree with Sauron's proposal. The drug funding available to organized crime evaporates, a host of threats to civil liberties evaporates, and the DEA and all its inconveniences for chemists evaporate as well.

I do believe that addiction rates would rise. I don't think they would rise overwhelmingly. Neither do I think those addicts would have as negative of social effects as addicts do now. They wouldn't be supporting organized crime with their purchases or resort to theft/prostitution to pay for them. They'd be diminished as disease vectors if they don't resort to reusing needles or selling their bodies. They might still end up with essentially dead-end lives of no productivity, but giving 20 do-nothing addicts a warm cot, soup, and a bucket of crack rocks (or whatever their drug of choice is) is still cheaper than imprisoning a dealer and funding the interdiction apparatus that hunts users and dealers in the first place.

If you still want offer a lifeline for people who have spiraled deep into use and want to reenter the mainstream of society, treat them like alcoholics. On a voluntary basis, provide them vaccinations against their drug(s) of choice (this technology is already in testing) and offer counseling and job searching to help them find something productive to do with their lives. This should be more effective than existing treatment programs, which include many people who are forced there by the courts and have little personal interest in changing.

[Edited on 9-12-2008 by Polverone]

Sauron - 12-9-2008 at 10:41

I am so very pleased that Polverone, who is a thoughtful and in all ways moderate individual, has seen fit to give my ideas a second look.

The narcs won't like it any more than the enforcers of the idiotic Volstead Act liked reversing that one, either. In fact it has long been argued that the Harrrson Act creating the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was mostly make-work for the soon to be out of work (and mostly corrupt) anti-bootleg agents. That bureau evolved into the BNDD then into the present DEA over about 45 years.

Sorry, OMG, if you think I am ignorant for thinking outside the box. But inside the box is nothing but dysfunctionality. The present (and past) approaches to drug enforcement are and always have been ineffective. The only period when heroin smuggling into the US dropped to zero was 1941-1945, when shipping routes were inoperative due to World War II. Every addict in the country went cold turkey. So, would you care to propose a world war to repeat this side effect? Problem is the next one would be thermonuclear. Overkill, wouldn't you agree?

But never mind me. I'm ignorant.

The rehab industry won't like my ideas either. They have an obvious vested interest in the status quo. They also have such an outstanding exemplary record of near total failure that it is downright breathtaking, and in order to match their unperformance one must look to the equally abyssmal record of law enforcement at all levels in order to come close.

Ignorance is bliss. "Stupid is as stupid does." - F.Gump

---------------------

The real hurdle is translating this idea into a real political movement. I am not a member of NORML and do not really know much about it but my impressions are that, despite its having been around for decades and being reasonably large in membership and reasonably well funded, NORML has been highly ineffective at political action. As a case in point my own brother in law (now deceased) ran for governor of Louisiana on the NORML ticket and got all of 50,000 votes. In fact he was an embarassment to my family. Anyway my point is that NORML is WAY ahead of us and they are getting nowhere fast. Perhaps the lesson is: don't build an organization on a member base of drug users if you want to get anywhere with your agenda.

Bill Buckley might have signed on, and indeed was the inspiration for a lot of my premises. But he's dead. So is Barry Goldwater. No faction of the Republican Party that is in any way beholden to the Christian Right would go anywhere near this. And I doubt either major party would want to buck Big Pharma.

The Libertarian Party appears impotent.

So I fear we are a LONG way off from even starting to actualize this idea. But, it is better than having no idea at all. What's the old line? "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

That was Confucious. He was ignorant too.

[Edited on 13-9-2008 by Sauron]

woelen - 12-9-2008 at 11:42

You do not take into account the cost, associated with illness due to excessive use of free drugs. Who takes care of all those (very) sick people? When their bodies are almost ruined, they will ask a lot of medical care. All those people have to be taken care of.

When drugs becomes free, I expect a large rise in addiction, and also a large rise in costs of medical care.

[Edited on 12-9-08 by woelen]

Polverone - 12-9-2008 at 12:10

Quote:

Originally posted by woelen
You not take into account the cost, associated with illness due to excessive use of free drugs. Who takes care of all those (very) sick people? When their bodies are almost ruined, they will ask a lot of medical care.

Will they? Maybe there are some drugs that continually degrade the body until the addict can tell his body is almost ruined, and then repent of drug use and seek care, but I don't think this happens commonly. Some drugs (like morphine and related compounds) are safe in controlled dosage for long term use, but can be acutely lethal if the dosage goes up too much or if the addict's tolerance declines from a few days without use. Stimulants like cocaine can damage the heart, but this is not something that requires expensive chronic care. The user may live a fairly normal life or may have a heart attack, but won't end up in a hospital bed for months either way. Marijuana may bring out latent schizophrenia but its only physical health burden is (possibly) lung cancer, like tobacco.

I could be wrong, and I will humbly accept corrections if I am. It is hard for me to find quantified scholarly data about the chronic and acute physical effects of drug use. Lethal incidents, like a fatal heroin overdose, or untreatable chronic problems like persistent visual distortions after heavy LSD use, are downsides of drug use but they don't actually increase the health care burden. Hepatitis and AIDS patients are heavy chronic users of health care, and overrepresented among drug-using populations, but this is related to social factors and not caused by the consumption of illegal drugs.

[Edited on 9-12-2008 by Polverone]

Sauron - 12-9-2008 at 15:15

woelen, the US does not have socialized medicine or free health care. Drug users like anyone else, either have health insurance, or they don't. If they don't and get sick, and can't pay for health care, they die. If their sickness is a consequence of what is a lifestyle choice (drug use) what is different about that and the lifestyle choice to be a homosexual and engage in unsafe sex (for example) or the lifestyle choice to smoke 5 packs of cigarettes a day or the lifestyle choice to be an acute alcoholic?

None that I can see.

We already have health care costs associated with drug use and contaminated adulterated drugs. We already have health care costs associated with AIDS transmission by needle sharing among IV drug abusers who refuse to get the message.

I say, by eliminating the cost of incarceration, the cost of maintaining massive law enforcement efforts at drug control that have never worked, the country can save a great deal of money - billions of dollars, likely tens of billions - and that is a lot more than the sorts of costs you are hypothecating.

ScienceSquirrel - 12-9-2008 at 15:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
woelen, the US does not have socialized medicine or free health care. Drug users like anyone else, either have health insurance, or they don't. If they don't and get sick, and can't pay for health care, they die. If their sickness is a consequence of what is a lifestyle choice (drug use) what is different about that and the lifestyle choice to be a homosexual and engage in unsafe sex (for example) or the lifestyle choice to smoke 5 packs of cigarettes a day or the lifestyle choice to be an acute alcoholic?

None that I can see.

Quite right.

One of ther leading causes of death among the current American population is obesity and the diseases caused by it.

A huge proportion of the population is morbidly obese, in some areas as much as 60% of the population.

Land of the Free though

Sauron - 12-9-2008 at 20:15

Quite right! Pass the bangers and mash, please.

kclo4 - 12-9-2008 at 21:30

wait.. Why wouldn't my way work?
I think it would get rid of all incentive to make and sell drugs, and be cheaper then what they are doing now.

Legal to have.
Illegal to sell.
Reward for those who turn in the dealers.

Incentive = Risk/Reward.. doesn't it?

Sauron - 12-9-2008 at 22:47

You obviously are naive, and you also have not read my posts carefully.

kclo4 - 12-9-2008 at 22:48

I'll agree with the last part of that.

Panache - 12-9-2008 at 23:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
You obviously are naive, and you also have not read my posts carefully.

Evian spelt backwards is naive, Reality Bites.

The fact that sincere considered counter arguments can be made against legalisation and free supply does not address the necessity to shift the current status-quo in social thinking and policy in relation to the prohibition of drugs.

I think society would benefit from all those suburban dead-head obese australians losing some weight because they shift their addiction temporarily to an amphetamine or a something. This is obviously an emotional oversimplification however at least their gardens would be well tended.

I imagine KFC and the like does not share this stance however they are just as insidious as the fabled (because i never knew one) drug-pusher of the 70's getting his customers addicted to heroin. Their tactics in creation of their menus, marketing to the vulnerable and unnerving inflexibility to improve their impact on public health is immoral and despicable, however its legal, so somehow less despicable and immoral than the same behaviour in a drug syndicate.

I say let the playing field be leveled, why make one illegal and the other legal, it can't get worse than it is presently. And it is preposterous to think that because cocaine is available at the corner store i will likely become a crack addict or that my neighbour will. The reality is that it is available at the corner store and i and my neighbour are not crack addicts. However it supply is illegal, meaning corruption and crime has a backer.

The argument that selling drugs be illegal but not using them is naive because its just transposing one illegal behaviour for another, thus not reducing all the key social parameters that make up the basis for the argument like incarceration rates, corruption, police spending etc etc. It would also be almost impossible to write decent legislation for, i mean 'i'm not selling drugs your honour i'm supplying them free just charging for delivery' x1000 variants on that theme comes to mind.

raiden - 12-9-2008 at 23:39

As above

Sauron - 13-9-2008 at 07:07

kclo4:

I am reluctant to have to repeat myself. Your proposal is to narrow the WOD to only the supply side. That does not eliminate the law enforcement structure, nor the supply side. It leaves both in place unchanged. LE has proven highlky ineffective at dealing with dealers/importers.manufacturers and cartels. A lot of money is wasted in the effort and a lot of civil liberties are lost. A lot of people rot in prison and cost us more money.

Y9u also want to turn a large segment into professional rats for pay and we are supposed to pay for that. I say there ought to be fewer rats in the world not more.

In short your proposal in ineffective and costly and fails to address the real issues in any meaningful way. I conclude therefore that you do not clearly and fully understand or apprehenmd the problem, hence you are naive. In some ways naivete is an admirable state, it suggests innocence (or perhaps dullness) as opposed to my own cynicism and world-weariness. But, unfortunately, it is not a very helpful state of mind when trying to come up with practical and effective solutions to complex problems.

In order to roll things back and restore civil liberties lost to the useless WOD we must junk the law enforcement approach to it almost entirely.

We must also create a condition which effectively neutralized organized crime interest in drugs (organized crime defined to include traditional mafias, drug cartels and all drug syndicates that operate above a local level.)

Decriminalizing drugs completely and making them freely available is the ONLY way to achieve these ends. The state should not be involved in their manufacture, or distribution, I already outlined how to force the corporeations who introduced essentially all of these drugs in the last 150 years to do that pro-bono. Fuck Bayer, Fuck Merck, etc. In return they are forever freed from all liability. They created these messes. Give them the job of cleaning them up.

These proposals are elegant, balanced and comprehensive. The WOD GONE. The Nanny State dealt a death blow. The criminal justice system unburdered and left to deal with real criminals. Nine out of ten prisons closed. Organized crime paupered.

What the WOD has taught us is that the supply of drugs exists because of the permanent and apparently insatiable DEMAND for drugs. Presently the supply is a for-profit illegal enterprise worth billions annually. The society (government) spends billions vainly trying to shut this down. This has consistently failed.

I say: REPLACE the for profit supply with a free supply thus shutting down the criminal supply. You can't shut down the DEMAND. Feed the demand, deny the profits to the gangsters/drug profiteers. FORCE the original drug profiteers to make the stuff and give it away. The demand is thus satisfied, the black market withers and dies. The enormous overhead of the WOD is saved.

For sure at the expense of the people who are the demand side but I say those people are lost anyway and have been for a long time and will be in the future no matter what we do. Let's get out of the business of engaging in a pyrhhic struggle to protect people from themselves, who don't want to be protected and who constantly strive with considerable success to defeat that protection.

OMG - 13-9-2008 at 08:54

I would agree that decriminalizing drugs that do no more harm to you than alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, salt, etc etc., would be the way to go. Even just legalizing marijuana would be a very good start and save society a lot of wasted resources.

I disagree with legalizing drugs that the human mind cannot easily resist and cause significant deleterious alterations to peoples behavior.

In the end its all about the money anyway. Obviously the powers that be keep things the way they are because it is most profitable for them. If it was more profitable to legalize drugs then they would surely do it. That's the thing about democracy, it's set up so over time the most greedy and weaselly people have the most power.

Sauron - 13-9-2008 at 09:52

No, it's not about the money. It's about trashing our rights and liberties for a lost cause. And you want to continue the lost cause with partial measures.

The WOD and drug laws are protecting no one. Every 11 year old school attending child has access to just about any drug you care to name in every corner of the nation, whether it is white suburbia, the inner cities, or the rural heartland. So who is being protected? No one is. What you propose is vanity in the name of making yourself feel like you are doing good. Nothing more. A meaningless exercise devoid of effect. Give your high horse a rest.

Polverone - 13-9-2008 at 23:32

This thread has remained civil, but I am afraid that political discussion on SM is still highly volatile and should probably be avoided. I apologize for participating in such discussion myself, as the example I want to set is to keep political discussion away from SM altogether. Although drug-related chemical regulations create practical problems for many amateur chemists, this is probably not the place to discuss broader questions of drug policy.