SpeedBalling

Dr. E.

Thanks for the mention! Actually despite our differences, Pablo Escobar and I share one main thing in common. We both have benefitted greatly from the absurd American laws governing drugs.

In my case, I work for a software company that makes a LOT of money selling a pharmacy dispensing / automation / patient care product. This is because the law in this regard is so complex that pharmacists need specialized software to help them deal with dispensing, counting and complying with government reporting.

Pablo Escobar, on the other hand ... if not for US Drug laws would have probably been a wetback hanging drywall in Texas for ten bucks an hour. Instead, he managed to acquire a huge fortune filling American consumer demand for narcotics.

The irony of it all is that the US government creates the demand that Escobar got rich filling. The effect of scheduling narcotics and other 'dangerous' substances is that they've created two classes of drug dealers, both who serve a lucrative market.

The first class of drug dealer is the giant pharmaceutical companies. Scheduling, along with patents gives these drug dealers a virtual monopoly on the legal market, allowing them to control supply and demand so as to maximize profit.

Escobar is typical of the second type of drug dealer, what I call the 'discounter'. The discounter ships raw product in large quantities for sale on the black market.

The real beauty of this system, from the perspective of the drug dealers is that the American taxpayer pays billions of dollars each year to maintain it.

We pay to maintain the Federal regulatory agencies which seem to exist mostly to help the mega-Pharms block generic drug mfgrs when their patents run out.

We pay for law enforcement. It probably cost millions alone for the US's part in killing Escobar. Think of the salaries and costs of all those DEA agents, ATF agents, police, etc. dedicated to fighting the 'war on drugs'. How much do you think one of those fancy Coast Guard cutters costs?

And It is American law enforcement that makes smuggling drugs dangerous that drives the price up that makes it more worthwhile for a Columbian farmer to grow Coca than Coffee!!

We pay for incarceration. The USA has the second highest per capita prison population in the industrialized world (Russia is #1).
If we released all of the non-violent drug offenders from prison right now, we could cut our prison population in half, I'll bet.

We pay for making criminals out of non-violent offenders. Consider: a guy with a college education gets busted for drugs at 22. Because of prejudice against ex-cons, you've probably cut his potential lifetime earnings in half, and with it the amount of taxes he'll contribute.

For someone without a degree, the picture gets even worse. Recidivism is almost guaranteed ... and remember, while a person is IN jail, they're not only not contributing to the economy, they're being supported by the American taxpayer to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per year.

So even before you've even bought any drugs, legal or illegal, you've been paying for them in the form of taxes!

Wow! What a country!