06 - Organised crime

Finally, a plea to the crime syndicates that control the drugs trade right now.

Firstly, please don't hunt me down. While I am not hard to find and especially not hard to harm, I am just a citizen, nothing more. I hate the ridiculous drugs laws as much as you do.

I will criticise you for your use of violence. It is never the answer, even if you only killed each other. But you do not. You kill innocents as well. Doing that only gives law enforcement and the politicians reason to say that you are dangerous and should be hunted down.

If you want to 'win' this drugs war the most sensible thing you could ever do is stop the violence, stop the pushing of harmful (addictive) substances and work on harm reduction. If you can supply good, stable-quality less-harmful drugs with the correct medical advice to go along with them then you can argue to civil society that you are simply business people, fulfilling a demand and doing so with social responsibility. Unfortunately, the demand happens to be for something illegal.

Right now, by creating crack and heroin addicts these people are essentially lost to a life of petty crime, preying on their neighbours to feed a habit. Government response isn't going to help these people. Someone has to. If you step in and get drug users into stable legitimate jobs where they are earning money then their purchasing power increases. There will still be a market for drugs, but without the addiction lock-in that causes so much social harm.

Without the violence, without the addiction, with addiction support services - yes, you will need to stop buying guns and start doing things like buying suits for job interviews and interview coaching for addicts - there will be ground roots pressure for a change in the law. You can then work with and fund political activists to make this happen. You might need to buy a few newspapers too. No problems fighting as dirty as the other side currently does.

Then, you can use your knowledge of the supply chains and manufacturing to go legit. Be the good guys. Try it, it's less dangerous and more profitable.

Right now you waste so much of your own money and the lives of people in your organisations because of the illegality. In the 80's you would fly planes of cocaine into Florida and a loss of an aircraft, its crew and 100% of the product was 'just a cost of doing business'. These days, you build the narco subs - bloody good effort by the way - and again, total hull losses of a percentage of shipments is just a cost, factored in to your accounts. Imagine if you could just fill up a TEU and FedEx it to your destination. Sure, the cost centres will shift. Now you need to focus on worker health and safety and quality control instead of bribes and lost shipments. Hire a couple of people from the current pharmaceutical industry. They've already solved these problems.

Oh, and while drugs are still illegal, hire a couple of geneticists. See what other plants can be modified to produce THC. Fuck enforcement. If we can all grow a banana plant in our houses that happens to get us high as well it's going to be a much harder game for the governments.

But please, stop the violence. It's not doing you or the cause any favours.

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