The USCG seems to be pleased with themselves for interupting the supply of narcotics to the retail market.https://gcaptain.com/record-haul-uscg-offloads-cocaine-and-marijuana-worth-more-than-1-4-billion-in-port-everglades/
But what do they really achieve?
The interruption will drive the street price up. More street crime to pay for the “habit”. The suppliers loose nothing. They have sold to the shippers. Even if this setback puts one shipper out of business another will risk everything because the payoff is so huge. The industry will not collapse and people stop demanding narcotics. Nothing changes.
As seafarers (professional and leisure) we know that if something doesn’t work we don’t do it again. Yet at 64 I have been reading the same drugs story all my life. “Authorities boast about arresting a drugs shipment” (whilst the trade continues). Nothing changes. Would any sane mariner sign up with a captain who’s track record is 60 years of failing to make port without a major incident? I do not need to ask. Yet is seems the authorities have total faith in such a monster.
I suggest it is time to do things a different way.
I came to the conclusion the government couldn’t figure out a way to efficiently tax narcotics to pump money into the bureaucratic machine so they decided to start a never ending war on drugs to spend/create the same amount taxation would reep if they could. The government gets the same amount of money both ways except with a war on drugs they get to imprison a bunch of people they didn’t like anyways.
If I could do CG again I would have gone black hull. Drug crap was a waste of time not to mention countless hours of Helo ops. Only part I enjoyed was looking at the Galapagos Islands through the big eyes one evening.
MEXICO CITY — The most sought after marijuana being trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border is now the weed entering Mexico, not the weed leaving it.
Cannabis sold legally in California is heading south illegally, dominating a booming boutique market across Mexico, where buying and selling the drug is still outlawed. Mexican dealers flaunt their U.S. products…
Traffickers from California load their suitcases with U.S.-grown marijuana before hopping on planes to Mexico, or walking across the pedestrian border crossing into Tijuana…relatively few of the southbound traffickers are caught — even as their contraband doubles or triples in value as soon as it enters Mexico.
…“The demand here for American weed has exploded,” said one dealer in Mexico City, who estimated that 60 percent of the marijuana he sells now comes from California.
I used to say after I retire I will try marijuana again but with so many of the dipshit drug dealers lacing everything with fentanyl I wouldn’t try any street drug now. I don’t blame anyone for paying a higher price & buying from a dispensary legal or not.
A “Friend” just came back from vacation in Colorado. Heard he had a well packaged, legal contraband that was high quality. I will have to ask him, purchased on the way to the airport, almost across the street.
