"Roger, in Bangkok" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked a question well outside my pay grade when he inquired thusly:
>Out of all the shipments globally in a year, just how high do you suppose >the incidents of intentional vs, unintentional law breaking do you suppose >there might be? Well, now. If you include the commercial shipments worth $billions, it's probably close to negligible. But it's certainly not zero. Otherwise, why would there be 65 Plant Rescue Centers in the US and its territories? http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/prc.pdf They only cite statistics from 2002, but note that 281 plant shipments were intercepted, including 10,127 plants- of which 7,702 were orchids. Of those 281 shipments, 280 went to plant rescue centers; one shipment (consisting of one plant) was returned to the country of export. One supposes this number has gone up on the basis of better funding and (hopefully) training on the part of interdiction personnel. It worked in the War on Drugs, after all; the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, and we've hardly had a problem since then. Nixon declared War on Cancer in 1971, so I expect we'll have a cure for that soon, too. Whether the individuals purchasing these plants were intentionally breaking the law when they did so is unknown. When someone clicks on a dig-em-up in a brown box from Asia, it's tough to know whether either party has a full understanding of the Byzantine laws, regulations, and perpetually unwritten rules of order to which we mere mortals are left to interpret unaided. To borrow some of the context above and to steal from P.J. O'Rourke, it's tough to tell what impact the War on Drugs is having on crime because it's tough to get a urine sample from a crack addict while he's sticking up a 7-11. Warning: if some of the sarcasm included here went over your head, do not attempt to reach for it without proper supplementation with oxygen. No semblance between crack addicts and online purchases of dig-em-up paphs is implied, but it should be. Cheers, -AJHicks Chandler, AZ _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com