boddhisatva wrote: >> I'm just going to keep saying it. This anti-cocaine bullshit is a >>complete waste of time. We can buy it for less. ... Is or is not buying off >>coca farmers a win-win? Bill answers: >And what happens when they have a guaranteed market? ... If one wants to get rid of the drug trade, and more importantly the negative aspects of that trade, it's important to lower demand. Instead of buying the crop, as boddhi suggests, the market should be freed. That would drive down the price and take the profits out of smuggling (because there would be no smuggling) and out of gangsterism. But then anti-drug education and drug-treatment plans (medicalization) need to be instituted to lower demand, which would drive the price and profit down further. But of course our fearless leaders prefer a moralistic, authoritarian, violent, and destined-to-fail approach guaranteed to incarcerate a large percentage of "minority" youth. Does anyone have any direct info about the success of medicalization efforts? I heard that one could get heroin in the UK by prescription. Is this true? does it work? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html "A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and human beings dear." -- R.H. Tawney.
