Saturday, July 5, 2008

Now that must be some good pot Driver arrested with $5 million in pot 104 pounds of pot, which police estimated to have a street value of $4.7 million. According to my rough math, that's over $45,000 a pound or $2,824.52 per ounce. That makes it about three times as valuable as gold. Hmm.... When I was in college, the good stuff cost about $50 an ounce. Assuming, of course, that Naperville police aren't just making stuff up. They wouldn't do that, would they?... [Thanks, Nick] Correction: The arrest was in Ohio -- it appears that the bizarre math came from Ohio state troopers, not Naperville police. 9:11:16 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

U.S. on Drugs A must read in the Los Angeles Times today, by David W. Fleming and James P. Gray Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind. The first group are the drug lords in nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan and Mexico, as well as those in the United States. They are making billions of dollars every year -- tax free. The second group are the street gangs that infest many of our cities and neighborhoods, whose main source of income is the sale of illegal drugs. Third are those people in government who are paid well to fight the first two groups. Their powers and bureaucratic fiefdoms grow larger with each tax dollar spent to fund this massive program that has been proved not to work. Fourth are the politicians who get elected and reelected by talking tough -- not smart, just tough -- about drugs and crime. But the tougher we get in prosecuting nonviolent drug crimes, the softer we get in the prosecution of everything else because of the limited resources to fund the criminal justice system. The fifth group are people who make money from increased crime. They include those who build prisons and those who staff them. The prison guards union is one of the strongest lobbying groups in California today, and its ranks continue to grow. And last are the terrorist groups worldwide that are principally financed by the sale of illegal drugs. 7:26:38 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []