Drugs and The Ramifications of the Economics

[Jakeperson]

In the end, all money is dirty money!

 

[hyroller]

All money belongs in my hot little hands... hehehehehehe

drugs & money folks. what else do you need besides oxygen? (and, possibly, or at least occasionally...SEX)

 

[MrIbis]

^no one needs sex.

and yes, drug money fuels the economy like a fat chick at mcdonalds.

Every dealer i know, that ever made it big - and got out.. still has a very nice lifestyle. The houses full of big screen tv's, brand new lounge suites and video game consoles... It'd be ignorant for people to believe that drug dealers dont spend cash because people would be suspicious, but pulling out 1-10k in cash really isnt a big deal when you're in the market to buy a car and get a cheaper deal.

the tax ramifcations though - when you think about it, the gov would still profit decently from GST on the things the guys buy - which then is fed into the legit banks - and taxed accordingly from there on in - until it's fed back into the black market, and completes the cycle again. Nothing new.

 

[Coolio]

The money funds clandestine US/UK government operations, as evidenced by the Iran-Contra scandal; the only nationally public case where the way the drug smuggling industry is partially operated by different branches of the same government was exposed.

 

[Busty St Clare]

^no one needs sex.

.

Speak for your impotent self. The house of Bust a Beat desends into anarcy if at least one of us doesn't get it once a day. It's like a disturbance in the force

Any figures for the drug economy should be taken as a grain of salt becuase it is impossible to determine acurately and the tendancy to inflate prices at street level. (Like someone said when was the last time you paid $50 a pill?)

There is a finite amount of money in the world and bad guys just happen to spend their cut on drugs. If there was no drug trade these same kingpins would spend it on something else, be it sex or swimming pools.

A better way to try and judge it's affects is to look at the very middle men, the low level employees in thrid world countries such as farmers or mules. Their cut is but a fraction of the final street value yet due to the imbalance of their economies, $50 amounts to a huge improvement in the quality of living.

 

[madmick19]

i was talking to an economist about this in july about the impact of legalising drug and its impact on the economy. Ill see if he is still a registered member of bl and can post in here

 

[psytaco]

I think it all depends on how high up the ladder the money gets. I'm sure big portions of the profits go to corrupt governments, paramilitary groups etc. Further money would be spent on expanding organised criminal empires, put back into more drugs, human trafficking, weapons, sex trade etc.
And of course the money is spent on the legitimate economy eg. laundered into property and other assests, and spent on nice shit like cars, T.Vs, whatever people want and need.

 

[mungazz]

How much off australias drugs are imported from overseas? You would think most of the marijuana is grown at home, but what harder drugs are imported the most?

 

[psytaco]

100% of certain drugs such as heroin and cocaine would have to imported due to the raw materials (coca plant, opium poppy) growing in only certain parts of the world. Ok this isn't true of the opium poppy, because in Tasmania they are grown for pharm companies, but there would be no significant illicit cultivation operations going on here.

I can't really guess about other substances, obviously some of the meth and MDMA (and all the other shit that goes into pills) is produced locally. However, SE Asia is the biggest exporter of meth. Think burma, in particular, and other parts of the old golden triangle (Thailand, Laos, cambodia - maybe china a bit). They still produced heroin and opium, but i think afghanistan has the lions share of that market these days.

BTW I SE Asian opium

 

[UnSquare]

drugs & money folks.
what else do you need besides oxygen?

Ammonia!

 

[hoptis]

While I don't think a huge amount of our drugs come from Mexico, whether or not we are directly connected, it doesn't hurt to remember just what types of activities our money does contribute to.

18 shot dead in Mexico drug treatment center: official
September 3, 2009 - 3:44PM

At least 18 people were killed when gunmen stormed into a drug treatment center in northern Mexico's violence-plagued border city of Ciudad Juarez, security officials said.

The gunmen entered the facility and attacked 23 people, killing 18 and leaving five more wounded, a source in the public security department told AFP.

"There could be more bodies," the source said, adding that the dead were found near a small area of an entranceway to the center.

The attack capped a particularly bloody 24-hour period in Mexico that also saw the killing of 21 people overnight in drug-related violence in Chihuahua state and the murder of the number two security official in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.

Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, is the bloodiest stage for an ongoing turf war between Mexican drug cartels battling for the right to control the trafficking of drugs into the United States, the world's largest market for cocaine and marijuana.

Last year in a similar attack, eight people were gunned down at a Mexican clinic that treats drug addicts.

More than 9,600 people have died in the drug-related violence since 2008, despite Calderon's deployment of some 36,000 troops and police across the country to try and stem the bloodshed.

According to an AFP tally based on police data, in the first seven months of 2009 there were 1,161 murders in Ciudad Juarez alone despite thousands of police and soldiers sent there to maintain security.

© 2009 AFP

The Age

For the life of me I can't conscience how drug cartels could be see a treatment clinic as any sort of a threat to their business or way of life (it's not like demand is disappearing any time soon).

 

[belarki]

I just saw this and it put things in perspective a bit. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the figures but it's thought provoking at least

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/

Figures supposedly from 2006/2007. Note the "Global illegal drug market" grey box in the centre.