If he'd facilitated for that many drug dealers in the real world he'd get a pretty hefty sentence. And there will only ever be a handful of people like him at any given time, so it won't lead to many issues.
Dread Pirate Roberts...a real life Heisenberg (kinda)
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) are here to discuss Amad saving our blushes in a win against Southampton as well as our now annual loss at home to Brighton. They discuss Amorim's post-match comments, revisit how mid-table we may or may not be, and discuss some transfer news.
Point is, this kind of marketplace isn't going to go away. Just like it didn't for the entertainment industry. It's the new world. And the old world is going to have to adapt to it somehow. I don't know how myself, but it can't just shout it away forever.
It's depressing how many government officials are detached from common sense. The former head of the DEA refused to admit that weed is less harmful than legal substances like tobacco and alcohol, a fact substantiated by numerous peer-reviewed articles and scientific research. A website like Silk Road is noticed, which promotes sellers of good quality drugs, and the response is to come down heavy handed on it, driving drug networks deeper into the ether.
The main difference is the entertainment industry actually cares about money. Whereas governments have been pissing money fighting drugs for decades, so you're only going to see more shouting and crying.
Not that deep, you can still find comprehensive buying guides on reddit.
Ah! I heard multiple iterations of Silk Road were shut down, but I may be wrong.
Main one at the moment is the Agora Market. It apparently overtook silk road before the arrest.
That's a fair point. Tolerance waxes and wanes but that's only an issue for intermittant users and someone who's in that much control over their habit is likely to be sensible enough to start low after a period of abstinence, once they can be certain what dose they're taking. It's nowhere as big a risk as the lottery every user faces when they have no clue how much each new purchase has been stepped on. Which will be hugely variable, unpredictable and only apparent by the time they've already taken a hit.
That's without even getting into the danger to their health from all the nasty shit it might be cut with.
You're right, that was badly worded by me. My point was supposed to be that being addicted to the drug itself is a destructive experience, even if you get good stuff. Many people's views on drugs & their legality start from the viewpoint that it is the prohibition itself that is the biggest problem, not the addiction, and therefore they propose actions that may result in even more people taking the drug, such as suggesting that heroin be made available cheaply once you're on it. The starting point imo has to be that taking the drug itself is a bad thing and that we shouldn't encourage people to do it. I certainly don't suggest victimising people who are, essentially, suffering from a disease. However taking a course of action that encourages other people to have the same disease feels like the wrong solution to me.
You're making it sound like people who use heroin might as well have leprosy. Most people who use it don't become addicted.
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The only figure I've seen are for the U.S., where about 20 of people become addicted. So not most, but a pretty substantial minority I'd say.
Have you tried it out of interest?
Never gone further than acid. But I would try it if I didn't have to buy it off dodgy feckers.
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Very hard to make any sensible estimates about this sort of thing. You can't just crunch numbers about users/addicts on a particular drug and come up with a % risk of getting addicted. There's a good chance that anyone who ends up addicted to anything would have always ended up addicted to something.
Yup. I'm pretty sure I remember reading your genes play a big part in it.
True, which is why there are so few figures for that kind of thing around. That said, heroin is unquestionably addictive, I'm a bit surprised this is even a debate. Its not like booze where I can drink two nights a week for 5 years and never come close to alcohol addiction. Everyone who takes it regularly for long enough will become addicted, and 'long enough' can be a month if you're taking it two or three times a week. The difference between becoming addicted and not is just a question of frequency.
Psychological addiction and physical addiction are two separate conditions. Heroin is the most physically addictive drug, in that relatively low exposure can result in physical addiction. Alcohol takes longer to get hold physically, although the withdrawals are more dangerous.
What makes an 'addict' i.e. the types that would populate 12 step meetings is generally thought to be innate or genetic. That is it not something that can be acquired by a user without that genetic predisposition to the condition being exposed to a particular substance.
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Its true that there's a hereditary predisposition to addiction, but that doesn't mean that if you lack the predisposition you therefore can't have the addiction. Its the same way that you might not have a genetic predisposition to cancer, but that doesn't mean you're immune to it.
The two are not analogous as one is a mental disorder and the other physical.
I am highly sceptical that you can acquire the 'disease' of addiction through exposure to drugs.
That does not mean you cannot acquire a physical addiction through exposure.
Lots of people are exposed to the highest grade opiates as pain medication and don't get addicted, for example.
A quick google will show you that addiction predispositions are not solely inherited. Here's one link, there are loads of others.
That doesn't support your view. You posit that heroin can turn none predisposed people in to lifelong psychological addicts through a minimum amount of exposure.
Scientists will never find just one single addiction gene. Like most other diseases, addiction vulnerability is a very complex trait. Many factors determine the likelihood that someone will become an addict, including both inherited and environmental factors.
Because addiction is a complex disease, finding addiction genes can be a tricky process. Multiple genes and environmental factors can add up to make an individual susceptible, or they may cancel each other out. Not every addict will carry the same gene, and not everyone who carries an addiction gene will exhibit the trait.
However, multiple lines of research show that addiction is influenced by genes.
That article supports the genetic theory of addiction, only stating that it cannot be taken as a linear indicator due to the role that wider genetic makeup and environment can have on those 'addiction genes'.
It is established that environmental factors play a role in all genes pertaining to mental illness.
Nope, didn't say that.
You said that addiction "...is it not something that can be acquired by a user without that genetic predisposition..." That quote says that the likelihood of addiction is influenced by genetic factors. It does not say that if you lack those genes you cannot get addicted to drugs, which is what you claimed. Plus it quite clearly states that genetic factors are not the only thing affecting the likelihood.
Nor does it say that a none predisposed person can become addicted by exposure to a drug, specifically heroin above all others, which is your argument. It barely even touches it on that possibility.
I interpret that article as saying that just because you have the genes does not mean that you will be exposed, which is the case with all genes because they interact with other genes and have environmental triggers.
I feel that you are holding onto this line
However, multiple lines of research show that addiction is influenced by genes.
And specifically the word 'influenced'. It seems to me to be a caveat in appreciation of our limited understanding of the complex nature of the interactivity of genes and the interactivity of genes and environment.
Perhaps you can post a scientific paper pertaining to the exceptional nature of heroin as a narcotic and how it causes lifelong psychological addiction in none predisposed people.
You're just waffling now. You made the claim that you can't get addicted to heroin without the appropriate genes and you haven't provided a single shred of evidence to support it. Feel free to provide any link or any study that supports your claim. Don't see why I should go chasing rabbits on pubmed when you can't do the merest bit of research yourself.
Perhaps. In as much as any sweeping statement can be true. I think cigarettes are a better comparator than booze, as they're more addictive. The big difference is that cigarettes are far more harmful than heroin, in terms of the direct physical affects of ingestion.
We're going in circles here, though. I agree that more people taking heroin will mean more people addicted to heroin. My point was always that we need to weigh up the pros and cons of having an increased total number of users vs the harm caused by criminalisation of supply. It's all very hypothetical I absolutely believe that heroin is a less harmful substance to abuse (for individuals and society in general) than booze and fags, providing you remove all the risk, uncertainty and criminality associated with it's current legal status.
On the last point, I guess we're each influenced by our own experiences. Working in that drug centre, and particularly working with the NA, really moved me in terms of the impact of heroin. The point you're making is one I often hear, but sounds like a theoretical standpoint and doesn't seem to match the real world. Maybe I just met the bottom 1% and that the other 99% have a totally different experience of smack? Who knows.
It is long established that there is a genetic component in addiction. You are the one posting that anyone will get a life long psychological addiction to heroin if they are exposed to it. I am not aware of any school of scientific thinking that subscribes to that view. Most guys in NA or AA will claim to have been 'born an addict'. I am not afflicted myself but I have seen more than enough of it in my family and their 12 step friends to know.
You said your experience in NA tells you that heroin is different. Well go to AA and you will find a much larger group of people telling you that abstinence from alcohol is a life long struggle, which is why they spend a lot of their free time in those meetings.
Generally people that go to those meetings have tried everything else. In NA or AA, they are largely true addicts.
But yes. I am also coloured by my own experiences as I can see the addictive lineage running down my Dad's side of the family, different substance preferences but the same underlying cause IMO.
For me though, the actual consequences of criminalisation are completely insane. It is just that it is normalised in our society.
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In terms of my own experience, I worked in mental health services in a city with one of the worst heroin problems in Europe (Dublin) so have seen first-hand how badly messed up chronic smack addicts become. I just have a slightly different take on it, in that I think they're vulnerable, damaged individuals to begin with who would have found some way of fecking up their lives even if they never came across heroin. Similarly, I've seen some absolute train-wrecks fuelled entirely by booze, the difference being that I had very little exposure to non-damaged heroin users, although I'm certain they exist. It's impossible to unpick the whole thing properly, though and - like you say - it's all far too theoretical for anyone to talk from a position of authority.
So - what should we do with alcohol and cigarettes? Criminalise them?
Good documentary on iPlayer about lad currently. Amazing how dumb the FEDS are. I don't buy the case against him wasn't corrupt.
Is that the one where the guy googled and found his name over a weekend?
Yeah - two years into the case! It was total amateur hour when they were staging the assassination by getting the guys mum to take photos of the fake dead body! Unbelievable really.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b092s5vv/storyville-silk-road-drugs-death-and-the-dark-web
I thought you meant that one.
edit: Nvm, I thought there were two docus up, one was just a short news story that's not up anymore. Found it
I thought you meant that one.
Who do the FEDs think are behind all the new sites? It will be entities like terrorist organisations and rogue states I bet.
NK might be in the game somehow. The run a large scale criminal enterprise to make money and this seems like an obvious avenue for making a boatload of cash. Terrorist and organised crime groups have been using the internet and drugs to make money for as long as I can remember, so they've probably tried. Japanese organised crime groups are especially fond of fraud and cybercrime so it would make sense. Larger countries might also find reasons to open them up. From making life easier for criminals in unfriendly states, to simple information gathering.
Think about a group like ISIS. If they could run such a site from inside on of their territories they could make shed loads of cash but also use cells on the ground in countries like the U.K., France etc to move drugs locally and self fund for terrorism on the ground. I'm sure they would see the proliferation of drugs in enemy countries as a tactical win too.
everybody is doing it!
remember the CIA sold drugs to finance a lot of their interventions to sovereign nations.
Dictators like Pinochet also sold drugs via DINA (national intelligence department) to finance the cleansing and disposal of the "communist threat".
I would be surprised if the US is not the country moving the biggest amounts of drugs via the internet.
Conspiracy friend of mine says that's why we're still in Afghanistan - to milk the opium
This big boys fly fully loaded of weapons to Afghanistan.. they won't return empty, that's for sure.
Trump pardons Silk Road dark web market creator Ross Ulbricht
US President Donald Trump says he has signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold.
Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.
Trump championed Ulbricht's cause, joining libertarians who said the conviction was an example of government overreach. On Tuesday, he said he had called Ulbricht's mother to inform her that he had granted a pardon to her son.
Silk Road, which was shut down in 2013 after police arrested Ulbricht, sold illegal drugs using Bitcoin, as well as hacking equipment and stolen passports.
Ulbricht was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking.
Thought it was a draconian sentence back then. Despite the pardoner, glad the pardon happened.