You Can’t Make this Shit Up!

I was a cop for thirty years. I spent fifteen of those years assigned to a narcotics task force. It has been my experience that dopers are not rocket surgeons. The Galveston Task Force showed up at a conference wearing shirts with a logo stating “If they weren’t so stupid…. we’d never catch them.” I couldn’t argue with that sentiment.

Dope dealers are not altruistic. They are in it for the money and the money is very good. Cue the sound track.

One of the goals behind enforcement is to upset the cost benefit ratio. If the risks outweigh the benefits potential players will find something else to do. However, enforcement isn’t the only way to upset an illegal market. For twenty plus years cops chased bikers all over the southwest shutting down clandestine methamphetamine labs. In the mid to late 90’s the bikers got out of the speed cooking business. Did they suddenly find Jesus?

If they did, he was a member of a Mexican cartel. The cartel discovered “speed” they could make more and better speed than the bikers could. The cartels had so much product they were practically giving it away. It was no longer cost effective for bikers to manufacture speed, so they got out of the manufacturing business.

California legalized marijuana. Being California, the state had to set up a whole new bureaucracy. California came up with a licensing scheme for pot sales operations. They also implemented regulations governing the growing, harvesting and distribution of marijuana. The end result is that the regulatory process is so convoluted that most marijuana operations are unable to comply. California took the profit out of pot.

Now the state is proposing to inject 100 million dollars into the pot industry to save it. At the link. https://news.yahoo.com/california-offers-100-million-rescue-231502162.html

Many cannabis growers, retailers and manufacturers have struggled to make the transition from a provisional, temporary license to a permanent one renewed on an annual basis — a process that requires a costly, complicated and time-consuming review of the negative environmental effects involved in a business and a plan for reducing those harms.

Los Angeles Times

Remember those famous words from Ronald Reagan:

I guess current events dictate that the Galveston Task Force saying be revised, “Dopers, we may be stupid, but we’re smarter than politicians.”

Please, please please, come on earthquake.