Topic: Life after Silk Road: how the darknet drugs market is booming (Read 2650 times)

Well it looks like the hydra comparison comes into play here
Chop one head off and a few more come in to take its place

user reviews and ratings?

Like they have already claimed you can shut down 1 market but you can't stop the idea and 10s of new markets will appear.

Now, where's the SilkRoad of prostitution?  (Silk Sheets?) 

That's a mythical image, not the reality.  Likely the writer that best captured those times was Hunter Thompson, but he did specialize in documenting the very image that didn't represent the common reality, but the more exciting, dangerous and lunatic fringe, which did make for exciting writing.

Typically a party might have had mostly beer, a few joints being passed around.  Users tended to group with like users; you'd see four or five gather to smoke weed commonly.

It was difficult to be around people using weed without, over the course of time, being around people doing heroin or speed.  People did in fact move from weed to hard drugs or acid.  Hallucinatory drugs had a period of popularity that subsided to a lower level that continues today.  The perception of weed as a "gateway drug", and the attribution of cause and effect was likely incorrect...since forced into illegality, pushers worked with various products.  When a person went to get weed, he met someone who was happy to give him some free heroin to try out.  Dangerous times for many...

Original research on the LSD etc indicated there might be some good uses for them, and I agree with that.  The shutting down of research into this area was a mistake, maybe that will open back up.

Drug abuse, excepting or including the fraction which is self medication, is going to be around forever.

what marijuana, mushrooms, et alia psychedelia do is temporarily alter/expand the way one can perceive, often in a way never before experienced given the conditioning that has previously beset them. This can allow an individual to question the reality which they thought they were in, and occasionally, some wake up. once this happens, one is able to gain perspective that may allow them to see the matrix for what it is.

alcohol, nicotine, some other legal drugs like caffeine and amphetamines on the other hand don't quite do this.

in any case, like beetcoin astutely observed, a lack of discipline usually leads to dependency/ruin/loss of Self.

but that's what life is, a big learning process for the all of us


edit: fun story about Christmas, Santa, and shrooms

^ but also to be fair, the people in the 60's were out of control. constant orgies, groups hanging around partying.. and even charles manson. i think the 60's hippie movement was cool, but it was far from perfect.

Yes that may very well be the case, When I was younger I always was a little obeying person of society.
Maybe when i started to smoke weed I started to rebell, but I really remember I was really able to think different when I used shrooms.
It was like my mind was on a totally different level it was thinking so much different then I normally would.
It was more like a eye opener, the way i was thinking with shrooms, it was pretty crazy.

i may sound crazy, but my theory is that government doesn't want people using drugs, especially psychadelics (which is what marijuana is).. because it ends up with people questioning government and the establishment. it's why nixon had to battle the hippies, so he could operate the war in vietnam.

Yes putting people in prison for just growing or selling a plant that grows in the nature is just crazy!
Sometimes killers serve less time then people convicted with drugs cases (in the US ofcourse)

I think killers should be punished heavily, but most of the time they are off easy especially where I live in Holland.
The prison sentences are so low, it's like a paradise for criminals, also our prisons are much better then the American prisons.
And weed should be legalized worldwide it's a goddamn plant, look at alcohol man made it and it kills and hurt people everyday.
But they still allow it worldwide just because they can tax it, and also keeps the people happy.

well yeah, most of us here already know that per capita, america imprisons more of its citizens than any other developed nation in the world. same goes with capital punishment.

Filling prisons with any non violent offenders is just a waste. We also punish them for the rest of their lives by limiting them socially and economically.

It's a gradual process.  I can't recall how many times several of the states have had a checkbox on the ballot to legalize weed, someone libertarian would know.  At least a half dozen times.  Now 2 have done it and Congress is clearly in favor of allowing state level decision making on this.

Still there are complex problems.  Think about the border traffic and the inland Mexican drug gangs if the four border states legalized stuff.

The first thing a government care for is its reelection. So, I guess sending almost 1% of the population to prison pays votes.

A huge part of those inmates were arrested for drug associated crimes. I don't have the figures, but arresting and condemning all those people and building, managing and paying for all those prisons might be more than what the Federal government pays in social security.

The war on drugs was a scam from the start, do people honestly think their governments care if you take narcotics or not?

All they care about is making sure the little guys don't eat into the CIA's profit margins.

The war on drugs is just an arms race between law enforcement and criminals. The people that die and get maimed are often not involved with either. I don't partake in drugs or anything illicit but I do think silk road 2 actually helps keep things more peaceful.

those people are former presidents, not people who are part of the establishment. i don't think the war on drugs is going to change.. the government likes to put minorities in jail, maybe because there's a capitalistic business model built around it.

Yeh they are backing off the war on drugs, they found a new one with the war on terror.
And they are already stopping to fight marijuana in the US, so that's great.

Did you see the movie Kid Cannabis?
There was a boy killed, and the killer only got 6 years or something.
And the boy that was running drugs from canada to The US got more then 10 years.
That in my eyes is really crazy, for just a plant that is growing in the nature.

It seems pretty clear that we won't have to wait that much to see a change in policy about drugs, from a repressive policy to a therapeutic and tolerant one.

Even Clinton, that kept the Bush war on drugs, is backing down: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/12/03/bill-clinton-jimmy-carter-slam-war-on-drugs-in-new-documentary

If we keep this way, soon certain states will end as failed states. Mexico seems to be going this path.

So what's the prediction how this all shakes out after 10 or 20 years?