05-01-2004 09:46									#61
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Personally, I do not want to see these drugs made legal. I have seen the damage drugs do to families. I would support nuking areas where drugs are grown if not for the fact that if we didn't have organic drugs to abuse we would just get them out of a lab.

	05-01-2004 09:54									#62
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quote: Originally posted by Chilean President Exactly! Bolivia have the biggest cocaine-farms in the continent. And more than that, those cocaine farmers have huge political power. they even provoked the destitution of former President Gozalo Sanchez de Lozada... actually they provoked a huge bloody riot of over 2 months which lead to the president's destitution.

Coca production in the Andes goes through fluctuations, depending on the anti-coca inntiatives of states- when Peru cracks down, production goes up in Bolivia and Colombia, and when Bolivia cracks down, up in Peru and Colombia, and when Colombia cracks down, Bolivia and Peru. But the general Andead total does not change as much as the country totals do.

I have lost faith in the FARC. Right now, what Colombia needs most is an end to 50 years of savage politics.

	05-01-2004 21:02									#63
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quote: Originally posted by Tripledoc JCG. Now you are simply being a sophist.

Again, "Thank you very much", though I don't think this is the proper place to debate who employs the higher degree of sophistry in their posts.

quote: And I don't think it is a 'vast conspiracy' as you say. It is simply how I think policies are being decided upon in Washington.

Of course, it's just your opinion. Just that, IMHO, it's one that takes for granted considerable "bad faith" and hyperbole, a la "conspiracy theories".

quote: However I don't appreciate the sense of moral superiority they seek to inflict on me.

I don't see much moral superiority there either, for what it's worth.

	05-01-2004 21:52									#64
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara That's because you aren't paying attention. The Columbian government is one of the worst in the world. It is among the most murderous, and possilby even rivals the Hussein government in Iraq in sheer barbarity. The fact that it is nominally democratic is meaningless. The government of El Salvador was democratic, but that didn't stop it from murdering 70,000 people in the 1980s. The government of Guatemala was called democatic, didn't stop it from murdering hundreds of thousands of its own people. Of course, the Columbian government is qualitiatively different, in that the government actually changes hands between parties.

Point of fact - the government of El Salvador changed parties at least once in the 1980's, ISTR.

	05-01-2004 22:23									#65
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark Point of fact - the government of El Salvador changed parties at least once in the 1980's, ISTR.

You may be right. I know that the junta stepped down in favor of elections, bu I thought that most of the 80s the Presidency was in the hands of the moderates (Napoleon Duarte?), with the proto-fascist party always threatening to take power.

	06-01-2004 05:45									#66
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quote: Originally posted by jimmytrick Personally, I do not want to see these drugs made legal. I have seen the damage drugs do to families. I would support nuking areas where drugs are grown if not for the fact that if we didn't have organic drugs to abuse we would just get them out of a lab.

Cocaine isn't that easy to synthesize. Consider the enormous mark-up that cocaine gets on it's way from Juan Valdez' farm to your nose. Is it something like 1000-fold? Doesn't it sell for somewhere around $100 to $200 / gram? You'd think that for that kind of prices it would be profitable to synthsize, but apparently the cost is prohibitive.

I believe that there must be some way to use genetics to combat cocaine production. Since cocaine is a unique compound some of the enzymes involved in it's biological synthesis must be unique to the cocoa plant. It should be possible to find ways to block the pathway. Perhaps pollen with defective cocaine synthsizing genes could be produced. Fields of cocaine could be swamped with mutant pollen at pollenation time, causing the next crop to produce dramatically less pollen. Perhaps a virus specific to the cocaine plant containing a DNA code for an enzyme blocker could be produced. Cocaine crops could then be infected with this virus, which would insert its DNA code into the plants', blocking their synthesis of cocaine.

	06-01-2004 10:23									#67
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quote: Originally posted by Dr Strangelove Cocaine isn't that easy to synthesize. Consider the enormous mark-up that cocaine gets on it's way from Juan Valdez' farm to your nose. Is it something like 1000-fold? Doesn't it sell for somewhere around $100 to $200 / gram? You'd think that for that kind of prices it would be profitable to synthsize, but apparently the cost is prohibitive. I believe that there must be some way to use genetics to combat cocaine production. Since cocaine is a unique compound some of the enzymes involved in it's biological synthesis must be unique to the cocoa plant. It should be possible to find ways to block the pathway. Perhaps pollen with defective cocaine synthsizing genes could be produced. Fields of cocaine could be swamped with mutant pollen at pollenation time, causing the next crop to produce dramatically less pollen. Perhaps a virus specific to the cocaine plant containing a DNA code for an enzyme blocker could be produced. Cocaine crops could then be infected with this virus, which would insert its DNA code into the plants', blocking their synthesis of cocaine.

Why not fumigate the whole place with Agent Orange? Only way to be sure.

Seriously employing biological warfare against the coca farmers is way off the mark. What if this virus mutates and infects other crops? And what are the peasants supposed to live from? No doubt, however, that such agents are being tried and tesetd in laboratories.

Elton John, who had a serious cocaine addiction, said that "a cocaine addiction is a sign that you are too rich for your own good." I would say a more equitable income distrubution would be the only secure way of combating this particular addiction. Then again I am not sure that it is really that much of a problem, that the rich should destroy themselves.

	06-01-2004 21:09									#68
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Pollen, not a virus. I think this would actually be a good use of GM, if not for the fact that peasants in the Altiplano use coca leave as part of their daily lives.