Gangland Killings

ClubMan said:
I try not to second guess what people mean. I know what you said.
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Thanks for that because reading that again, it is not clear whether I am referring to a mother shot dead on her doorstep and a young plumber doing his job in the wrong place at the wrong time or the numerous criminals who have been shot dead over the past few years. Useful service you administrators provide.
 
sunrock said:
Was the apprentice plumber aware he was working in a gang leaders house? AND the latvian woman...was threatened by her ex.. ..were all putting themselves in danger.despicable as these crimes were.
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Sorry, but i think this statement is disgraceful.
 

1. Profits will be profits and there will always be some group making a killing (think border diesel, illegal cigs, firewrks etc).
2. Yes, and who regulates the "quality" of heroin? When ROCHE or BAYER put some bad stuff on the street, will they be chased down in the courts or will our country's judiciary be engaged in a massive case when junkie x's family sue the company afer he'd overdosed?
3. I guess that heroin addicts will take up 9-5 employment, or even that the already affordable drugs will be even cheaper, or maybe we can claim our e's and grass on the medical card.
4. The state already spends copious amounts on tobacco and alcohol awareness campaigns, yet the numbers of young smokers and drinkers remain high, and binge drinking remains the plaything of Indo writers.

The above isn't an effort to be flippant or rude, your points are well made and I would lways try to think along those lines, but to what point is the drug trade to be legalised or regulated? Has the apparent openess to the problem helped social difficulties in Holland?

There is no way to eradicate this problem when there are massive amounts of money to be made and political gains to be had. The Soviets took out a corrupt drugmaking regime in Afghanistan to stop the spread of opium and heroin out of the region, hitting certain US interests in SE Asia (remember it was CIA men who sowed up packages of heroin in dead gi's being flown home from Vietnam in order to fund their activities), thus triggering the US involvement and recruitment of radical arabs and muslims who funded a lot of their fighting with drug sales. Each time the drug "problem" is addressed it switches and seems to be getting worse.
 
I see how my point about the young plumber and the latvian girl seem very callous.It seems that to be in the wrong place at the wrong time......or if one has in some personal way irratated a violent individual....that it might cost you your life.
Of course,if you are an ordinary working class person ,living in a crime ridden area ,your chances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time are much greater.
I guess that`s why more affluent ,safer areas are much more expensive.
There is a good argument for legalising drugs for addicts.
However early users of drugs shoul be under no illusion of the sordid nature of the drug trade.
 
sunrock said:
There is a good argument for legalising drugs for addicts.
However early users of drugs shoul be under no illusion of the sordid nature of the drug trade.
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But early users then become addicts, and legalising it will not benefit them. In the same way as warnings on cig packs haven't stopped 13 year old girls from smoking, we have to accept that unless there is a magcal solution we are jammed with this globally proficient problem.
 
There was an interesting discussion about the drug legalisation issue on BBC2 Newsnight last night and somebody made the valid point that in this debate a lot of the time people are looking for the perfect solution rather than the one with the best cost/benefit tradeoff. He happened to be arguing for some sort of legalisation of heroin.
 
James Whale was reviewing papers on Sky this morning and wanted to legalise prostitution, drugs (all types) and bring the nation into the "20th" century, maybe I was just confused, but legalising heroin doesn't seem to have a great deal of benefit. I know here in Croatia there were the first addicts in europe (thanks to the east-west trail and major ports) and good old Tito stuck them all onto islands. He died and the new mob decided it wasn't so nice, so they set about carving up countries for themselves. Can there be a solution for something so rotten as drugs?
 
I tend not to agree with McDowell very often, but he made a statement a few months ago to the effect that anyone who buys drugs is contributing to the problem. "Anyone" means the person who does a line of coke at a posh party or who smokes a joint at the weekend.

Nobody seems to be able to make the link between cause and effect, that the drug lords couldn't live off the proceeds of a few junkies on heroin -- a drug that is much cheaper now in real terms than it ever was. The real money is in the so-called recreational drugs, and if you ever use any of these you should know that you helped support an "industry" that killed that young plumber this week.

This is a message that needs to be drummed into the head of every self-centered jerk who uses illegal drugs. Its not just a case of doing themselves harm, they are helping to wreck lives and families all over the country with their selfish and stupid behaviour.
 

Oh I think you're wrong on that one. They are actually helping to wreck lives and families all over the world.
 

Correct me I'm wrong but I assume from your post you would be against any form of legalisation of current illegal drugs?

People (and some animals) have used recreational drugs for millennia. This is unlikely to change. The case for legalizing illegal drugs grows stronger all the time when the current means of preventing their use and thus curtailing the illegal trade in them does not have the desired effect and if anything is counter-productive. Prohibiting recreational drugs results in their illegal trade becoming massively profitable. Legalizing their use and distribution with proper government regulation should negate this. The proceeds can be used to provide the required mechanisms and social supports to (a) prevent people who succumb to addiction from falling into that category (i.e. many of those who have fallen through the social net) and (b) in the event of this failing provide them with the adequate support and means to recover from addiction.

We already have many legal drugs (e.g. tobacco and alcohol being the most common) whose use quite probably lead to more deaths, despair and destruction than illegal drugs yet we tolerate their use. Governments and multi-national co-operations profit from their use just as the illegal drug industry profits from the trade in illegal drugs yet one we can legally justify and accept one but not the other. Why not? Is the person who legally smokes tobacco or drinks alcohol also "self-centered jerk" as they are "not just a case of doing themselves harm, they are helping to wreck lives and families all over the country with their selfish and stupid behavior" by supporting an industry involved in the legal trade and consumption of tobacco or alcohol.

Surely the link between cause and effect is more complex than recreational drug use simply being the reason why the illegal drugs trade is along with the trade of military arms and fossil fuels one of the largest economic activities in the world. We should ask ourselves why humans seem to have a need to experiment with recreational drug and proceed from there rather than try to deny and suppress human nature and suffer its consequences. Better to acknowledge these desires and work from there.
 

The point is not just about what you are doing to yourself, it's what you're supporting. In the case of illegal drugs, you're not the only one paying the price. It could be farmers in Columbia at the mercy of gun-toting drug-dealing terrorists, drug money going to the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan used to buy explosives that kill civilians, contractors and soldiers, or supernormal profits funding the purchase of the guns that are later used to kill an enemy and a completely innocent bystander back here in Dublin.

The alcohol and tobacco industries are not particularly nice ones, particularly the latter, but they aren't quite as blood-soaked.

We are not, imo, going to get drugs legalised - probably in our lifetimes. I actually agree that legalisation would help address at least some of the issues around drug supply and addiction, but no-one will have the political courage to do it and risk seeming to place some sort of imprimatur on recreational drug use.

Against that background, I think it's very important that there's a clear message to those who think "It's only hash / it's only a line / it's just a pick-me-up; there's no harm in it," that YES THERE IS HARM IN IT, and you're probably not the one who'll suffer most from it.
 
i have no sympathy for those drug dealers gangsters who try to wipe each other out, i hope they do just that, its a pity an innocent bytander had to die as well
 

I agree Dreamerb that many people across the world suffer on the supply side just as badly and many times far worse than those who also suffer on the demand side. Colombia and Afghanistan as you mention being the most well-known locations of these happenings. However, the origins of the drug trade in these countries came about as a result of depressed or shattered economies (sometimes caused due to Western policies) where the only avenue left open to impoverished landholders was the cultivation of illicit substances, coca derivatives in Colombia and opium in Afghanistan. For many in such situations there is no alternative. Many times, in Colombia for example, the threat to growers from "gun-toting" elements comes not from the "drug-dealing terrorists" but state itself. It is also obvious that the US "War on Drugs" is failing in this respect despite the fact that billions of dollars have been spent on trying to reduce both supply and demand, the aerial fumigation to eradicate coca crop in Colombia being the most controversial means to attempt this.

Dreamerb said:
The alcohol and tobacco industries are not particularly nice ones, particularly the latter, but they aren't quite as blood-soaked.
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Yes, and the reason they are not blood-soaked is probably in large part due to the fact they are legalised. I'm sure if they were illiegal we would be seeing the same effects from their illegal trade as we see in the drugs trade.


Unfortunately not, even a well-informed debate seems unlikely any time soon. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that humans have always and will always experiment with mind-altering substances. It's in our nature, from time immemorial we have seeked ways to escape reality for a time. For some it is a cigarette, for others it is "joint", for some a pint, for others an "pill". Why can we accept all the legal forms of such escapism but not those that are deemed illegal. Whether a drug is legal or illegal there will always be those who become addicted and cause pain and suffering to themselves and others, this is unfortunate especially for those involved, but not acknowledging or dealing with the problem(s) will not make it go away.

There is harm done to others in many things we do and actively support, some knowingly and others unknowingly. Market protectionism in developed countries can cause pain and suffering in developing countries. Western lifestyles could/will make the planet less habitable for futures generations. Prohibiting recreational drugs results in their illegal trade becoming massively profitable, thus spawning crime and violence and as a result pain and suffering. It is only by dealing with the root causes in a fair and humane manner that we can ever hope to alleviate their worst consequences.

Postscript: I thought the staged display of armed Gardai on the streets of Dublin last night showed how far we have yet to go in attempting to form a constructive and long lasting solution to the problems mentioned in this thread.

 
These murders are not drug related. They are Gang Related. The fact that the gangs happen to deal in drugs doesn't mean the gangs will go away if you legalise drugs.

These are people who feel that Crime Pays, and if you remove the profit margin from one crime (by either legalising it, or making it to difficult to commit the crime) then they'll switch to another crime. Gun Running, Armed Robbery, Kidnapping, Bootleg Clothes or DVD's.

Whatever the crime is the Gangs will still exist and still shoot each other and innocent people in order to grow their business.

So, let's separate the debate about legalising drugs, from the potential impact on crime. Let's assume that the criminals will find other crimes.

The case for legalising drugs has to stand on it's own merits, just like the case for legalising Prostitution has to. I happen to think there are some merits in the arguments for both of these, but they are incidental to the debate on gun crime.

The solutions to crime have to come from policing, and from society deciding it has had enough, not from making more and more things legal until there are no crimes left to commit.

We know that where there is a will great strides can be made to cut crime. When a Journalist gets shot and there is national outrage suddenly all sorts of resources can be made available and they have an effect.

So ask yourself why it is that you allow the people who hold the purse strings to sit back and wait for someone famous to die before they do something.

Is a Journalist, a politician or a Judges life worth more than a plumbers? If so then OK. At least society has decided on who's murder it will tollerate and who's it wont. I'd like to have known all this when I filled out my CAO form, but I suppose it's never to late to get these things sorted out.

-Rd
 

Good point. If Baiba Saulite's solicitor had been murdered like they were threatening and thankfully he wasn't, I reckon the law society would have made such political noise that we would have seen a response from the governement and from the Judiciary (who seem to get off blame free when this topic is debated) similar to that when Veronica Guerin was killed.
 
there is a sense in which a young plumber is even more innocent than the others - Guerin knew she was in danger from the gangs, judges and solicitors can see what happened the judiciary in Italy with Mafia reprisals. He was just doing a job on a house which was owned by a mother of two young kids, who happened to be the niece of the gang leader.
(I don't actually think anyone is less 'innocent', just making the point.)

But I do think that the illegal trade in arms needs urgent stamping out - criminals who don't have access to guns aren't QUITE as dangerous to the public.
 
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