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 Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:28 am
OnTheIce OnTheIce: Curtman Curtman: OnTheIce OnTheIce: So just because it's not reported in your fancy graphic, means it doesn't exist or isn't a problem? You tell me. Where is it a problem, and why isn't the media reporting it? Tell me why there's millions of smokers who have no problem going to buy $15 packages of cigarettes, and why they don't go buy them from bubba in the back lane for $2? Don't have to look far past a Native reserve to find a problem with either smokes or booze being run through....a sensitive subject for any media to cover. However, the National Post did a big story a few years back....a quote: $1: The RCMP has estimated that 175 organized-crime organizations are involved in the tobacco trade, conceding that some are “mom-and-pop” operations, but also established groups like the outlaw bikers and Eastern-European mob. The New Big Tobacco: Inside Canada’s underground tobacco industry, a five-part serieshttp://news.nationalpost.com/2010/09/18 ... rt-series/There's a few good articles here. $1: Three months ago, a southwestern Ontario farmer reportedly sold 90,000 lbs. of raw-leaf tobacco, about a tenth of the crop produced on the area’s largest farms, to a shadowy buyer. The eye-popping, secret payment he pocketed in return was $1-million–in cash–close to five times the price he would have commanded on the legal market. $1: Mr. Cazzetta is infamous as the head of the defunct Rock Machine gang, which fought a long and bloody war with the Hells Angels in Quebec. When the Angels triumphed, Mr. Cazzetta joined forces with his old rivals.
The Rice family’s dealings with him, however, were solely through a legal beverage distributor he ran, which sold a U.S. energy drink the Mohawk firm marketed in Canada, Mr. Rice said. He does admit that his own past as an aboriginal person immersed in white society, where taunting schoolmates would call him a “savage,” helps him identify with the bikers, though not their criminal acts. “I’ve always been viewed as an outsider,” he said. “Natives, guys like me, are able …to say ‘I know how you feel.’ “
When the family started its cigarette operation, though, it planned to be totally above board, figuring that lower overhead costs on the reserve would allow it to pay all the taxes and still undercut the price of major non-native brands. The company obtained a federal licence, which allowed it to sell to other First Nations people, but was denied one by Quebec that would have opened access to the non-native market. In a 2006 letter, Revenue Quebec said it could not consider the licence application because the Kahnawake band council had objected to any inspection of the plant by the department. “We can not ignore … the council’s warnings,” the letter said. Let the bikers try to survive in their niche market. The average person has no desire whatsoever to deal with them, and they'll buy their smokes at 7-11. You take out one of these distributors, and their customers will return to 7-11. In the drug market, there is no 7-11. The market just creates another distributor, and the market never gets any smaller.
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OnTheIce 
CKA Uber
Posts: 10666
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:54 am
Curtman Curtman: Let the bikers try to survive in their niche market. The average person has no desire whatsoever to deal with them, and they'll buy their smokes at 7-11. Considering they have 50% of the market in Ontario, 40% in Quebec and 20%+ in Canada as a whole, I don't think people have a problem dealing with them at all. They've been "surviving" quite well. Billions in sales helps.
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:07 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson: Curtman Curtman: The escalation of violence is a direct result of prohibition. Fine. Canada has problems with Mexican cartels now so you legalize pot, coke, meth, and heroin first and then we'll talk. You look at the numbers, and see which we should deal with first, and then we'll talk. 
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:50 pm
Lemmy Lemmy: OnTheIce OnTheIce: How about this, curtman...because you feel your choices and those of others don't affect anyone.
How about we legalize all drugs here in Canada and the US.
When it comes down to getting health insurance, you pay a much larger amount if you're a drug user or found to be a user upon diagnosis. Same goes right now for smokers so let's apply that to any type of drug If you lie, use drugs and get sick, you get the bill. use.
In Canada, if you're diagnosed with an illness due to your drug use, you're responsible for paying a premium for your care or require special "drug user" insurance to cover where our system won't pay. I'll support that, with provisions: You tie risk to actual, scientifically proven costs and damages. That means we bill fat, lazy people 100,000 times more than fit, active people who smoke pot. Next, we bill people for riding motorcycles, scuba diving, living in cities, and every other social and recreational choice that affects costs. Oh, and of course we also have to screen people for every conceivable genetic predisposition to anything. Why should I pay the same as the person who has cancer in their family when none of my ancestors ever have had it? If you want to play the "risk-cost" game, let's get the real, actual risks and costs rather than the costs you perceive out of your moral outrage over drug use. Sorry, dude, but the real drags on your health taxes are fat people and cancer patients, not pot smokers. IF its made legal there will be a tax and my guess is a heavy tax not so much because of the possible health issues but it would be a cash cow and let Ontario for exzample pay down its debt.
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andyt
CKA Uber
Posts: 33492
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:55 pm
Are you sure about that because I don't know about that because legalization would make many more people use the drugs with all the problems that causes so it would cost a lot more for treatment and people sitting in their basements not working and being a drain on the economy besides the Cheetos economy that is and anyway the gangs would just sell the dope for less than the government does the way they do now with cigarettes and alcohol and look at all the problems that causes so we might not really be better off with legalization
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Posts: 35270
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:03 pm
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:10 pm
I do all kinds of dope. I demand that you love me for it! 
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Posts: 11907
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:24 pm
Curtman Curtman: What I care about is stopping the violence from the drug trade. The rest doesn't interest me much.  What you care about is the ability to smoke dope without being charged. This bullshit about "stopping the violence" is nothing but blowing smoke up everyones ass!
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Posts: 65472
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:37 pm
2Cdo 2Cdo: Curtman Curtman: What I care about is stopping the violence from the drug trade. The rest doesn't interest me much. What you care about is the ability to smoke dope without being charged. This bullshit about "stopping the violence" is nothing but blowing smoke up everyones ass!  +5
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 1:53 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson: 2Cdo 2Cdo: Curtman Curtman: What I care about is stopping the violence from the drug trade. The rest doesn't interest me much. What you care about is the ability to smoke dope without being charged. This bullshit about "stopping the violence" is nothing but blowing smoke up everyones ass! +5 I can do that now. I've never been charged with anything.
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Posts: 23565
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:55 pm
andyt andyt: BartSimpson BartSimpson: Curtman Curtman: The new guy thinks they're better off fighting actual crime instead of moral crimes. Right, because if you just abandon any notions of morality we all know how great the world could be. Is smoking pot immoral but drinking alcohol moral? Based upon the fact that one is legal and one is not, then yes.
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Posts: 23565
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:00 pm
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OnTheIce
CKA Uber
Posts: 10666
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:36 pm
Gunnair Gunnair: Isn't it odd, that a guy like curtman, so concerned about gang crime, had no clue about the illegal cigarette trade?
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Posts: 23565
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:50 pm
OnTheIce OnTheIce: Gunnair Gunnair: Isn't it odd, that a guy like curtman, so concerned about gang crime, had no clue about the illegal cigarette trade? No. It just doesn't fit into the agenda.
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Posts: 21665
Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:05 am
andyt andyt: How about this, curtman...because you feel your choices and those of others don't affect anyone.
How about we legalize all drugs here in Canada and the US.
When it comes down to getting health insurance, you pay a much larger amount if you're a drug user or found to be a user upon diagnosis. Same goes right now for smokers so let's apply that to any type of drug If you lie, use drugs and get sick, you get the bill. use.
In Canada, if you're diagnosed with an illness due to your drug use, you're responsible for paying a premium for your care or require special "drug user" insurance to cover where our system won't pay. We should legalize but regulate. Different drugs, different regulations. I like your proposal, because the drinkers would pay much higher premiums than the pot heads or possibly even the junkies (since they would now have access to clean heroin of known dosage). But as we know, many things can cost the health care system, so we'd have to include over and under eaters (anorexia is more dangerous than obesity) poor quality eaters, people who don't exercise, people who exercise too much (ie runners), people who drive cars, people who drive cars recklessly, etc etc. Soon we may be able to estimate your natural healthy lifespan from gene analysis - make the genetically inferior pay more. The pot smokers would probably cost the system less than just about anybody.[/quote] Don't we already have sin taxes? It's already taken care of.
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