>I agree, though I'm sure there are down-sides to it I think the truly amazing part is that for Holland to be even a little bit successful in this area with open borders to the rest of Europe ( and hence the rest of the world ) is rather amazing. Sort of like Maryland trying a radical social experiment and having it succeed despite the fact they can't really control the behavior of surrounding states.
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>In any case, we pretty much know what doesn't work and that should be enough to have them take a hard look at the "war on drugs". A basic understanding of supply and demand economics shows making drugs hard to come by ( when demand is a heck of a lot more inelastic ) is only going to increase the profit margin.
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>In another life I had a chance to learn quite a bit about the heroin trade - starting up in the Golden triangle and Afghanistan and including trafficking routes through Turkey and Marseilles. It was rather amazing even then - the early 70s - how the traffickers could afford to lose multimillion dollar shipments and just write them off as a business expense the way orange growers figure they are going to lose so many bushels to frost.
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>A few years later in Miami some friends in DEA showed me how the narcotrafficantes in the coca business weighed money because it took too long to count <s>
>

That's an eye-catching detail but I can't help feeling skeptical. Did everyone pay in the same denominations?

If we meet again, which I hope we do, I would love to hear some of your war stories. At least the stuff that isn't *still* classified. (For those who don't already know this, which is probably no one, Charles was a spook).

Then he went over to the dark side and became a programmer, LOL.