So, the goal is probably aligned more with career progression than stopping drug trade as such
"Chinese Drug Dealers Are Being Sentenced to Death in Sports Stadiums and Public Squares"
http://www.newsweek.com/china-criminals-sentenced-death-spor...
[2015] "On Wednesday, China’s Supreme People’s Court argued that serious drug crimes merit the death penalty. Serious cases involving “drug lords, professional drug dealers or re-offenders” as well as “drug smuggling, organized transnational drug crime and armed or violent drug crime” should all receive capital sentences, according to a circular released by the SPC."
https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/chinas-growing-drug-problem/
That's what I remembered.
As an adolescent of 12 or so, I remember watching a D.A.R.E. video in school where the fictional character tried marijuana for the first time, but it was secretly laced with cocaine and the fictional character had some kind of unspecified heart condition and hyper-sensitivity to cocaine that caused his first puff of pot to kill him. Remember kids, your first puff of pot can kill you!
They also told us that sometimes PCP is laced with rat poison.
Even as a 12 year-old, the implied frequency of such craziness beggared belief. It would have been more believable if they would have warned us that we shouldn't try hard liquor because it might be tainted with methanol. That at least happens with some frequency back in the Old Country, according to a Bulgarian friend.
Shut down the site, people move to another one, and you've got to start all over again.
Shutting it down is aligned with career progression (gets the big news). Leaving it running gives you some chance of affecting the actual drug trade
https://ctmirror-org.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/ctmirror.org/fil...
I agree with you that this sounds like a sensible strategy, and I don't understand the complaint above about career progression - to the extent that their careers were benefited by focusing on the most serious problems instead of a performative war on drugs, props to the system for enabling them to do this. People always make decisions based on career progressions, the best thing to do is set up incentives so those decisions are also good for society.
No, you should read the article rather than automatically assuming bad faith.
"Since the takedown, Ras says, they've arrested a dozen of Hansa's top vendors, with more arrests planned for coming weeks"
"While most drug vendors who fled AlphaBay showed up soon after on other dark web drug sites, those who fled Hansa didn't—or if they did, they recreated their online identities thoroughly enough to escape recognition"
“State bodies” are not required to pursue and assist with enforcing federal laws, and are generally prohibited from prosecuting under then except when states have been granted special power to do so in federal law. These are fundamental features of the “dual sovereignty” federal system in the US (and the freedom of states to decline to enforce federal law was noted as far back as in cases related to the Fugitive Slave Act prior to the Civil War.)
If the federal government wants to make laws, then it is also responsible for figuring out how to enforce them. Within certain bounds, it can bribe states to do it, but it can't command them to.
> writ of mandamus?
Yes, it exists.
No, it doesn't obligate state bodies to “pursue” or “prosecute” violations of federal law.
Hell, you can buy heroin directly in front of the Tenderloin police station. Not across the street, directly in front.
de facto, I'd say heroin is basically legal in San Francisco.
From what I've heard, people are just selling over Facebook and WhatsApp, and the police just can't be bothered with it because what are they going to do? Arrest people for buying small amounts for what is obviously personal use? Or try and track down and pin a case on someone for posting stuff. I can't see them taking Facebook down.