And having children

"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy eating bugs"

I already eat bug from a lot of foraging and fruit market waste, not very intentionally, but they are there and they eat the same thing, so can't be bad, extra proteins actually

No need to minimize consumption for cocaine, ~90% of the resources used are in the distribution.

If legalized, the cost of distribution would crater to that of other products, just a few dollars per kg.

it costs pollution to grow, transport, stock, plastic-wrap, etc..

it's like saying: "it doesn't cost pollution to buy those avocadoes grown in another continent since they're already there", it's true immediately (above all if very ripe), but in the mid-long term, reducing consumption reduces production & pollution (at all level of the chain)

Sure there are some essential production and distribution costs, but let's remember that cocaine is a minimally processed leaf extract.

You can industrialize its production and get close to sugar level production pricing and distribution. Sugar sourced from Brazil hits my Toronto supermarket shelf bagged at CAD$1.50/kg at 99.9% purity, including retailer markup. Which is like 1/50000th the retail price of cocaine.

Even if it costs 10x as much due to lower volume/weaker extracts/slower growth/additional processing, you're talking a 99.9something% reduction in resource expenditure per dose.

Price of something is a good representation of the resources destroyed ("costs") in its production.

Minimally processed leaf extract? You make it sound like extracting cocaine is the equivalent to making sugar.

Most sugar today comes from beets and is extracted through an industrial process. Drug cartels rely on things like gasoline because they are commonly available, but if there were not criminal sanctions on the process, then it’s possible some higher-quality means of extraction would be employed.

It’s almost all from sugarcane in Canada, crude juice is extracted in places like Brazil and refined in Canada.

You can chew out the sugar or cocaine if you like.

(I think coca needs an acid base extraction to get a crystalline form, but that’s straightforward chemistry at scale)

Most sugar in my own backyard originates from beets, but I see I was wrong about it being most sugar worldwide. Wikipedia[0] gives a figure of 30% of world sugar for 2013.

If crude juice is extracted in Brazil and refined in Canada, I’m surprised that it is viewed as cost-effective to transport so much unneeded liquid by sea.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet

I could be mistaken on the form of sea transit. I just know it gets refined in Canada (which also seems like a waste: why not refine at source?).

Sea transit is cheap, sugarcane grows better in the tropics than beets in cooler places. Harder to harvest below-ground stuff.

Canada used to subsidize/protect sugar beet producers (to keep them competitive), but largely got out of it.

Maybe that’s why we still refine it: because the plants still exist.

> it’s possible

Nope it's not possible and it's more than obvious way.

The cocaine content in coca leaves is 0.23% to 0.96%. Sugarcane has a magnitude or so higher sugar content.

It is. Then you’re an acid-base crystallization away to powder product.

Cocaine is not a synthetic drug. Been around long before any human was walking around.

But it's the refining that is modern. Chewing on coca leaves is not the same thing as a little key bump. Let's not try to confuse what's happening

Solvent-extraction and crystallization isn't very modern.

Are we really arguing about the pollution caused by the cocaine trade instead of the violence and destruction of lives for addicts. What a proposterous contention

Right, let's just sit around in our tents in the dark and try not to move or speak unless absolutely necessary. Moving is not always essential, and has a caloric cost, which means food consumption. Are you sure being on this site right now is actually necessary? In fact, why bother being alive at all?

Yeah, have fun with that. I'm going to enjoy my life!

Tents are made from nylon, and nylon is made from fossil fuels!

Jiminy Cricket, you're right! We shall build dung huts instead to be even more eco-friendly

Nerd snipe: Will the sequestered carbon from a grass and dung hut make up for the CO2 expended in manual labour to build one.

Humanity can have just 2 modes of operation (3th one is fake path). 1) is to consume less and less, so we end up like living in tents in dark with population 10B and more.. 2) Smart-manage population growth and cut bullshit jobs, so we end up with 200M-300M people living good live.

The choise is yours. I personally would go with (2) option, but its just me.

Before anyone hit the downvote button, think about it in math. You only have limited amount of resources and energy. How you distribute it, is up to you.