Quote from: waytoomany on April 27, 2012, 03:36 amWhy doesn't the government just start producing drugs... wouldn't that put all the criminal organizations out of business?You're forgetting history. The British did do this before, it was called the Opium Wars, they were importing 1000 tons of opium per year into China every year in the early 1800s.For comparison, the total world production of opium is about 8000 tons and as you'd imagine our populations are massively bigger. Drugs have been used by states as methods of social and political control since inception. In the case of the Chinese, I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for the anti-trade 1800 government. They crippled their own country. Many misguided ideas about reality continued until the Japanese invasions, a major wake up call. And then they fell prey to communism... China has been it's own worst enemy for over 2 centuries, and only snapped out of it lately.Today, drugs are infinitely more powerful than before. Today, I shudder to think what would happen if a government used a drug to exercise ideological control over its population. Drugs are only expensive because they are illegal or intellectual property. Xanax for example, is extremely cheap to produce, but is sold for 500,000% the cost of manufacture albeit that's an unusual example. You could stockpile enough LSD for the entire planet's population for the rest of the century if you only had the right people, equipment and materials for a month or two. If a government controls all drug manufacture, you'll eventually get a chemical dystopia.