Quote from: Crooked on July 27, 2012, 09:15 amAh pine... I have learned so much from you :)Today, I was doing my new routine of analyzing news trends(practice I adopted because of you), and it looks to me as though there's a lot of focus from LE on busting people importing RCs from China. Now after reading this post of yours I can imagine the Cartels calling their LEabradors in to chase away the new kids on the block. Major raids been going down on legal synthetic sellers too ever since the new ban.Yes, although in this particular case they aren't Mexican or South American Cartels, but the Pharmaceutical Cartels like Johnson & Johnson or Glaxosmithkline. They collaborate on a huge scale with government officials at Customs and family doctor associations etc in order to prevent generic (cheaper but equivalent drugs) from being imported either by western enterprises or consumers.They will claim these drugs are counterfeit, but the reality is that 99% of the time the Indian and Chinese corporations producing the generics are the exact same corporations that produce the regular versions of the RC drug. i.e. these drugs are only counterfeit in the sense that they are not paying royalties to a company to make them. Because they roll off the exact same pill presses and contain the exact same active ingredients.Basically it is a giant conspiracy against the consumer. It's actually a much bigger problem for the world than the illegal drug trade. If this were actually an argument against Intellectual Property being violated, then I would have some sympathy for the western pharma. It is not cheap to produce basic pharma research etc.But this has got absolutely nothing to do with intellectual property, that's a different problem entirely, as evidenced again and again by the Western governments extending patents beyond reason or essentially prohibiting the use of generics by mandating the use of slightly adjusted RCs (these are "copycat drugs", the company has lost the patent to a drug, but tweaks the forumulae slightly to produce a drug with the same effect but that can be registered under a new patent for another couple of decades, effectively extending patents into infinity). They are trying to have their cake and eat it.The Chinese and Indian corporations have it right, they are the true capitalists in this market, not the western corporations.I'm all for capitalists to make profits, that is why I am one. But when you have a company making 500,000% profit in the difference it takes to make the pill and what it retails at, for decades, then there is something corrupting the market. There is no competition for such a profit margin? Really? That is highly suspect.I salute the black market enterprises of South East Asia, they are making the world a better place by being pirates. The pharmaceutical industry needs an almighty kick up the ass, on both price + innovation for all our sakes, from the poor of Africa to the pensioners in America spending a 1/3 of their income on drugs.Lastly; the law on synthetic 'legal highs' is completely irrelevant. The DEA and Customs are both a law unto themselves. They took a guy who wrote a book on MDMA down (Strike) with absolutely no evidence that he knew if he was supplying lab equipment to clandestine laboratories or not. Similarly, Dr Shulgin, a scientist working for the DEA who invented many drugs in his laboratory, was raided by the DEA on literally no grounds whatsoever. This is not about right or wrong in the Law, this is about the free market vs arbitrary coercion. If I got taken down I would begin a hunger strike until I was made a political prisoner because that is the reality.