the real criminals for that prank were never even tried.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w...
I expect in such a society, certain groups (e.g. Mormons) would normalize banning yourself from vices the day you turn 18.
Murder has never been legal.
The society didn't decide, the ruling class decided to use drug policy to attack their own citizens.
History shows that prohibition is an abject failure. The fent epidemic is symptomatic of this failed policy.
If they actually cared about the epidemic, addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin whilst also having ready access to treatment.
But then we'd have empty prisons and the police would be free to solve real crimes so we can't have that.
2. There is no evidence anyone else ever said this, either
The closest you get is MLK.
See https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.
He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.
Last I heard he was promising to make drug dealers eligible for the death penalty: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-wants-e...
The war on drugs have caused immeasurable harm due to failure to understand most people use drugs either as escapism or as a tendency.
That's why it has failed.
I don't know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?
Don't take my word for it though, the monticello folks looked into it too - https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
It is a fun quote though, because it's one of those quotes that people want to use to justify their own dumb behavior.
"If you don't like the law, feel free to ignore it" - Albert Einstein
In my personal belief, everyone[0] has the right and moral obligation to fight the injustice they care about at the level they can manage. If that's handing out water at the protest or inventing penicillin, do what you personally can do to improve the world.
[0]the average layperson, obvious exceptions for power/money apply
He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.
”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
Theres probably a movie or two about it too
>Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
edit: i see your other comment with the context
He was trying to create a more just, egalitarian society. I don't understand how you can consider acting in accordance with leading research on successful drug policy "moronic"?
Considering the diversity of standards of justice within the history of Christianity (which, in just the US, includes—relevant to this topic—MLK, sure, but also the Southern Baptist Convention, founded explicitly in support of slavery), I don't know that having rhetoric grounded in Christian theology tells much of substance about the standard of justice one is appealing to.
I find that hard to believe.
It's weird that GP seemed to purposely obscure that.
It happens all the time in pleas and diversion agreements, so don’t frame it as a reckless lone judge going off the reservation.
Of course Trump's platform was enormously based on law & order and combatting the drug trade, which he seems to think should still be actually illegal and is not ending the war on drugs so, I don't know - make of that what you will.
Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.
It should eventually pop up here: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-recipients
(among other places)
We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.
> weapons weren't permitted on the platform
My mistake.
The only reasonable argument for drug legalization, in my opinion, is the libertarian one - the idea that you should be free to take the drugs you want to take. I am sympathetic to this argument. I am someone who is able to make wise decisions about the drugs I take. But I also recognize that millions of my fellow citizens are not. The harm to society from drug addiction and overdoses outweighs the benefit to me getting high whenever I want.
Ross though? The government alleged it but never bothered to prove it. Furthermore the government agents involved were laughably corrupt, so anything they alleged needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. For all anybody here know, they fabricated the entire assassination story to distract the public from their plot to loot Ross's money (which unlike the assassination stuff, has been proven in court.)
Not really, this was a case of a private company deliberately pushing narcotics for profit without oversight or any associated increase in access to treatment options.
Now the "opioid epidemic" has been replaced with a "fentanyl epidemic" which is objectively a much more dangerous drug with absolutely no regulation and murderous cartels instead of doctors - and we're still throwing people in prison for the crime of being addicts rather than treating it as a medical issue.
I don't know the stats (or if it's even possible to accurately collect statistics due to prohibition) but I'm fairly certain this costs more lives than the short lived opioid epidemic.
Biden pardonning his son and other criminals also made this clear.
Most people are becoming aware most politicians are actually criminals in suits.
Here's the thing about the US federal law enforcement: there aren't actually a lot of them. In a country of 380 million people, there are 38,000 agents. Google employs more people than the FBI. If the US citizenry decided to take collective action against them, the federal domestic police force alone could not stand against the citizenry.
This shapes where they apply their resources. To be most effective, they need to be visible so that people don't start to think of them as toothless, because mass-resistance to their general police activities would actually work. So they pursue cases into the dust to generate high-profile images of lawbreakers having a really awful time to discourage other lawbreakers.
He was prosecuted because he broke US drug law. But he was prosecuted to the extent he was prosecuted because Silk Road had made headlines as something untouchable by federal authority. That's the kind of Capone energy that the federal law enforcement cannot abide and survive as an institution.
He was not pardoned for any crimes not charged, and therefore could still be charged.