Pushed on the morality of his business, he said it was a reality “that drugs destroy. Unfortunately, as I said, where I grew up there was no other way and there still isn’t a way to survive, no way to work in our economy to be able to make a living.” If he disappeared, he said, it would make no difference to the drug business.

The "War on Drugs" is over. Drugs won. One of my most circledotted comments on Hubski was sarcastically congratulating the Feds for breaking up Silk Road 2, as doing so would certainly curtail humanity's inherent cravings for vice. So as to why the United States is still funneling billions of dollars into what is essentially a game of "whack-a-mole" seems like a pretty valid question.

And I'm not even sure we're really fighting drugs anymore, or just going through the motions so that my grandma can sleep at night ("Bitcoins? I heard they buy drugs!", she told me. "And so does USD," I replied. She instantly conceded defeat.) Valid criticisms aside of author integrity aside, this man and his latest book hint of a global balance between cartels, governments, and the fact that they're all composed of individual people, subject to extortion, bribery, blackmail, and anything else you can imagine. I'd wager there's more than a hint of truth to that idea. Full disclaimer: I haven't read the book, and probably never will. If you'd prefer a Hollywood action/thriller/drama on the subject, this movie was more than a little entertaining.

Reddit routinely points to Portugal's decriminalization of drugs and its effectiveness as proof that we should just legalize all drugs in all amounts everywhere in the world. Good ol' reductionist redditors. I doubt that implementing similar policy to Portugal's in the United States would cut through the Mexican cartels' jugulars, but I think it'd be a step in the right direction. Truthfully, I don't have an answer to The Problem, and I don't know that anyone does.

Maybe we can just put heroin, crack, and meth next to the tabloids at the supermarket, and cull the herd a little bit. I'm kidding, but if I did stand-up, I might use that bit.

He described labeling cheap "burner" phones, "one per contact, one per day, destroy, burn, buy, balancing levels of encryption, mirroring through Blackphones, anonymous email addresses, unsent messages accessed in draft form."

All for an acting role, yet American reporters couldn't for the story of the century figure out how to simply accept PGP messages from Edward Snowden.

US actors are more skilled at reporting than US reporters. This is extremely depressing.