If you buy cannabis you are an accessory to the modern-day slave trade that caused the death of the 39 in the shipping container

[Parsimon]

I hate the fact that so many people in this country blissfully ignore the human misery behind the drugs they consume, whether it’s working class kids being stabbed because of their involvement with the gangs that supply cocaine to middle-class dinner parties or the “just a spliff” crowd who are fuelling modern slavery from predominantly Vietnamese trafficked immigrants, often children.

If you grow your own and trace to source everything else then you’re only harming yourself, but I expect that the vast majority of drugs users don’t actually do that.

Excellent article in the Guardian today about the children having to work to support UK cannabis consumption.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/25/trafficked-enslaved-teenagers-tending-uk-cannabis-farms-vietnamese/

Everyone that buys illegal drugs are part of the problem of exploitation abroad and drug gangs in the uk

Complain all you like about knife crime in London (and other parts of the country) but you are absolutely are contributing to it

@DaveMyHat thanks for the thoughtful reply. I appreciate your candour and I'm sorry about your brother.

How can th average consumer know if a mail bar or car wash is dodgy? Why not put the onus on local authorities to regulate these businesses?

@DaveMyHat

A while ago there was a post on here about missing people, the poster had linked to a website with pictures of those missing and two thirds were Vietnamese, it was shocking

This is how you can tell if it’s not legit: If you paid a ‘bargain’ price in cash to a place full of workers who can’t speak English in an area where you know that unless they have a thousand customers a day, they couldn’t possibly stay in business because even excluding all other costs the rent is too high for them to be viable, then it’s a money laundering front full of trafficked people.

If the price is too low to seem right - think about how the business might be making profit.

If the workers can speak English or not (suggests they are probably fairly well integrated and not isolated).

If it's a very new place that has come up without much publicity etc.

Car washes, I go past one occasionally ‘ Hand wash for £6’ quite a number of young men hanging around = no where near the min wage, A bit of a clue?

The nail bar in our small, middle England market town was raided recently. All the cannabis, however, is home grown

I remember when they raided half of Green Lanes in Haringey.

I used to live around there, and I did used to idly wonder at Green Lanes all night shops (while buying my giant slab of baklava costing 30p at 4 am) but would then get distracted by the baklava.

I used to feel very safe walking around there at night because all the shop lights were on, and the friendly drug lords shopkeepers.

We should legalise, they've done so in Portugal and it's been hugely successful in terms of lower crime (most crime is drug related) and addiction rates fell and continue to fall. It's been well demonstrated that prohibition doesn't work.

The tax generated would be a great earner for these austere times.

It’s easier not to think about it, if you live in a nice house and your kids are okay, that your drug use is causing misery to other people and their kids

The nice house and nice car are also causing misery to others. We live in luxury on the back of horrific human suffering. Cannabis isn't worse than, say, a mobile phone.

Those people didn't die because people buy cannabis.

I didn’t know this but then I don’t use drugs, it’s awful! We do grow (legitimately) a lot of cannabis for medical use in proper farms in the UK as licences recently became legalised to do so).

I do use nail bars but know the lady there quite well and her kid is at a loca school. Not sure if I should stop?

Car washes / adult black market work is a tricky one, I’m going to see my friend today who came here illegally from India as a teen, he was promised college but then put to work in a burger bar, freezing and exhausted.

He’s taken black market work ever since until he got papers this year, but with all that he’d still rather be here and able to sustain his family back home who would starve otherwise so I can’t get too down on black market work like car washes. It’s very hard to hear, but it’s that or what for his family?

I thought the Albanians had the global cocaine market sewn up.

A friend told me a very disturbing story about a Vietnamese nail bar the other day and it seems that the guy running it is known to the police as people trafficker but he's been in business for 10 years.

Well probably, probably not. But the truth is that the cocaine that people love to snort is tainted with the blood of innocent people of a big chunk of one continent: Latin America. Parts of Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia, and most of Central America are on siege. All thanks to the cocaine market.

Two car washes near me, within yards of each other. Opposite a police station.
You can get a quick wash for £3 or mini valet for £5.
Five or six lads washing a car doesn't equate to £3 unless we go back to 1960.
They have a price war going on at those prices!
Also cheaper rental properties sleeping 20 men head to foot.
In our area used tyre yards are another hot spot for trafficked men.

It's the age old solution, follow the money.
Until you take the profit away no serious impact will be made.

YANBU-Illegal drugs cause untold misery. Anyone who supports that industry buying something for their own pleasure is the scum of the Earth. Yes, I am judging them and happy to do so. Have known too many lives wrecked and lost.

Anyone buying illegal drugs on the street is directly supporting murder and human trafficking. Yes, lots of things which we consume have a negative impact on others, but not in such an immediate and dire way.

We should legalise, they've done so in Portugal and it's been hugely successful in terms of lower crime (most crime is drug related) and addiction rates fell and continue to fall. It's been well demonstrated that prohibition doesn't work

I was offered cannabis and cocaine multiple times a night on the street in Porto earlier this year - all by men I would suspect were migrants to Portugal. I'm not sure that their lives, or the lives of people working in the industry has improved since the reform.

Also important to note that Portugal hasn't legalised drugs, they decriminalised it. There are still fines for possession and production is still a criminal offence.

it’s that or what for his family?

How about his employer/master pays him and treats him properly. How about the authorities do something to address it? It’s not the fault of the trafficked people, they are desperate. Who would choose that life? If the pathway were there for legitimate work, or perhaps the pathway to illegitimate work was not so easy and going on in plain sight, perhaps everybody’s lives would be safer. We have children stabbed on our streets regularly for drug running. One man pulled up at a boys house and stabbed him when he answered the door, for refreshing to hand back his county lines phone which he’d been running whilst the other guy was in prison. I think he was only 17!

Yes I agree. Part of the reason drugs should be legalised which would take them out of the black market.

YABU- I buy local. There’s plenty of good ganja about support your local grower x

A lot of people grow their own cannabis. Not quite sure how that squares with the OPs assertion.

A lot of people grow their own cannabis specifically to avoid contact with the criminality of prohibition.

The OP said if you buy it, not if you grow your own. I think it's clear that she refers to buying from a dealer who in turn buys from a supplier. Not buying from a mate with a greenhouse.

Where I live there are 3 Vietnamese nail bars within a 5 minute walk. They charge £20 for a pedi and £12 for a mani. Cash only. Most of them have the same staff for years and they don’t seem unhappy. They do a great job.

Clearly I am hopelessly naive but surely some of them are legitimate businesses?

At least one previous poster has said the people who work at their local nail bar look 'happy' - so, just to be clear, modern slavery doesn't (always) look like ragged, dirty people who live every moment under the whip. They are often paid (not much, but something) because they need to live somewhere and eat something and it's easier for the slavers to give them enough to just about get by than to lock them up and feed them. The slavers also use 'debt' to keep people enslaved - they give them money for rent and food and what have you but it's a 'loan' and they are basically indentured to pay it back (which they'll never be able to do). In addition to the loan slavery, they're also in the country illegally, they may not speak the language, and the slavers constantly hold threats (physical and financial) over their heads. So if you think your nail tech or the guys at the hand car wash can't be slaves because they're smiling and they live in a flat instead of chained in a basement, well, you couldn't be more wrong.

Very naive question but I suppose that those pop up Christmas cash only shops are money laundering as well?