Prohibition is enforced jointly by the largely decentralized, traditional police (exectuive cabinet position = Ministry of Police), and the specialized, national Prohibition squad, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for the Enforcement of Prohibiton (MEP). In cases involving Drug Lords, the military is used.
All drug cases are sent to the dedicated Alcohol Circuit of courts, headed by the Grand Alchohol Tribunal. Despite the name, the GAT and its inferior courts are the "drug courts" of TurtleShroom, which deal with all criminal, non-medicinal drug cases, from booze to bongs and all in between.
The jail time for possesion/consumption of alcohol is two weeks initially, doubled for each offense, with an infinite number of repeats being possible in theory.
All other drugs used to be strict maximum and minimum sentences, but a law that made certain drug trafficking and dealing crimes punishable by death also gave huge freedoms to the Alcohol Circuit to choose the punishment. For any non-alcoholic drug, the range is from one month to two life sentences for any form of its use or existance (e.g. consumption, supplying, trafficking, etc. etc.), subject to the opinions and decision of the judge. Depending on the mood and level of compassion by the presiding bench, folks successfully convicted with a few ounces on them have seen decades in jail, and in other reigons, those found with a bus full of weed would get a slap on the wrist of a few years.
If the drug amount exceeds a set amount (which varies on the substance), the crime becomes capital and the judge can choose death. There were four drug-related executions thus far in 2011, and nine more are pending execution, to be put to death by the end of the year, bringing the drug crimes on Death Row to thirteen.
This lack of standardization and deregulation makes the sentencing for drugs unpredictable, but drug smuggling rings are extremely adept to perform their actions in favorable Alcohol Circuit jurisdictions.
The punishment for anything regarding drug/LSD magic mushrooms is death. This is because sentient mushrooms are considered citizens and protected like humans. Therefore, if someone smokes LSD magic mushrooms, they might be literally smoking a TurtleShroomer! (Killing a sentient mushroom is the crime of fungicide, which is in every way but name identical to murder/homocide
The fight against drug dealers and consumption is tiring, exhaustive, and the number one reason why TurtleShroom's police ratio sets universe records. Half of all crimes in TurtleShroom are drug-related. Thirty percent of prisoners are there for alcohol alone, the other twenty for all other non-medicinal drugs.
Forty percent of the police are part of the MEP and the military has two elite divisions to target organized crime and Drug Lords.
The street value of alcohol is three hundred percent higher than its legal selling. The street value of marajuana/cannibis is five hundred percent its legal equivalent. -and most dramatically, the street value of "magic mushroom" LSDs are ten thousand times higher than the legal equivalent's price. (*Legal equivalent is defined by the price of the drug in Switlia.)
The most successful dealer in TurtleShroom history was "Stoney the Robot", a Transformer from Victorious Decepticons who made over sixty billion $USD by totally monopolizing the cocaine and cannibis trades over the entire nation of TurtleShroom. (He's a fifty story giant robot. It was too easy.)
He was finally defeated when TurtleShroom unleashed their Moon Cannon on him. (The Moon Cannon was intended as the ultimate post-WMD last resort in the darkest, bloodiest of wars... -but it was used on Stoney.)
The largest drug cartels and organized crime syndicates combine themselves to become multiple tens of trillion-dollar industries that have the power and organization of sovereign nations.
Documents seized from kingpins by the police document meetings governed by Robert's Rules of Order, with minutes, militarty-grade weapons, and even crowns (made of glass methanphetamine snorters and/or bongs), flags, Constitutions, and rulebooks. The drug black market of TurtleShroom is sophsiticated and essentially a sovereign nation unrecognized by TurtleShroom. If it was a real nation, it would have a population of ten million, and only nine hundred thousand of the druggies would be from TurtleShroom. Its GDP would be bigger than TurtleShrooms, its exports five times more than its enemy, and the amount of money it pulls in can never be calculated.
Even with a wealth of information from druggies' "law books" and other cartel-based nation-like items with extensive data, the sheer size of the smuggling market makes it impossible to ever permanently stop it. The constant cunning and brilliance of the Drug Lords makes it virtually impossible to remove them from TurtleShroom.
The endless battle that is waged between the black market and the police of TurtleShroom has been a stalemate since 1913, when the police of the day managed to kill fifty drug kingpins and their associates, essentially collapsing the order of the "families" and "rulers" of the Mafia and the cartel narco-nations.
Some rule themselves like countries, others like businesses, still others like terror networks. Every group is different and every group
The worst group, though, are not the mob or the cartels. Alcohol can be made in basements and forests. All you need is grain, fruit, sugar, water, and yeast. All of these items are cheeap and abundant.
Did you honestly think a hayseed agrarian realm like TurtleShroom didn't have a hick moonshine burden?
Alcohol bootleggers and rumrunners are the most common breed of drug criminal and are usually side projects by otherwise decent citizens. For example, a community college was revealed to contain a moonshine distillery in the basement of the building, where moonshine whiskey was produced with the knowledge and participation of ninety percent of the faculty, and the rest were bribed to silence. Most students didn't even know it existed.
The college netted over eight hundred thousand dollars a year until a guilt-ridden whistleblower tipped them off.
Over six hundred thousand moonshine distilleries are caught in the dunes of the desert, deep in the rainforests, and in the murk of the swamps. These are shut down as fast as they open, now and forever endless in productions.
Police versus drugs. It's an exciting and classic story of cat-and-mouse that every single creature in TurtleShroom fully admits will never go away...
...unless the "Noble Experiment" is shut down for good.
- STATISTICS
-OVERALL-
- SURVEY SAYS: Approval rating of Prohibition: 88% "loved", 4% "supported", 1.5% "neutral", 7.4% "legalize drugs" (survey sample = one million random TurtleShroomers)
- Worth of all drugs seized combined in the 2000s (from Jaunary 2000- December 2010): one quadrillion Skillets. (Remember: 4.8991 Skillets = $1, so it'd be less in $USD.)
- Breakdown (est.):
[Blocktext]Human: 65%
Turtle: 10%
Mushroom: 25%
Foreign-born: 90%
TurtleShroomer: 10%
(Drug smuggling is, by and large, done by foreigners.)
-BOOZE-
- Most popular drug in TurtleShroom: Alcohol
- Particular type of booze: Moonshine whiskey and Rum
- Hick distilleries shut down in 2011: 780,000 so far
- Gallons seized: over five hundred thousand every two months
- Police deaths in alcohol fights: 1 so far
- Alcohol-based arrests: 1,080,981 so far
- Known cartels/syndicates in alcohol: 2 (most alcohol is local and indepent)
- Drinkers/DUI/Consumption caught: 400,000
- Selling/Trafficking/Intent to Sell/Hoarding caught: 680981
-CANNIBIS-
- Weed plantations* discovered in 2011: 2
- Weed plantations discovered in 2000-2010: 7
- Other weed farms** found: 59
- All other weed growing***: 10
- Average crop size: 20 marajuana plants
- Total cannibis-based arrests: 300,000 est.
- Consumers/potheads/stoners/WUI caught in 2011: 50,003 est.
- Selling/Trafficking/Intent to Sell/Hoarding caught: 249,997 est.
* = A "plantation" is defined in TurtleShroom law as any non-mobile one-crop estate with over six hundred dedicated acres and twenty or more employees. This definition for plantation is universally used on all crops, legal and illegal.
** = Unlike plantations, a "weed farm" is defined a non-mobile area of at least a half an acre with more than five cannibis plants.
*** = Includes hobby growing and travelling dealers
- METHANPHETAMINE AND COCAINE -
- Meth labs found in TurtleShroom so far: 15
- Average meth production rate totalled: 1000 gallons
- Meth lab explosions this year: 1
- Cocaine plantaions* found so far in 2011: 0
- Cocaine plantations found from 1950-2010: 2
- Cocaine farms** found: 0
- Cocaine farms found from 1950-2010: 11
- Total methanphetamine arrests: 30,000 est.
- Consumers caught in 2011: 5,003 est.
- Selling/Trafficking/Intent to Sell/Hoarding caught: 24,997 est.
- Total cocaine arrests in 2011: 6,000 est.
- Consumers caught in 2011: 1,211
- Selling/Trafficking/Intent to Sell/Hoarding caught: 4,800 est.
* = See plantation definition
** - See "weed farm" definition
{I'm too lazy to write the rest...}[/list][/box][/blocktext][/blocktext]
