Legalise Cocaine and Make the World a Better Place

[tom]

Travelers who are used to bumming around in South East Asia get a bit of a shock when they come to Central and South America. Whereas you have to be pretty unlucky to get mugged in Delhi, Bangkok or Tokyo, there’s barely a Latin American city where you can walk around at night without jeopardising your average travel insurance policy.

Mexico City, Guatemala City, San Marcos, Tegucialpa, San Salvador, Managua, San Jose, Panama City, Bogota, Caracas, Sao Paolo… the list could go on but it’s open season on gringos (and in fact anyone solvent enough to own their watch) in these places and no amount of incense sticks or little souvenir Buddha statues will change that. Violence, it would seem, is endemic in the Americas and some would say that it’s the reverberation of the original massacre of countless millions by the Spanish some many centuries ago.

Of course, the real reason is cocaine. That is, 90% of the violent crime, street gangs, government corruption and domestic misery can be traced back to perhaps the most profitable business in the world – trafficking of cocaine through the Americas. With profit mark-ups of several thousand percent, there’s enough cash to corrupt every single cop, customs agent and politician from Medellin to Miami. The coke travels through every conceivable route by land, sea and air, seeping through the paths of least resistance to supply the inexorable demand.

Americans and European middle class professionals are not the only ones to take cocaine, however. Coke and its dangerous derivatives like crack and basuro are taken all over Latin America and the price is such that it’s even a poor man’s drug of choice near the source countries of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Naturally, thanks to the War On Drugs, it’s illegal everywhere and the much publicised spraying of the coca crops, the occasional bust and the Narcotics departments set up in every national police force has only served to drive the business underground into the hands of cartels and gangs.

Gang warfare has made life a misery for millions across the cities of Central and South America and the guns carried by the armed punks are usually bought with the profits from selling coke. The governments do nothing much about it as they’re busy on holiday in the Bahamas after getting kickbacks from the international traffickers and the US couldn’t care less as the chaos keeps Latin America poor and a good source of cheap labour. Hell, we’re not economists but the right wing journalists at The Economist are and they also think coke should be legalised. (but they make you pay to find out why).

Don’t get us wrong, we think coke is a nasty, obnoxious drug that makes people too arrogant and selfish to bear. But the fact is if people want to dose themselves with legal or illegal drugs they will. They can, however, be educated about the effects the drugs have, have access to drugs of safe and clean dosages and even be provided with better drugs like mescalin and khat if the laws would allow it. In as much as people are hynotised every day by television and mind-numbing office environments, what difference would it really make?

Well, for one thing it would mean that the hundreds of millions of people speaking Spanish and Portuguese south of the US border would find themselves living in safer cities, possibly with more honest politicians (though let’s not get our hopes up) and with the chance that their children might grown up to be healthy adults instead of lying in the gutter with a crack pipe in their hands.

[markymark]

As with many illegal drugs, legalization could help to solve many problems associated with them. On the consumer end of things, having certain regulations and professional distribution could easily prevent people from accessing absurd quantaties that would lead to health problems to say the least.

I think you raise some valid points. I don't fully understand why the US likes to maintain this poverty in its southern neighbors. With appropriate investments in infrastructure these countries could become economically stable and the whole illegal immigrant issue in the US would become mut. Borders would be safer, there'd still be access to other poor countries for cheap labor, and with more options for work fewer would resort to the cocaine industry.

One problem I keep running into with legalization is that governments would tax it up the ass, and this would cause people to continue to go black market. Regardless, I think it would be a good start... just keep it out of 24-hour pharmacies.

[jim]

Quote:In as much as people are hynotised every day by television and mind-numbing office environments, what difference would it really make?

Got a chuckle out of that one.

I'll play a bit of the devil's advocate here.

I am not sure whether viewing drug regulation as a sort of conspiracy against the poor is the ultimate reason for outlawing narcotics. Poverty existed before cocaine and its derivatives, and will continue long after. Violence and crime in the Americas is more complicated than just the cocaine trade, for instance El Salvador is more torn by the civil war and deported gang members from LA than by cocaine-related problems directly.

Without drug laws, many people who don't possess the ability to stop would have one less reason not to mess themselves up. It is idealistic to hold humans responsible enough to build good societies without laws. The fact is drug abuse is harmful, and many people can't use a drug without eventually yielding to addiction.

Don't get me wrong, there is a ton of propaganda and demonization out there. But a place like Miami is bad enough as is, cheap, legal coke makes it sink into a Rio.

[ohio]

I didn't get the feeling tha SE asia is safer than latin america. Jesus, the Philippines has some of the most dangerous places in the planet, as does Cambodia. Still, Honduras or Colombia are dodgy as hell. I think that Marijuana, magic mushrooms, etc (natural plants and substances) should bve legalized. Chemical drugs such as cocaine or X should be considered poison, and therefore restricted. No, cocaine shouldn't be sold in a store or pharmacy. Access, especially for minors, would be too easy. Even though coke is available if you know the right people, the fact that it is illegal makes it just that little bit harder to get ahold of, and that strikes me as a good thing for society.

However, there's an argument to the idea that who the hell are some asshole politicians to tell me what I can or can't put into my body. Interesting topic, really, and you have a reasonable argument, though I agree with Jim that there are alot of sources involved in Latin American violence. Partly it's the economic and cultural divide between the rich and poor, and a hell of alot of other things. Many of the theives and criminals are camesinos who haven't even seen coke or weed in their lives.

[tom]

Ok, take the favelas in Brazil - they're run by cocaine trafickers and their profits kits their workers out with guns.

Or the Farc and para-militaries in Colombia who have maintained their armies by selling coke.

Drugs destroy lives, ask any relative of the 100,000 people dead from alcohol-related deaths each year or the 440,000 from nicotein. How many lives would sniffing a bit of coke take?

If you make a drug legal you make it safe, pure and the taxes that come in provide enough education to help people make the right choice in the first place.

Most of the guns in latin america come from the money generated by the coke trade. Yep. nothing to stop a delinquent grabbing a knife and going for you, the roots of povery go deeper than just the drug trafficking but it sure as hell doesn't help.

cambodia's violence comes more from their traumatic past under the last despot, likewise for Burma and the Philippines is probably the most Latin of all Asian countries.... ah, hell, let's blame it all on the Spanish!

[Ali Baba]

tom Wrote:If you make a drug legal you make it safe, pure and the taxes that come in provide enough education to help people make the right choice in the first place.

I'm not sure Tom. I know people in England who don't bother doing weed in The Nethelands because it isn't as strong as the stuff they get back home. Didn't the legalisazion of canabis lead to an increase popularity of harder drugs there?

Can't we find a way of allowing pople around the world to earn a decent living without producing drugs?

Reducing farm subsidies in developed countries could help.

[tom]

yeah, the whole international trade set ups would be part of it.

There's nothing proven that cannabis leads to anything harder as far as i know. anyway, doing drugs is ok, what we need are better drugs and legalisation is necessary so we can achieve Better Living Through Chemistry check out http://www.biopsychiatry.com

For me most of the arguments concerning the illegal status of coke etc are just propaganda to protect tobacco and alcohol revenue. Did anyone notice the death tolls? WAY higher than from hard drugs.

Coke used to be legal anyway. Then the race card was played of Chinamen seducing american virgins under the influence of coke and the bill was passed. same for marijuana and those scary negroes peddling reefer...

[aramac]

I believe with the Chinamen it was actually opium that they used to seduce the virgins.
Personally I think this issue comes down to individual people, of course. Sure it's easy for me to say, 'legalize it, I've never had a problem with drugs and I've done virtually all of them, so ya, no problems'. The problem is that we can't truly know how our fellow man may react to such a hit. For example, law-abiding Joe Schmo might just go for it cause 'hey it's legal now' and be on the path to fucked up brain cells, wife leaving him, children taken away, house repossessed and even the Vauxhall Nova sold off - damn it, not the Nova!
The thing about these laws, beyond corrupt politicians and what-not getting rich, is that they are there to protect those who can't protect themselves, and by that I mean those who can't protect their own susceptibility to addictive behaviour.
In my case I walk away from heavy drug use after a few days or so, and feel no need to do it again for weeks, months or even years at a time, depending on the drug. My brother on the other hand, recently got out of rehab.
You just don't know my friend. And this is why I believe the laws are there, to protect those who can't look after themselves.
Alcohol and cigarettes do kill more people right now, and it's too late to change the law about them now, but do you really think the drug death's would stay so low if it all became legal. I don't think so.

[sasquatch]

Bah, legalize it all. Prostitution too. The problem with having any vice at all is that somewhere it is illegal.

As for drugs, hard or soft: don't know. never done any of them, not even weed. Had, have, no desire to.

I used to drink- ALOT. The joke is I quit to let the rest of the world catch up. But, eventually I grew out of it- that and seeing what happens to gringoes getting stupid in a foriegn country. The guy in question spent 18 months in a Thailand prison. Course he did it with coke- picture someone with a favorite movie of Scarface and desire to reinact that last scene with the huge pile of coke on a desk and him sticking his face in it. That and we were at an outside cafe at the time, about 2 PM. Stupid.

Needless to say I haven't touched anything in about 6 years.

I have no problem with legalizing some things. Sure, legalize certain drugs, enforce their purity etc., tax the hell out of it. Nope. Not a problem. Same thing with prostitution. Look at Nevada. The girls are checked for VD every week and can't continue to work until the results of their test come back. And it is strictly enforced- I went to college with a couple of girls who worked at "the Ranches" during the summer and holiday breaks for money. Hey, they paid their college that way.

[tom]

You're right about the opium. I think coke was blamed on the blacks, too.

The thing about alcohol, nicotein and caffein is that they don't stop people doing the 9 to 5. People might suffer and die but most of them still turn up at the factory. Imagine mescaline being available at the pharmacy, who would ever go to work?