Let’s get a few things out of the way. First, I am for legalization of drugs: regulate it, tax the shit out of it, and impose stiff penalties for dangerous use. I also have a message for pot heads – think local, buy quality USA grown pot! As for the meth-heads and the heroin addicts, you guys are fucked anyways.
That leaves the one drug that inspired a shitty JJ Cale song of which 90% (according to a state department estimate) transits through Mexico. It’s the one that came up in conversation while I was having coffee with a friend of mine who was visiting Houston for the first time in ages. She asked, “When did cocaine get so popular?” and I really had no clue. I mean, years ago, coke was this total douchebag drug reserved for the worst of the worst of the people who would now be cruising the Washington Avenue bar scene here in Houston. You know who I’m talking about – some Gucchi wearing assbag yuppie in a convertible with a horrible license plate that says something like “RU 18 YET.“
Yet, it’s so prevalent now in the Houston music scene that you can walk into just about any show to someone doing blow in the bathroom at some point in the evening. But here is the thing, these aren’t the douchebags of some years ago. No, these are actually just regular Rock and Roll dudes. They don’t drive a fancy car or swagger in wearing Raybans behind their head. Nope, just regular people which is what sparked my friend’s comment.
Some of these are friends and acquaintances who I like very much. In fact, once I walked into a bar and this one guy I know offered me some coke and I jokingly declined saying, “No way man! You know how annoying you guys are?” and he laughed and went into a perfect, note for note, impression of a coke head talking at a million miles an hour which was pretty hilarious. So yeah they even have a sense of humor about themselves and aren’t out to look cool or impress anyone. It’s very much this social drug akin to sharing beers and I’m very libertarian on that kind of thing – if it’s not hurting anyone else, go for it. But here is the problem – over 40,000 bodies.
You want to know what your cocaine really cost?
OK here you go… here are two pictures of some guy doing a mound of coke. Click on them when you’re not at work if you want.
Coke is fun!
Coke is fun!
Man, doesn’t that make you high all the better? Woo! Yeah, you know, what’s a couple browns. They are just fucking Mexicans anyhow. Not like us here in the States. I mean it’s not your fault. You didn’t start the drug war, that’s Calderon’s fault for trying to interfere with Free Commerce and Bush and Obama’s fault for helping him escalate the response. Your nose is morally clean.
Except that’s bullshit. Regardless of your stance of on the drug war, the fact of the matter is right now, in the reality that is North America 2011, there are thousands of people murdered, lives displaced, economies ruined, and a region of Mexico that has basically become a narco state and it’s all fueled by the demand in the United States – your little bump. While you are at a club or at a party doing a bump someone is dying because of it.
So, to you in the Houston Music scene and elsewhere, may I humbly suggest you stop being selfish narcissistic sacks of shit: put the fucking coke away. Thank you.
Ok, here we go –
1) You are making the argument that if you contribute to the demand for a product whose production has negative externalities, then you are morally culpable for those negative externalities. Bullshit. By this logic, unless you stop eating meat, eating vegetables, driving a car, breathing air, drinking water, drinking coffee, wearing clothes, etc., you are culpable for all the sins committed in the chain of custody of those products from their creation to your consumption of them. If you are prepared to stick by your guns on this argument, then please remind me of that the next time we order an enormous Star pizza so that I can enumerate all the crimes against humanity committed just to put that pie in front of you. And don’t try to give me some kind of hippy Free Trade bullshit, because I’ll smack you on the head with the empty pizza box if you do. The only morally pure human is a dead human, because he’s no longer consuming resources or exploiting other humans to live the way he does.
2) Mexico has an organized crime problem, drug trafficking is just part of it. If Americans stopped using coke, the cartels would find something else to run — guns, sex slaves, illegal emigration rackets, etc. – or they would just go into extortion (most of them already do all these things anyway). In fact, one could argue that things would get worse if the US stopped doing coke, because they’d try to extract even more money out of their other rackets to compensate.
3) Mexico’s problems are largely its own. You can blame Uncle Sam for a lot, but despite what Porfirio Diaz said, the main reason Mexico is screwed up is because its governing class is rife with nepotism and corruption even as many hidebound state-owned enterprises crowd out private sector growth. Things like NAFTA probably didn’t help, as initially Mexico benefited from the growth in industrialization only to have the rug yanked from under them as companies sought even cheaper labor overseas. The disruption of what was a poor, but relatively stable agricultural economy has led to a large, culturally displaced and unemployable population. Mexico needs stable, healthy economic growth and the return of the rule of law. Well intentioned Americans can play into the “poor, poor Mexico” riff but it isn’t going to do a damn thing to help Mexico. Mexico needs to help itself.
4) Trying to convince a cokehead to stop using because of a spurious moral hazard is about as likely to work as convincing a tiger to become a vegetarian. It ain’t happening. If you want to help Mexico, push for comprehensive immigration reform and drug legalization. Those are much more realistic ways to help Mexicans and undercut the cartels than trying to make hipsters on coke feel guilty.
Everyone who has ever used drugs understands that those drugs generally came to their nose, lungs, brain, etc. through the actions of not-very-nice people. The quiet quasi-legalization of pot in parts of the country is starting to change that, and should be a lesson to the mainstream political parties. Unfortunately, they continue to waste taxpayer resources, blood and treasure on a completely failed “war on drugs” whose principal casualties seem to be innocent people in Mexico, and whose only real value appears to be to create employment for people in law enforcement.
Well, there is no argument on the drug war or the mexican Government’s failure and how those things are feeding this. But the point is that until those kind of reforms happen, the violence going on down in Mexico is inhuman in its brutality and the gangs thrive of the fear they create. You buy coke and you are feeding that supply chain and the horrible people behind it. There is a huge difference between a gang that puts battery acid in the heart of a child or decapitates people compared to a corportation that emits toxins in the air. The latter is regulated and there is a push and pull about the emissions allowed but yet you have people who get all high and mighty about corporations killing people yet are happy to put up some powder up their nose and money in the pockets of these people. The same goes for someone who is horrified by say Daniel Pearl’s murder at the hands of terrorists but then has no moral issues with snorting a line despite the fact that these people are terrorists as well. So, it really has to do with the extremity of the violence which is pretty damn over the top. Once again 40,000 people. That’s insane.
Leaving aside the philosophical issue of the morality of demand, I think you can make the argument that cutting down on coke demand might make some impact, on a practical level, by reducing cash flow to these guys. But in the end, I don’t think it will make a whole lot of difference and I think it’s an uphill battle to try to convince people to stop using a habit forming narcotic because of the violence in the upstream supply chain. I do agree with you that I don’t want to hear anything about free trade coffee or whatever from people with a white moustache.
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First off, I have to say that I cringe whenever people refer to “brown people” in these types of arguments, as if people are using cocaine because they’re racist, and would certainly refrain if the lives of “white people” were at stake.
I pretty much agree, though; I find it pretty gross that people are using cocaine despite the clear linkage with the horrible violence that’s been going on. However, I would have to include marijuana use in the same argument, so please don’t feel too smug/innocent if that’s your drug of choice:
“Marijuana and cocaine are the two largest sources of revenue for the cartels, generating billions of dollars in illicit profits each year. But some analysts say marijuana may be the cartels’ greatest source of cash in part because the Mexican gangs control the production, trafficking and distribution of the drug. The cocaine they move has a higher street value, but they initially have to buy it from the Colombians.” [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126978142]
Aging Scenester makes a good point that other forms of consumer activity also involve negative externalities, but I think in this instance the link is so much more direct, and the consequences are so horrible in terms of the violence that’s been going on, that in this case I’m much more comfortable with making an argument based on guilting the consumer. Plus cocaine, among other things, has gone through cycles of popularity or unpopularity, and this is often based on whether it’s seen as acceptable/cool by sizeable segments of the populace. Don’t underestimate the power of social ostracization.
So, basically, if using drugs served up by violent cartels comes to be seen as socially unacceptable, I do think demand will go down by a meaningful amount, and this will result in less money for the cartels & ultimately fewer people involved, and therefore hopefully less violence. A.S. makes a good point that organized crime will continue to exist, but look at what happened in the US after the market for illegal alcohol collapsed. Yes, there is still organized crime, but it involves less money, less people, and much less violence than before. And of course, all of this is all the more reason to legalize marijuana, at the very least.
If this was Canada it would be no different but I think people dismiss Mexico because it has so many political, social, and economic problems that people kind of dismiss it as a problem they created so they shrug their shoulders for various reasons one of which is racism but others would be simply the fact that there is little if anything we can do outside of stopping the futile drug war that feeds thsi machine – and that ain’t happening.
Oh I agree about pot that’s why I added the caveat at the beginning about pot. If you can be reasonably sure of where it’s coming from and it’s not coming from Mexico, then I think it’s less dubious. I’d argue that if you can’t be sure of its origin, save yourself some money and don’t buy the pot. That may be naive but back when I used to do pot there was always apoitn of origin in what was bought that would help establish the value of what you were paying for. So, I am assuming that this is possible to some extent today but I wouldn’t know.
Again we can all agree that, while not to take anything away responsability for the inhuman violence from the cartels, the drug war is helping drive the insanity down there.
Speaking of:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/mexico-bodies-gunmen_n_973298.html
fuck all this shit