BajaNomad

Cocaine Is Evil

Cisco - 1-1-2014 at 01:26 PM

The gruesomeness of the drug trade rivals any atrocities in history.
By Erik Vance

I don’t cover the narco war. I don’t even pretend to. I’m a science writer: I go to labs, talk to scientists and policymakers, and occasionally get on boats that take me out to see cool underwater critters.

I live in Mexico City, which is about as safe as living in Washington, D.C. I occasionally walk home a little drunk without worrying about my safety any more than I would have in my old home in Berkeley, Calif. And I gotta be honest, I’m happy in my little bubble.

But working here, especially on occasional jaunts to northern Mexico, you can’t avoid the drug story. It’s infused in every interview, every stop at a checkpoint, every street corner, like that stink you can’t get out of the carpet.

Last year I reported a fishing story in Sonora that attempted to put a human face on the seafood industry and the collapse of many populations of key ocean creatures. The idea was that if consumers knew more, they might make more informed choices about what they eat, maybe selecting slightly less destructive options.

I was in a relatively quiet part of Mexico in terms of violence but one that is nonetheless a crucial stopover for drugs going north. To states like California, where I’m from. My reporting partner—a photographer named Dominic Bracco who’s spent his share of time amid drug violence—and I always thought it was funny that people in the area seemed incredulous that we were actually reporting about fish. Oh right, sure, “fish.” We have a lot of “fish” here.

I remember one interview in particular in which a fisherman told us about his relative who occasionally ran drugs for the cartels in between seasons. In this area, it’s not blood in, blood out. Cartels have porous edges, where people drop in when they need the money and get out as fast as possible. And we are not talking about characters from Breaking Bad here—these are poor fishermen with no other choice. And mostly they hate it.

Fishermen are great mules because they know the waters and they don’t draw attention. And if you have to chuck your haul overboard to avoid the military, other fishermen can dive to retrieve it. This particular guy had a long run up the coast. In moments of dark humor, I imagine the people I know back home who do coke being on that boat with him. Any of them would have considered it the trip of a lifetime, posted photos all over the Web, and come home to great applause with wonderful stories to tell. I imagine them carrying home a couple trinkets to remember their Steinbeck-like voyage.

This man did not. Maybe he endured storms and massive waves slamming his little panga while he clung for his life and prayed to get out alive. Maybe it was smooth going for a hundred miles, I don’t know. What I do know is that when he got to the end and he met the men who would take the cargo across the border, they put a bullet in his head and tossed him overboard to feed the fish he should have been catching. It’s cheaper to kill the mule than to pay him.

When people back home do a line of coke, they call it a “bump.” It’s a marvel of the English language that something so horrible, so corrosive can have such a cute little name. I wonder what that fisherman would have said to that innocuous little word. “Glad I could help brighten the party,” maybe?

Not that the fisherman here are wholly innocent—many of them do meth and coke to stay awake on the water, and some have become addicted. But we all know who drives the drug trade. It’s us. At our hip little parties, our New Year’s Eve celebrations, our secret back rooms, and on the counters of people from well-off families who are destined for rehab.

The economics of cocaine trafficking are simple. South Americans make it, people in between move it, rich Americans buy it, and U.S. gun stores sell weapons back down the line to enforce this system. Everyone knows this.

I submit that the drug trade—and specifically cocaine—is among the worst things that the human mind ever invented (which is saying a lot, since we are especially good at inventing horrible things).

No one has good numbers on the death toll of a given drug trade. I called and asked a few think tanks how many people cocaine has killed over the past 100 years and got mostly bemused laughs. Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, has thought about this as much as anyone. When I asked him, all he could guess was a number with nine figures in it.

Just for fun, let's try a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Around 60,000 were executed as witches during 150 years at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Mexico alone has seen perhaps twice that many deaths during its seven-year drug war. From 1990 to 2010, Colombia had some 450,000 homicides, overwhelmingly due to coke. Add all the rest of Latin America (counting all the military actions that were driven by efforts to control trafficking routes as much as by politics), the U.S. share (15,000 per year on the high side, counting all kinds of drugs and overdoses and such). Now add an estimate of all the uncounted murders and overdoses and track that carnage back to the 1960s when the modern drug war began. The number starts to be in the league of the atrocities of N-zi Germany or American slavery.  

Please, you say, not another N-zi comparison. Hitler references in the media are so cliché that Jon Stewart uses them as a running gag. But the magnitude and gruesomeness of the atrocities committed to acquire and maintain drug trade routes to the United States actually are comparable. Decapitations and burning people alive are just the start. Chainsaws, belt sanders, acid—these things are used very creatively by cartel torturers. They disembowel bloggers and sew faces to soccer balls. Children are forced to work as assassins, people are forced to rape strangers at gunpoint, and lines of victims are killed one at a time with a single hammer. Many of those people disappear into unmarked graves. If their bodies are ever found, they are described in the media with antiseptic words like “mutilated.”

So yes, I say that paying for coke is equivalent to donating to the N-zi party. The unspoken thing here is that the reason Americans aren’t more outraged or guilt-ridden is that the people dying are poor brown people—many of them in a tragic irony are classified as narcos so governments can claim it's just gang-on-gang violence.  
 
So perhaps you can see why I sometimes feel a little silly covering the ocean fisheries crisis, telling people what’s not sustainable and why. It’s true, consumer choices are behind the ocean crisis. But you can eat sustainably every day of your life and give to charity every year, and it all gets wiped out with one line of coke. Who cares if you were a nice guy if in your spare time you burned witches?

There’s no such thing as cruelty-free cocaine. You can’t buy sustainable crank at the farmers market. And here in Mexico people are tired of footing the bill. They often say, “Why not just let the Americans shove as much of this crap up their noses as they want?” “Let’s just let it through.” “Why do we have to be the ones who die?” And they have a point.

The Americans I know who indulge in cocaine are not bad people. Some of them even give money to charity. They’re just a little too bored, a little too rich, and a little too clueless. But if someone here in Mexico asks me who these people are—these people who support something that’s killing entire towns from Bolivia to Texas—well, I don’t know what to say.

Hey, I mean, it’s just a little bump.

monoloco - 1-1-2014 at 01:35 PM

When you add up all the people who have been killed and all the money spent on interdiction, prosecution, and incarceration, it makes one wonder if it would be safer and cheaper to just legalize all drugs and let people take responsibility for themselves. Personally, I have never met anyone who wanted to do drugs, who was the least bit deterred because they were illegal.

weebray - 1-1-2014 at 02:03 PM

Excellent Cisco. I'm also from Berkeley and spent the "summer of love" immersed in the euphoria of oneness with my fellow man. Contrary to popular belief it was also a very productive time personally and collectively. There was a time for work, a time for love and a time for smoke. I saw first hand the introduction of cocaine in the 70's and watched it put ruin to the innocence. The drug, the high, were counterproductive to the culture of the sixties. I saw many great artists and entrepreneurs vaporized in the haze. Thanks for your excellent expansion to this story of evil. Living here in Baja I guess I am blind to the fact that this chit still holds sway in the US of A.

Cisco - 1-1-2014 at 02:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by monoloco
When you add up all the people who have been killed and all the money spent on interdiction, prosecution, and incarceration, it makes one wonder if it would be safer and cheaper to just legalize all drugs and let people take responsibility for themselves. Personally, I have never met anyone who wanted to do drugs, who was the least bit deterred because they were illegal.


Because WE (U.S.A.) make money on the interdiction, (Homeland Security) prosecution, and incarceration of illegal items. We also sell a lot of guns. There are 101.6 guns for every 100 people in the U.S.A. Highest in the world for a civilian population.

Interesting that during the time that the U.S. budget for education fell -13% the budget for "privatized" correctional facilities which are basically a monopoly of CCA) increased 406%.

One of every four people incarcerated in THE WORLD are in American facilities. America, a country containing 5% of the world population has 25% of her prisoners.

Recently a judge was convicted for sending up for LOOONG periods of time young, poor people that had pled out rather than actually going to trial as they could not afford it, got a Public Defender who is part of the system and had their sentences imposed maximum for the financial benefit of CCA who was kicking back big bucks to the judge and system.

Oh, we also make a whole lot of money laundering drug money through our (U.S.) facilities.

As Hillary stated when asked two years ago in Mexico City why we (U.S.) did not legalize drugs she stated we would not, there's too much money in it.

I posted this article to show the impact our (U.S.) noses have upon the people of Mexico and the upper Gulf region specifically.

Lee - 1-1-2014 at 02:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by monoloco
When you add up all the people who have been killed and all the money spent on interdiction, prosecution, and incarceration, it makes one wonder if it would be safer and cheaper to just legalize all drugs and let people take responsibility for themselves. Personally, I have never met anyone who wanted to do drugs, who was the least bit deterred because they were illegal.


Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.

While we're at it, remove all gun laws. Anyone want's to carry should carry. There would be less crime if everyone was armed.

Mandatory military draft for 18-20 y.o. men and women. Or, Peace Corps. Everyone serves. Nobody rides free.

Today is a great day for those living in Colorado. http://photos.denverpost.com/2014/01/01/photos-legal-recreat...

mtgoat666 - 1-1-2014 at 02:17 PM

I look forward to legal pot, as illegal pot comes with blood and mayhem. Sad that many that will boycott a product for political point don't bother to think that their recreational drugs came with price of murder.

Do you buy fair trade coffee to go with your murder/mayhem marijuana?

chuckie - 1-1-2014 at 03:29 PM

Move to Colorado

willardguy - 1-1-2014 at 03:40 PM

I never realized pot bred such violence! anybody else watch "pineapple express" last night? :P

bajaguy - 1-1-2014 at 03:48 PM

Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.
Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.

bledito - 1-1-2014 at 04:32 PM

If illlegal drugs were legal what would all the people working in the illegal drug trade do, will a criminal remain a criminal and turn to kidnapping extortion and robbery or will they become entrepeneurs in the newly legal drug market?

bajaguy - 1-1-2014 at 04:36 PM

A Zebra does not easily change its stripes
Quote:
Originally posted by bledito
If illlegal drugs were legal what would all the people working in the illegal drug trade do, will a criminal remain a criminal and turn to kidnapping extortion and robbery or will they become entrepeneurs in the newly legal drug market?

monoloco - 1-1-2014 at 05:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.



Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.
Or maybe just go to a system where the only people who are killed by drugs are the people who choose to abuse them.

bajaguy - 1-1-2014 at 05:15 PM

In a perfect world, that would be great. but it is not a perfect world.
Quote:
Originally posted by monoloco
Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.



Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.
Or maybe just go to a system where the only people who are killed by drugs are the people who choose to abuse them.

Don't need fishermen as mules to smuggle coke when you got this

durrelllrobert - 1-1-2014 at 05:20 PM

We All Live in a Yayo Submarine
Illegal drugs and their means of transport are constantly evolving. Cocaine and weed shipments have been entering the United States from Central and South America via a range of methods, with seagoing craft being one of the most popular. First there were fishing boats, then "go-fasts" (speedboats mounted with multiple engines). Once these started succumbing to improved detection, drug cartels developed the semi-submersible "narco sub" – which is now making way for the full-scale submarine.

In 2010, authorities in Ecuador announced that they had seized an actual submarine designed for smuggling drugs. "It is the first fully functional, completely submersible submarine for transoceanic voyages that we have ever found," said Jay Bergman, the Andean regional director for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, speaking to the Associated Press.

According to reports, the captured sub was 33 meters long, could accommodate a crew of five or six, and was equipped with twin-screw diesel-electric propulsion, periscopes and even air conditioning. The DEA said the vessel could have carried up to 10 tons of coke


Bajaboy - 1-1-2014 at 05:23 PM

Stricter smoking cigarette laws...relaxed smoking pot laws....makes no sense unless your a pot head...

monoloco - 1-1-2014 at 05:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
In a perfect world, that would be great. but it is not a perfect world.


Quote:
Originally posted by monoloco
Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.



Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.
Or maybe just go to a system where the only people who are killed by drugs are the people who choose to abuse them.
No, in a perfect world, everyone would be so happy, well adjusted, and prosperous, there would no reason to take drugs.:lol:

Lee - 1-1-2014 at 05:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.

Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.


Like I wrote, if everyone was armed, there would be no murder, rape or anything else illegal.

Guess you're promoting more government and stiffer laws?

Friend of Obama, are you?

Death and Destruction

MrBillM - 1-1-2014 at 06:03 PM

Whenever there are Drug-Murders, I keep hearing the refrain that "They were all involved somehow in the trade".

IF So, Who Cares how many of them Die ?

Sounds like it should be a good thing.

Bajafun777 - 1-1-2014 at 08:59 PM

Make all drugs legal and that would solve our over crowded prison system along with no need for more law enforcement officers really? I think the ones preaching this are clueless. How are these drug users suppose to get their legal drugs are you clueless ones going to pay for it? No you are not, as you are all talk & no walk. What will happen are these drug offenders will continue to do many different crimes which causes loss of property or harming people up to killing them to gain means to get their drugs.
People that use drugs cause harm to their own families, so do you clueless think they care one flying flip about doing harm to our families?? Hell no they don't, they care about about their own selfish illegal wants over everyone else. Hope you clueless never get victimized by loss of property or loss of a loved one like others have. I am sure your clueless thinking will change real fast. Take Care & Travel Safe--- -"No Hurry, No Worry, Just FUN" bajafun777

No argument

bajaguy - 1-1-2014 at 09:35 PM

I would like to see a nationwide concealed carry authorization.

Like the old saying goes....."I carry a .45 because carrying a cop is too heavy"
Quote:
Originally posted by Lee
Quote:
Originally posted by bajaguy
Hey, while we are at it, why don't we make murder, rape and bank robbery legal....after all, as it is now with laws against them, we are removing the freedom of choice.

Quote:
Originally posted by Lee

Let people take responsibility for their behavior. Making any drug illegal morally coddles adults removing freedom of choice.


Like I wrote, if everyone was armed, there would be no murder, rape or anything else illegal.

Guess you're promoting more government and stiffer laws?

Friend of Obama, are you?

motoged - 1-1-2014 at 10:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by willardguy
I never realized pot bred such violence! anybody else watch "pineapple express" last night? :P


Reefer Madness is a good film on the evils of marijuana....;D

alacran - 1-2-2014 at 11:08 AM

There is no easy answer, however we all know that the war on drugs is lost, and very expensive.