Gypsy Jan
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The Drug Trade and GNP (Gross National Pain)
The Drug Trade and GNP (Gross National Pain)
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
Posted: 07/10/2012
Dear Mexico,
"I apologize. There are so many things I could apologize for, from the way the U.S. biotech corporation Monsanto has contaminated your corn to the way
Arizona and Alabama are persecuting your citizens, but right now I'd like to apologize for the drug war, the 10,000 waking nightmares that make the
news and the rest that don't.
You've heard the stories about the five severed heads rolled onto the floor of a Michoacan nightclub in 2006, the 300 bodies dissolved in acid by a
servant of one drug lord, the 49 mutilated bodies found in plastic bags by the side of the road in Monterrey in May, the nine bodies found hanging
from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo just last month, the Zeta Cartel's videotaped beheadings just two weeks ago, the carnage that has taken tens of
thousands of Mexican lives in the last decade and has terrorized a whole nation. I've read them and so many more. I am sorry 50,000 times over.
The drug war is fueled by many things, and maybe the worst drug of all is money, to which so many are so addicted that they can never get enough. It's
a drug for which they will kill, destroying communities and ecologies, even societies, whether for the sake of making drones, Wall Street profits, or
massive heroin sales. Then there are the actual drugs, to which so many others turn for numbness.
There is variety in the range of drugs. I know that marijuana mostly just makes you like patio furniture, while heroin renders you ethereally
indifferent and a little reptilian, and cocaine pumps you up with your own imaginary fabulousness before throwing you down into your own trashiness.
And then there's meth, which seems to have the same general effect as rabies, except that the victims crave it desperately.
Whatever their differences, these drugs, when used consistently, constantly, destructively, are all anesthesia from pain. The Mexican drug cartels
crave money, but they make that money from the way Yankees across the border crave numbness. They sell unfeeling. We buy it. We spend tens of billions
of dollars a year doing so, and by some estimates about a third to a half of that money goes back to Mexico.
The Price of Numbness
We want not to feel what's happening to us, and then we do stuff that makes worse things happen -- to us and others. We pay for it, too, in a million
ways, from outright drug-overdose deaths (which now exceed traffic fatalities, and of which the United States has the highest rate of any nation
except tiny Iceland, amounting to more than 37,000 deaths here in 2009 alone) to the violence of drug-dealing on the street, the violence of people on
some of those drugs, and the violence inflicted on children who are neglected, abandoned, and abused because of them -- and that's just for starters.
The stuff people do for money when they're desperate for drugs generates more violence and more crazy greed for the money to buy the next round. And
drug use is connected to the spread of HIV and various strains of hepatitis.
Then there's our futile "war on drugs" that has created so much pain of its own. It's done so by locking up mothers and fathers and brothers and
sisters and children for insanely long prison sentences and offering no treatment. It does so by costing so much it's warping the economies of states
that have huge numbers of nonviolent offenders in prison and not enough money for education or health care. It does so by branding as felons and
pariahs those who have done time in the drug-war prison complex. It was always aimed most directly at African-Americans, and the toll it's taken would
require a week of telling.
No border divides the pain caused by drugs from the pain brought about in Latin America by the drug business and the narcotraficantes. It's one big
continent of pain -- and in the last several years the narcos have begun selling drugs in earnest in their own countries, creating new cultures of
addiction and misery. (And yes, Mexico, your extravagantly corrupt government, military, and police have everything to do with the drug war now, but
file that under greed, as usual, about which your pretty new president is unlikely to do anything much.)
Imagine that the demand ceased tomorrow; the profitable business of supply would have to wither away as well. Many talk about legalizing drugs, and
there's something to be said for changing the economic arrangements. But what about reducing their use by developing and promoting more interesting
and productive ways of dealing with suffering? Or even getting directly at the causes of that suffering?
Some drug use is, of course, purely recreational, but even recreational drug use stimulates these economies of carnage. And then there are the
overdoses of the famous and the unsung on prescription and illicit drugs. Tragic, but those dismembered and mutilated bodies the drug gangs deposit
around Mexico are not just tragic, they're terrifying.
GNP: Gross National Pain and the Pain Export Economy
Mexico, my near neighbor, I have been trying to imagine the export economy of pain. What does it look like? I think it might look like
air-conditioning. This is how an air conditioner works: it sucks the heat out of the room and pumps it into the air outside. You could say that
air-conditioners don't really cool things down so much as they relocate the heat. The way the transnational drug economy works is a little like that:
people in the U.S. are not reducing the amount of pain in the world; they're exporting it to Mexico and the rest of Latin America as surely as those
places are exporting drugs to us.
In economics, we talk about "externalized costs": this means the way that you and I pick up the real cost of oil production with local and global
ecological degradation or wars fought on behalf of the oil corporations. Or the way Walmart turns its employees into paupers, and we pick up the tab
for their food stamps and medical care.
With the drug economy, there are externalized traumas. I imagine them moving in a huge circulatory system, like the Gulf Stream, or old trade routes.
We give you money and guns, lots and lots of money. You give us drugs. The guns destroy. The money destroys. The drugs destroy. The pain migrates, a
phantom presence crossing the border the other way from the crossings we hear so much about.
The drugs are supposed to numb people out, but that momentary numbing effect causes so much pain elsewhere. There's a pain economy, a suffering
economy, a fear economy, and drugs fuel all of them rather than making them go away. Think of it as another kind of GNP -- gross national pain --
though I don't know how you'd quantify it.
A friend of mine who's lived in Latin America for large parts of the last decade says that she's appalled to see people doing cocaine at parties she
goes to in this country. I mentioned that to an anthropologist who was even bleaker in describing the cocaine migration routes out of the Andes and
all the dead babies and exploited women she'd seen along the way.
We've had movements to get people to stop buying clothes and shoes made in sweatshops, grapes picked by exploited farmworkers, fish species that are
endangered, but no one's thought to start a similar movement to get people to stop consuming the drugs that cause so much destruction abroad.
Picture middle-class people here stuffing the blood of campesinos up their noses. Picture poor people injecting the tears of other poor people into
their veins. Picture them all smoking children's anguish. And imagine if we called it by name.
America, #1 in Pain
I don't know why my country seems to produce so much misery and so much desire to cover it up under a haze of drugs, but I can imagine a million
reasons. A lot of us just never put down roots or adapted to a society that's changing fast under us or got downsized or evicted or foreclosed or
rejected or just move around a lot. This country is a place where so many people don't have a place, literally or psychologically. When you don't have
anywhere to go with your troubles, you can conveniently go nowhere -- into, that is, the limbo of drugs and the dead-end that represents.
But there's something else front and center to our particular brand of misery. We are a nation of miserable optimists. We believe everything is
possible and if you don't have it all, from the perfect body to profound wealth, the fault is yours. When people suffer in this country -- from, say,
foreclosures and bankruptcies due to the destruction of our economy by the forces of greed -- the shame is overwhelming. It's seen as a personal
failure, not the failure of our institutions. Taking drugs to numb your shame also keeps you from connecting the dots and opposing what's taken you
down.
So when you're miserable here, you're miserable twice: once because you actually lost your home/job/savings/spouse/girlish figure and all over again
because it's not supposed to be like that (and maybe thrice because our mainstream society doesn't suggest any possibility of changing the
circumstances that produced your misery or even how arbitrary those circumstances are). I suspect that all those drugs are particularly about numbing
a deep American sense of failure or of smashed expectations.
Really, when you think of the rise of crack cocaine during the Reagan era, wasn't it an exact corollary to the fall of African-American opportunity
and the disintegration of the social safety net? The government produced failure and insecurity, and crack buffered the results (and proved a boon to
a burgeoning prison-industrial complex). Likewise, the drug-taking that exploded in the 1960s helped undermine the radical movements of that era.
Drugs aren't a goad to action, but a deadening alternative to it. Maybe all those zombies everywhere in popular culture nowadays are trying to say
something about that.
Here in the United States, there's no room for sadness, but there are plenty of drugs for it, and now when people feel sad, even many doctors think
they should take drugs. We undergo losses and ordeals and live in circumstances that would make any sane person sad, and then we say: the fault was
yours and if you feel sad, you're crazy or sick and should be medicated. Of course, now ever more Americans are addicted to prescription drugs, and
there's always the old anesthetic of choice, alcohol, but there is one difference: the economics of those substances are not causing mass
decapitations in Mexico.
Roads to Destruction and the Palace of the Dead
When I think about the drug wars and the drug culture here, I think about a young man I knew long ago. He was gay, from Texas, disconnected from his
family, talented but not so good at finding a place in the world for that talent or for himself. He was also a fan of the beat novelist and
intermittent junkie William Burroughs, and he believed that line about how "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Maybe it was fine when
William Blake said it in the 1790s, since Blake wasn't a crackhead. But my friend got from Burroughs -- a man with family money and apparently an iron
constitution -- the idea that derangement of the senses was a great creative strategy.
This was all part of our youth in a culture that constantly reinforced how cool drugs were, though back then another beat writer, the poet David
Meltzer, told me methamphetamine was a form of demonic possession. The young man became possessed in this way and lost his mind. He became homeless
and deranged, gone to someplace he couldn't find his way back from, and I would see him walking our boulevards barefoot and filthy, ranting to
himself.
Then I heard he had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He wasn't yet 30; he was just a sweet boy. I could tell four or five more stories like his
about people I knew who died young of drugs. The meth that helped him down his road of no return was probably a domestic product then, but now vast
quantities of it are made in Mexico for us -- 15 tons of it were found earlier this year in Guadalajara, enough for 13 million doses, worth about $4
billion retail.
When I think about the drug wars, I also think about my visit to Santa Muerte (Saint Death) in Mexico City in 2007. A young friend with me there
insisted on going. It was perilous for outsiders like us even to travel through Tepito, the black-marketeers' barrio, let alone go to the shrine where
imposing, somber men were praying and lighting candles to the skeleton goddess who is the narcotraficantes' patron saint. They worship death; they're
intimate with her; they tattoo her on their flesh, and there she was in person -- in bones without flesh, surrounded by candles, by gifts, by
cigarettes and gold, an Aztec goddess gone commercial.
My companion wanted to take pictures. I wanted to live and managed to convince him that thugs' devotional moments were not for our cameras. When it
came time to leave, the warm patroness of the shrine locked up the stand in which she sold votive candles and medallions, took each of us by an arm --
as if nothing less than bodily contact with death's caretaker would keep us safe -- and walked us to the subway. We survived that little moment of
direct contact with the drug war. So many others have not.
Mexico, I am sorry. I want to see it all change, for your sake and ours. I want to call pain by name and numbness by name and fear by name. I want
people to connect the dots from the junk in their brain to the bullet holes in others' heads. I want people to find better strategies for responding
to pain and sadness. I want them to rebel against those parts of their unhappiness that are political, not metaphysical, and not run in fear from the
metaphysical parts either.
I want the narcotraficantes to repent and give their billions to the poor. I want the fear to end. A hundred years ago, your dictatorial president
Porfiro Díaz supposedly remarked, "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States," which nowadays could be revised to, "Painful
Mexico, so far from peace and so close to the numbness of the United States."
Yours sincerely,
Rebecca
Rebecca Solnit lived through the inner-city crack wars in the 1980s and tried most drugs a very long time ago. A TomDispatch regular, she is the
author of thirteen books, including, most recently, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, which maps, among other things, the 99 murders in her city
in 2008, most of them of poor young men caught up in the usual, and the lives of undocumented laborers in San Francisco."
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook, and check out the latest TD book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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DavidE
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Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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Craving drugs is not the same as getting the measles, or the flu. As someone who lives in the lower one third of the poverty level and had to take
ungodly high doses of opioids for six months I have a right to state my opinion.
Any substance that causes impairment of cognitive skills or motor co-ordination has potential bad effects on other people who elect by choice not to
use substances for recreational use. I had a hell of a time legally when a meth junkie staggered sideways into the street and bounced off the side of
my pickup. He had white hair, looked like a survivor of Auschwitz, had no teeth, and turned out to be 32 years of age. This did not stop an ambulance
chaser attorney from trying to sue for fifty thousand dollars, even though the junkie was released from the hospital a day later. It was only the fact
of a half dozen witnesses to the incident who stepped forward and reported exactly what happened to the police that stopped my life from being
trashed. All because one individual decided he could do what he damned well pleased. He could care less about me, you, the world or the universe.
Ever go to a marijuana dispensary? I did. What I saw was a queue of hippies some of whom ran up, jostling and laughing clutching a prescription. There
must be legitimate users out there, who absolutely need medical marijuana but I didn't see any. just dozens and dozens of perfectly healthy looking
folk.
Somebody has to decide who PAYS for the privilege of drug users to be able to use drugs. These people cannot work for a living - not when they're so
screwed up they can't count past three. They end up sprawled on the ground, transported to an ER by ambulance, treated then released. They DECIDE TO
return to drugs.
The drug war cannot be won when all of our resources by the wealthiest nation on the face of the earth cannot stop the flow of CASH, the flow of
AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, and the FLOW OF AMMUNITION from going SOUTH into México. Forget the drugs coming north, all the king's horses and all the king's
men, cannot stop stuff from coming into México.
When I decided to stop using enough Oxycodone, and morphine to send any addict into rhapsody, I stopped. Dead. Zero. I was tired of the fuzziness,
tired of the constipation, tired of the necessity the NEED to dose myself. I told my internal medicine specialist "I quit!". He blanched. He warned me
about withdrawal symptoms "You are taking a large, a very large dose of opiates" he cautioned. Yes, I was even on Fentanyl patches.
Oh hell yes, I could have gotten an Rx, 50 times over for the strongest marijuana on the face of the dispensary. But I didn't. Oh hell yes, I could
have embarked on a life of crime because I am incapable financially of renting the cheapest gosh darnned apartment in the most crime ridden section of
any city. I could declare myself downtrodden, a VICTIM, divorced from responsibility from my actions.
But I didn't.
And THAT is what separates reality from people who cannot seem to "cope" with life and turn to alcohol or drugs which manages, always manages when
abused, to screw up everyone's life around them. This isn't about drugs, it's about personal responsibility and integrity.
If people decide to use intoxicants, they'd better do it responsibly because I offer no shoulder to cry on. Sorry, but excuses cut no mustard here.
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
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Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
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Mood: muy amable
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David E- very well said
I think we could stop the flow if our nation were not full of pampered and spoiled and utterly dependent folks.
But, we have a collective mentality that says, "A little pot never hurts anyone, and it never leads to anything worse."
Well, if you believe that I have a bunch of lots and houses to sell you at Punta Banda- cheap....
Meth is our #1 enemy here in Central California.
One of my close buds is a Superior Ct Judge- he sez "I would rather have a heroin addict show up in my court with needles hanging out of both arms
than to see a meth head come in with 'the look' in his eyes"
But hey, a little smoke never hurt, right? And, a couple lines of blow- what the hey....
We lose over half the truck driver applicants at our company because they cannot pass a drug test.
Pretty sad commentary on a pretty sad state of affairs.
And no- I am not willing to have a pot-head drive out of my yard with 5 tons of steel on the back of the Bob-tail- got enough problems without that
crap....
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dtbushpilot
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Location: Buena Vista BCS
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X2 DavidE.
The letter posted by Jan is so much BS on so many different levels that I wouldn't know where to start to reply. Thanks for stepping up and addressing
at least one level.....dt
"Life is tough".....It's even tougher if you're stupid.....
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Ateo
Elite Nomad
Posts: 5917
Registered: 7-18-2011
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Humans will always want drugs or altered states of conciousness. I think the best way is to make it safe for the low level users -- your friends,
kids, family members -- looking for a little party within their lives.............
Alcohol is a big killer.
Marijuana not so much.
We should have a smart legal system....I think and hope we are heading that way.
I'm an optimist. I think we will solve these problems. Not soon though....
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DavidE
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Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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I'm pretty hard-headed about this subject. I should have then, but will now include another category into the fray. People who abuse alcohol and put
other folks into misery or jeopardy. People can drink responsibly and smoke marijuana responsibly. It's their liver and lungs. But use meth
"responsibly"? Use heroin, or cocaine "responsibly"?
I have inadvertently rode as a passenger with a driver high on marijuana more than once. All I can say is I am lucky I am not dead. Ever sit at a stop
sign with no cars anywhere in sight for over a minute? Ever hear someone scream and hit the brakes during full daylight on a residential street
without so much as a power line shadow showing on the asphalt? I can tell you with reasonable guesswork that at any given moment there are more people
driving stoned than are driving drunk, and they are just as dangerous.
I am sooooooo glad to be sitting here listening to the surf rattle the windows, soooooooo far away from drugs. Sure, there is mota here. It isn't
legal, the people around me are just as poverty stricken as I am, and I don't even have a key to the front door. It isn't locked, even when I go to
Guerrero Negro for three days. There's no need to. Think about the "why" for a moment. Think about the "How Come?" in your neighborhood. The answer
isn't pretty, but excuses are even uglier.
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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