The countless drugs and alcohol talks from recovering addicts at school carefully outline the worst case scenario of their recreational use, leaving teenagers momentarily scared to touch suspicious white powders or unidentifiable pills. However, knowing the potential risk or even seeing the impact first hand still isn’t enough to really deter the use of party drugs. Perhaps this is because the risk is direct to the person taking it and clearly much less of an inevitability than campaigns make it out to be.
Unfortunately, the use of cocaine not only erodes your nose and savings, but also completely stifles the potential for any development in many Latin American countries which are dominated by drug cartels. The extent of the corruption is beyond imaginable to the casual university user, with children as young as 12 joining gangs with the slogan ‘Kill, Rape, Control’ in El Salvador because they consider the cocaine trade to be their only prospect. Sadly, their cynical view is often not misplaced but could land them in a rival gang’s cage for years on end. It is a similar story in Honduras, which is considered to be the gateway from Columbia to America and Europe in terms of drug smuggling. There, the murder rate is the highest of any non war country, with even the president’s brother being investigated in association with 12 years of cocaine smuggling. Whilst on trial in America he has admitted that the political and economic elites are very much complicit to drug smuggling. What is evident is that the cocaine trade penetrates all sections of society in Latin America and continues to force impoverished people from their homes in order to grow coca on their land, as well as putting police men and women who stand in the way of powerful drug cartels at risk of losing their lives due to their resistance.
While in my opinion the argument in favour of the legalisation of all drugs is a strong one because it makes drugs safer to use and supply due to greater control, currently that argument is clearly unrealistic. Also, despite over forty years of US-led international drug control efforts that look to eradicate production and intercept traffic in a ‘War on Drugs’, overall production has remained relatively steady. Therefore, it is evident that a demand side push to limit the environmental and humanitarian damage caused by this trade is the only realistic answer.
The UK consume the most cocaine in absolute and relative terms in Europe and therefore continue to provide profit incentive to cartels for the production of cocaine and where there is demand for cocaine there always seems to be a new supply route. It is very clear that the reality of recreational cocaine use by people, many of whom may care about the exploitation of workers in sweatshops and have no idea of the damage funded by their occasional usage, is that each pound spent to buy drugs in the UK is money which will be used to buy firearms, which will kill policemen and women as well as other victims linked to drug trafficking.
Politics for the Unpolitical 