How our casual drug habits helped kill 28,228 Mexicans

Tim says:

06:52am | 18/09/10

An alternative conclusion, of course, is that it’s the war on drugs that’s caused this terrible toll in human life. If cocaine was treated the same as, say, tobacco, the above wouldn’t happen.

You blame who you want, I guess.

John Terry says:

07:26am | 18/09/10

Those governments doing there bit on the ‘war on drugs’ side should also take a bow. To blame it entirely on users is a mis-representative article. Your article even states that only half of the cocaine imported was from Mexico, so where is the other half coming from? If you have been following the drug war in Mexico you will find a lot of talk from their own government about legalisation, having recently decriminalised ALL drugs in small amounts. Undercut these criminals by making it legal and government controlled. These cartels absolutely love the zero tolerance approach by governments, the harder the governments try to shut them down, the more the price goes up. With higher prices they are making more profit so the dealers are the ones enjoying this war on drugs ans as we know the kingpins never get caught. The news will show a drug seizure of a few kilos of cocaine or heroin and pretend like they are making an impact when 10 times that amount finds it way through. Australia is lagging behind on this front, led by typical ignorance and mass hysteria about drugs and ‘zero tolerance’ approaches. Maybe when we have almost 3 million prisoners and still a huge drug problem like America we will begin to realise how wrong our approach was. Cue the comments from ignorant morons who want every drug user to be killed, yeah lets wipe out a good 90% of the population as that is the rate of people who drink regularly in this country. Oh and cue the ‘its illegal therefore its wrong’ crowd. It used to be entirely legal to own slaves in many countries that does not make it right.

Bassett Hound says:

07:40am | 18/09/10

The pitbull is back and his snarlling will be his downfall.  Dog fighters can’t change their spots forever.

Gran Depine says:

09:09am | 18/09/10

I’m sick to death about the inactions of our Governments. Today we are fighting Heroin warlords in Afghanistan. How can these people live a normal life when they get 100 times more money for opium than for dates and vegetables? How can the Peruvian, Colombian and jungle Brazilian farmers survive when they get more money for cocoa base than for cash crops?

At the domestic level, the police in Australia do not have enough powers to arrest and the courts (with their soft judges) are all too lenient.  Shouldn’t there be a war fought against drug importers, manufacturers and distributors?

At the local level, cocaine is not a poor man’s drug. One gram that has been diluted three times is now worth $300 - $500 on the streets. The dealers act like large monopolies that control the price and hide stock for the so called “Dry Season” which conveniently is between December and January. Supply and demand…can someone call the ACCC?

The police are not stupid. They know where it is. They are just too small and are given fly swatter to control a cockroach epidemic. Just go to any nightclub, CBD bar, fashion industry function, racecourse, building site, screen all the lawyers, screen chef and foodies…should I go on? Go to all these doggy car yards that are fronts for money laundries…follow all these pilots travelling between consulate general contacts “on planes” nationally and internationally, all these bullshit jewelery shops and money transfer shops…the normal person out there has no idea. No idea! But the media helps by showing us a photo of a dead Mexican.

Peter says:

09:11am | 18/09/10

Good work Penbo. Cosseted, self-indulgent Sydney snorters are 100 per cent complicit. Without a ready market, there would be no incentive to generate supply infrastructure on the scale we are seeing in Northern Mexico and Australian recreational cocaine users are no different to their counterparts in the US, Britain, Europe or anywhere people have discretionary income and an attitude that says selfish pleasure prevails over social conscience. In respect of cocaine, that uncaring market supports a business that generates piles of corpses as a waste product of the manufacturing and distribution processes.

Paul Chawp says:

10:07am | 18/09/10

Prohibition FTW!

terben says:

10:42am | 18/09/10

Just another example of the consequences of Governments’ interference in the private behaviour of individuals.

Gregg says:

12:15pm | 18/09/10

I think I’ve read David where the border region of Mexico beats even Afghanistan and places like South Africa to the top in planet’s most violent location.
It is about a year or so ago myself when I first started seeing more media references to what was going on and that possibly came about because of the brutality of mass beheadings at the time.
I know in the US they have their DEA and stringent border policing but you do have to wonder how bad, how long and how far this can develop before Obama gets an agreement going with the Mexican government and develops a well equipped army type fighting force of thousands with helicopters and the works for a flying squad that can literally saturate a particular area, put on a curfew and do air/ground patrols for seek and destroy in cross border action and take these killers on in these gun battles rather than hoping local police will do it.
It is no wonder police are prepared to take bribes if the alternative is for they and their family to be shot/tortured/beheaded.
There has been reporting this past week that the Sinaloa is getting into bed with the Triad and Bikies over here and that’s the last thing we need, hopefully not a turf war here.

Of course you’ll have the Make Drugs free lobby claiming that is the answer too!
The thing is that the drug trade, be it free or not is going to have a greater effect on the US and here than 911 or Bali and yet governments are not prepared to put the same effort into quelling it.

Kassie says:

01:51pm | 18/09/10

You’re right, of course. And I imagine that many of those poseur coke-heads will be the first ones to bang on about Nestle, Big Pharma, etc. And while we’re at it, if not for the demand for heroin, poor dills like Scott Rush would not be sitting on death row. So smack-heads take a bow, too.

four corners says:

02:31pm | 18/09/10

I find it amusing that this week you wrote defending salt. Disregarding the health implications of over-salted food (just about all packaged and processed food is needlessly high in salt - among other things).

Now you write imploring people to consider their consumption habits and the impacts on the lives of people.

It seems that you are very picky about what you consume and who it hurts.

Either you believe in a world where we can consume whatever we want regardless of the consequences or you want to restrict what we consume(death is death - it doesn’t matter if some lardo kills themselves from overeating leaving their family behind and costing our health system billions of dollars or if a drug cartel kills people).

Doug Graves says:

04:25pm | 18/09/10

Funny story about a draft dodging mate,who absconded overseas,wound up in Vietnam anyway ,loading weed into B52,s to go back stateside.Funny how Afghanistan,s only viable export is opium,funny stories about Oliver North and C.I.A. funding, no one runs drugs better than a corrupt government aided by diplomatic immunity.

Chris L says:

04:35pm | 18/09/10

It’s the same as saying we’re responsible for the sweatshops in China and India. The fact is the people responsible are the people who are doing the killing.

Greg Kasarik says:

06:03pm | 18/09/10

It seems to me that the author here is missing the main point, which is that the blindingly obvious fact that drug prohibition simply does not work. People enjoy mind altered states and have used a variety of compounds to achieve those ends for thousands of years.

The arbitrary and stupidly American “War on Drugs”, which allows the highly toxic, addictive and aggression causing alcohol as the only legal mind altering compound is the real reason behind the violence in Mexico. Not everyone enjoys alcohol and many would prefer to engage with other substances, but government foolishly prevents this from happening, with the unsurprising result of a thriving black market, highly elevated prices, corruption and violence.

And of course, the second reason for all of the violence is that while cocaine is transported north, guns, freely available in the USA, are move south in order to ensure the success of the black market opperations. Where there is much money to be made from breaking the law, there will always be sociopaths prepared to go to any extreme to get to the top of the pile, even with the almost certain knowledge that they will eventually be laid low by the competition.

That cocaine is addicitive and problematic for health is certain, but it is doubtful whether it is as dangerous as alcohol, which kills about 3000 Australians each year and is responsible for huge amounts of social disruption and family violence.

The fact is that it is not the right of a paternalistic government to decide what adults can and cannot put into their bodies. The sooner our governments start treating us like adults and the sooner we are able to exercise our free will with respect to different drugs, the sooner the horrific death toll in countries like Mexico will come to an end.

stephen says:

07:31pm | 18/09/10

Drug-takers, generally, don’t do a lot of sport, and those that take drugs because of it, shouldn’t do either.
If we are a nation of sport-lovers, and sport has and is the defining activty of this nation, how do we then reconcile the notion of the aussie that likes to get things done, with the drug-addled fool, addicted to his/her own addiction ?

Kordez says:

11:19pm | 18/09/10

Coincidently, I watched Blow last night while throwing back my first bottle of Jimmy this weekend, George Jung (played by JD) and the late Pab’s always rocks my boat.

Australia has more important issues to worry about then drug war deaths in Mexico.. Just like the US Government, which evidently are more willing to spent a trillion bucks on warfare in Iraq than reduce an ever increasing “Mexican produced” drug death toll within their own nation. Australia is no innocent here, we do the same thing for political gain and one day when the nation is royally F’d, we’ll start regulating the sale of addictive substances to our own population despite the resulting deaths… Oh wait… We already do.. But our drug related deaths are a lot less instant and equally justified because instead of funding death we profit from it and fund nation wide health reforms, making it less evil.. right?

Perhaps we’ll have a real war on drugs with Mexico, one day.

common sense says:

06:39am | 19/09/10

well if there was no ‘war on drugs’ there wouldn’t be so many deaths. This is what an unregulated black market creates. It was the same under alcohol prohibition. The War is much more dangerous than the Drug ... always has been.

Mary wide bay says:

07:40am | 19/09/10

Thank you David. Wakey wakey to the elitist druggies out there.

John says:

09:16am | 19/09/10

Well put mate.

mike says:

10:39am | 19/09/10

It makes just as much sense to blame the drug laws for all those deaths as it does to blame the users. In fact, it makes more sense. When alcohol was illegal during U.S. Prohibition we had the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre but no one blamed drinkers for that.

Terry Wright says:

11:46am | 19/09/10

“Companies such as Nestle can face calls for a boycott over a product such as powdered breast milk, or a reputable firm such as Nike can be denounced for using sweatshop labour, yet when it comes to drugs there’s no thought given to the work practices and standover tactics of their manufacturers and suppliers.”

Downplaying the Nike’s and Nestle’s of this world but highlighting drug cartels - to support the claim that end users are somehow to blame - is simply disingenuous. I could safely bet my house that most readers here have purchased at least a few items that have involved the death of someone in the production process.

In the same way that government action could shut down the sweatshops, child worker factories or forced labour camps, we could also force the drug cartels out of the drug trade. It’s this lack of action by governments that is the real cause not the end consumers. End drug prohibition and these cartels will be instantly out of the illicit drug trade.

The end user should not have to research all the businesses and laws involved in providing a product. It’s the role of the government to make sure any product delivered to us is safe and made ethically. If it’s not happening with a product like drugs that is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, then there’s a problem up the line. Remember that we used to use heroin, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines etc. before the dangerous cartels. It’s the flawed strategy of governments that allowed powerful cartels to take over, not the consumer.

Singling out drug users as evil and immoral just doesn’t cut it in 2010. The moralistic approach to drug use has been a tool for the sensationalist media and point scoring politicians for too long. This is the job for moral crusaders and hypocritical religious types not rational thinking adults.

Elbo says:

06:23pm | 19/09/10

Aussies like drugs, so what? Legalize the shit and be done with it. Australians responsible for Mexican drug deaths is stretching the Butterfly effect too far,

Sol says:

06:40pm | 19/09/10

Typical Just Say No/War on Drugs mentality: blame the drug user for the problems of our draconian drug laws.

Russell says:

06:55am | 20/09/10

All drug users have a choice: If they continue using, buying and supporting this barbarous industry, then they are complicit (no, responsible for) murder. No one is forcing them to buy drugs.
Alternatively, they could try and change the laws, which would have to apply across the entire globe. But if they continue to use while these laws exist, all the evasive ducking and weaving, blaming prohibitionists, “the ruling class: (are they serious?) and twaddle peddled in this forum by people trying to justify themselves, is just that: twaddle.

sheedy's left foot says:

07:45am | 20/09/10

Never understood why in places like Afghanistan, the western governments don’t just buy all of the opium crops at a decent price. Then turn it all into pain relief medication.

Lots of cheaper generic pain drugs available and a legal market for opium poppies.

Russell says:

01:45pm | 20/09/10

The “tax and regulate” notion was one I once subscribed to. But our governments’ addiction to the revenue the alcohol and gambling industries provides doesn’t auger well for the model! In fact its not hard to imagine a worse nightmare scenario, rather like the ones Philip K Dick wrote about all those years ago. Pointing figures of blame and ringing our hands and saying “oh woe is us” is all very satisfying, but ultimately the responsibility is ours, the consumers.

We don’t have to support these criminals. No one is forcing us to. At least that’s what I think Penbo is saying, and I agree.

Natural Family says:

07:38pm | 20/09/10

I agree with the article.  One little point though.  Nestle don’t produce powdered breast milk.  They make powdered formula milk which is given to babies instead of breast milk.  That isn’t a problem when it’s used in hygienic conditions by mothers who can’t breastfeed.  It is a problem when pushed on mothers in the Third World as being better than breastmilk resulting in babies becoming ill and even dying from gastroenteritis, or being malnourished from overdilution of the formula once the free formula runs out.

Mark says:

05:37pm | 21/09/10

Ken Crispin QC and former supreme court judge on the war on drugs.

“KERRY O’BRIEN: That implies that you believe that the smart way to go in the end is some kind of decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs is that the case?

KEN CRISPIN: Yes it is. I do.

If you look at the prohibition era, it was confidently assumed this would cut down on the supply of alcohol. It didn’t. The use of alcohol exploded during the prohibition era. All it did was placed a great deal of money in the hands ever criminal gangs which flourished and you had colourful figures like Al Capone emerge.

The same has happened on a grander scale with drugs. The drug usage has exploded during the war on drugs. To quote one British figure ‘the number of heroin users over about 30 years increased from 2000 to 300,000.’ The prevalence of drugs has exploded to the point that the prices have fallen so cocaine, in real terms, now costs about a sixth of what it did at the start of the war on drugs. Heroin costs about a tenth of what it did on the start of the war on drugs.

And all the way around the world the countries that have the most rigorously enforced drug laws tend to have the highest rate of usage.”

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2911436.htm