Hooking the World on Drugs

BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN SPAIN

A NEWBORN baby shrieks in a hospital in Madrid, Spain. A nurse frantically tries to pacify him but to no avail. The baby is suffering the agony of heroin withdrawal. Worse still, he is HIV-positive. His mother was hooked on heroin.

A Los Angeles mother inadvertently drives her car onto a street controlled by a gang of drug dealers. She is greeted by a barrage of bullets, which kill her infant daughter.

Thousands of miles away, in Afghanistan, a peasant cultivates a field of poppies. It has been a good year; production is up 25 percent. Opium poppies pay well, and the peasant’s family is struggling to survive. But these pretty poppies will be converted into heroin, and heroin destroys lives.

A shy teenage girl in Sydney, Australia, goes to a discotheque every Saturday night. She used to find it hard to mix with the crowd, but recently a pill called ecstasy has given her new confidence. The pills she takes were smuggled into Australia from the Netherlands, although local laboratories are also beginning to supply them. Ecstasy makes the music sound better, and she loses her inhibitions. She even feels more attractive.

For Manuel, a tough peasant who ekes out a living from his small farm in the Andes, life got a little easier when he began to cultivate coca. Manuel would like to stop harvesting the crop, but he fears that this would enrage the ruthless men who control coca production in his area.

These are just a few of the human faces behind the drug scourge that is wracking our planet.a Whether these people are consumers, producers, or innocent bystanders, drugs are relentlessly taking over their lives.

How Big Is the Drug Problem?

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan observes: “Drugs are tearing apart our societies, spawning crime, spreading diseases such as AIDS, and killing our youth and our future.” He adds: “Today there are an estimated 190 million drug users around the world. No country is immune. And alone, no country can hope to stem the drug trade within its borders. The globalization of the drug trade requires an international response.”

To make matters worse, in recent years designer drugsb have entered the scene. These synthetic chemicals are designed to give the consumer a high, or a euphoric feeling. Since designer drugs can be manufactured cheaply almost anywhere, police forces are practically powerless to control them. In 1997 the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs warned that in many countries these synthetic drugs have become part of “mainstream consumer culture” and that they must be viewed as a “formidable threat to international society in the next century.”

The newer drugs are no less potent than their predecessors. Crack cocaine is even more addictive than cocaine. New strains of cannabisc have greater hallucinogenic effects, and a new designer drug called ice may be among the most destructive of all.

Drug Money and Drug Power

Although drug users may be in the minority, their numbers are sufficient to grant immense power to the drug barons, the men who organize the production and distribution of drugs. These unscrupulous individuals run a racket that has become the most lucrative—and practically the biggest—business on earth. Drug deals may now account for about 8 percent of all international trade, or approximately $400,000,000,000 annually. As drug money moves around the world, it enriches gangsters, corrupts police forces, greases palms of politicians, and even finances terrorism.

Can anything be done to curb the drug problem? To what extent does the drug trade affect your pocketbook, your security, and the lives of your children?

[Footnotes]

[Map on page 4, 5]

(For fully formatted text, see publication)

Worldwide Drug Production and Trafficking

PRINCIPAL AREAS OF PRODUCTION:

Cannabis—herbal (marijuana) and resin (hashish)

Heroin

Cocaine

The arrows indicate principal trafficking routes.

[Credit Line]

Source: United Nations World Drug Report

[Picture Credit Line on page 3]

U.S. Navy photo