What's the answer? Do you legalise it or continue the war against drugs?
It's all very Darwinian.
It'd be ok if the establishment was not involved in narcotics using it's proceeds to fund illicit activities around and about the planet.
As for Oxy, they call it Hillbilly Heroin. I heard a nice description of the problem some time ago, I can't remember if it was a movie, or a documentary but, basically: 100 years ago upto around 50/60 years ago opium and heroin was ignored, then they introduced controls and ban's. Big pharma, and their forerunners did not want to be losing the huge profits they were making so they 'invented' Oxy, produced some lab documentation, did some testing and stuck it out on the shelf for Dr's to 'prescribe'.
There are organised crime groups who take homeless people to tame Dr's get them 2, 3, 4 or more prescriptions each and then wheel them around a selection of pharmacy's to get the prescriptions filled. The homeless get paid for the day and whichever mafia group is doing the biz gets the pills and get to make $20, or $30 per pill.
It is a problem from the young to the old, rich and poor. We live in an affluent area, Lambo at the end of the road, few porkers and more range rovers than you could wave a stick at. My kid's school has regular drug searches, one happened last week, local plod brng along a sniffer dog and it goes all around the school, including classes being taught sniffing bag's, lockers, desks, kids, cupboards ... everything.
The lad tells me that there are about 5 dealers at the school, we are talking 15/16 year olds, they mainly sell weed. But, there is a culture of kids nicking happy pill's from the stressed out yummy mummy and selling those at aschool too, American Doc's over prescribe, just tell one you are feeling low and you will get a happy tablet prescription.
Quick bit of history: Back in WW2 when the US needed morphine it encouraged farmers in south america to grow opium poppies as the climate there was ideal. At the end of WW2 the US govt said, "thank you for your service to the US and goodbye". Overnight the farmers were making zilch, so they started growing coke plants and shipping that up to the US to continue earning some money. So look who started the problem.
Weed as it is known and grown in central america can be loosely attributed to the Lebanese. Back in the days of the shooty war in Lebanon in the 70's and 80's the blokes growing the stuff over there had enough of being variously shot at, extorted and threatened either by Yasser's lot, Hezbollah, the Christian Falangists and the Israelis thrown in for good measure. They upped and emigrated to various parts of central america, where they bought 'coffee plantations' and swathes of land and set up the family business there. There used to be some Leb's in Belize and I know of one Brit/Lebanese squaddie's family that had 'coffee interests' in Nicaragua.
, the latest figures show the
