poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
If you use cocaine, you’re helping kill thousands of innocent people. Oh, and you’re destroying your health. Enjoy
WARNING: CONFRONTING CONTENT
THEY never found her body. But her killers would reveal how they had kidnapped her, tortured her, repeatedly raped her, decapitated her, then played soccer with her head.
Middle class Westerners, some of them quite possibly Australian professional footballers, enjoyed the cocaine trafficked by these animals.
For the record, the victim’s name was Yahaira Guadalupe Bahena Lopezs. She was 19 and she was innocent. Her killers, when captured, admitted they had mistaken her for someone else.
So it goes in Mexico, where more than 10 thousand people are killed each year in the drug war. Authorities say 90 per cent of victims are directly involved in the drug trade. The reality is that most victims are innocents caught in the crossfire. And all so Aussies can enjoy a high on a night out.
“If we’re a society that worries about eating free range chicken, drinking fair trade coffee and buying shoes and jeans that were not put together by sweatshop labour, well, we’d better worry about the real cost of cocaine, too.”
So wrote Melbourne economist Mike Pottenger two years ago. Those words are truer than ever today, with cocaine use still on the rise in Australia. Two per cent of Aussies now use cocaine regularly. By that and several other measures, we are now one of the world’s top five cocaine users per capita. All of our cocaine comes via those evil Mexican cartels. All of it.
Most of the world’s cocaine is produced in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. It is then shipped through Mexico and onwards to the western world. Mexican cartels love two things about the Australian market. Firstly, our coastline is so vast the chances of interception are small, whether the drug is transported by small boats or shipping containers.
And secondly, as this graph shows, wholesale prices are insanely high.
According to the United Nations World Drug Report 2014, the Oceania market is among the world’s fastest-growing markets. Our market is so lucrative that Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo”Guzman Loera, a man the US State Department called “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world”, helped set up a cocaine importation business in Sydney five years ago.
But why do Australians love the drug so much? Matt Noffs, CEO of drug rehab and counselling organisation The Noffs Foundation, says it’s all about image.
“I think a lot of it is about social marketing,” Noffs tells news.com.au. “People see these sports stars using cocaine and they think ‘hey, if they can get away with it, I should be able to get away scot free too’.”
Noffs says cocaine is now the drug of choice among the middle and upper classes in Australia for several reasons. One is the decline of heroin, which occurred because of the “heroin drought” caused by the 2000s war in Afghanistan. Where opium poppies are grown. Also, heroin has had what Noffs calls very effective “social marketing”. Put simply, we all know what a junkie looks like. And that’s not an image anyone aspires to.
But the image of the cool footballer, the fast-paced Wall Street trader, the creative ad executive, all of them snorting a line or two of cocaine to get them through the day and later, through the night — is socially acceptable.
“A coke addict will look like our friends and family members,” Noffs says. “So many people use it regularly, it’s a very normal thing.”
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...our-health-enjoy/story-fnq2o7dd-1227237031272
WARNING: CONFRONTING CONTENT
THEY never found her body. But her killers would reveal how they had kidnapped her, tortured her, repeatedly raped her, decapitated her, then played soccer with her head.
Middle class Westerners, some of them quite possibly Australian professional footballers, enjoyed the cocaine trafficked by these animals.
For the record, the victim’s name was Yahaira Guadalupe Bahena Lopezs. She was 19 and she was innocent. Her killers, when captured, admitted they had mistaken her for someone else.
So it goes in Mexico, where more than 10 thousand people are killed each year in the drug war. Authorities say 90 per cent of victims are directly involved in the drug trade. The reality is that most victims are innocents caught in the crossfire. And all so Aussies can enjoy a high on a night out.
“If we’re a society that worries about eating free range chicken, drinking fair trade coffee and buying shoes and jeans that were not put together by sweatshop labour, well, we’d better worry about the real cost of cocaine, too.”
So wrote Melbourne economist Mike Pottenger two years ago. Those words are truer than ever today, with cocaine use still on the rise in Australia. Two per cent of Aussies now use cocaine regularly. By that and several other measures, we are now one of the world’s top five cocaine users per capita. All of our cocaine comes via those evil Mexican cartels. All of it.
Most of the world’s cocaine is produced in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. It is then shipped through Mexico and onwards to the western world. Mexican cartels love two things about the Australian market. Firstly, our coastline is so vast the chances of interception are small, whether the drug is transported by small boats or shipping containers.
And secondly, as this graph shows, wholesale prices are insanely high.
According to the United Nations World Drug Report 2014, the Oceania market is among the world’s fastest-growing markets. Our market is so lucrative that Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo”Guzman Loera, a man the US State Department called “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world”, helped set up a cocaine importation business in Sydney five years ago.
But why do Australians love the drug so much? Matt Noffs, CEO of drug rehab and counselling organisation The Noffs Foundation, says it’s all about image.
“I think a lot of it is about social marketing,” Noffs tells news.com.au. “People see these sports stars using cocaine and they think ‘hey, if they can get away with it, I should be able to get away scot free too’.”
Noffs says cocaine is now the drug of choice among the middle and upper classes in Australia for several reasons. One is the decline of heroin, which occurred because of the “heroin drought” caused by the 2000s war in Afghanistan. Where opium poppies are grown. Also, heroin has had what Noffs calls very effective “social marketing”. Put simply, we all know what a junkie looks like. And that’s not an image anyone aspires to.
But the image of the cool footballer, the fast-paced Wall Street trader, the creative ad executive, all of them snorting a line or two of cocaine to get them through the day and later, through the night — is socially acceptable.
“A coke addict will look like our friends and family members,” Noffs says. “So many people use it regularly, it’s a very normal thing.”
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/re...our-health-enjoy/story-fnq2o7dd-1227237031272
