Last night, I watched a 25-minute YouTube interview with Nathan Lake, an expat travel writer living in Ecuador. It was a highly informative video about living in South America, especially for someone like myself who is thinking of retiring in that country beginning in June of next year. However, the host made a comment at the halfway point which stuck in my proverbial craw. It was the kind of comment that sounds innocent at first blush but which makes one think twice as they contemplate the problematic assumptions behind the utterance. I hoped to cite the comment verbatim for you, but the YouTube transcript option seems unavailable on this video, so I will paraphrase the host's remarks instead, assuring you as I do so that the following quote grasps the spirit, if not the letter, of his troubling adumbrations. I refrain from posting the name of the host here, since my goal is to expose the racist nature of the mainstream mindset about drugs and not to trash any particular person for holding it, especially when the offender is obviously unaware of the racist implications of that mindset.
I hate to even ask you about violence in Ecuador," quoth the host (more or less), "because we know in America that the problems with guns and things are in specific places, so as long as you avoid those places, you will be fine."
Now, it's a simple statement of fact, right? We avoid the violent places. That's common sense. And yet to me it also represents the attitude that keeps Americans happy with the War on Drugs: the victims of that war are in specific places, after all; nay, they are different kinds of people than we are, belonging to specific races and economic classes, and so if we just ignore them, we will be fine. It's not a problem if they are gunning themselves down thanks to prohibition in some little corner of the world that we never visit. It's not affecting us. We know how to steer clear of the carnage that we ourselves are causing by knowingly promulgating a policy that created the Mafia as we know it today and is responsible for the influx of massive armaments into the 'hood. We can carry on with life as normal, as long as we pretend that such victims do not exist.
In other words, such comments are "all of a piece" with the Drug Warrior's absurd belief that the Drug War has no downsides. And they're right: of course. The Drug War has no downsides... for them. The Drug War's downsides are reserved for the invisible minorities that simply do not count.
Author's Follow-up: March 22, 2024
If you want to uncover unconscious racism, just watch some YouTube videos about moving to Latin America. The hosts will "blow off" violence in countries like Mexico and Ecuador by saying things like, "It's not a problem for us, really," ("us" apparently meaning "relatively rich expats"). "You've just got to know the places to avoid."
But this attitude is the whole problem when it comes to the Drug War. Rich westerners do not think of prohibition as a problem because it isn't one for them, and they do not lose any sleep worrying about the demographics for which the Drug War IS a problem. The victims are nameless minorities, after all, with addresses like "the 9000 Block of Water Street" or some other godforsaken location that is conjured by the very word 'downtown' these days when used in crime reports. "Gang shooting killed five in Baltimore? Not to worry, that shooting happened DOWNTOWN, after all, where you've got to expect such things."
I just saw a video about moving to Mexico, in fact, in which the host pooh-poohed the idea that the country was dangerous, saying that she hadn't noticed any major problems. But then she can hardly expect to see the 60,000 people who have been "disappeared" thanks to the Drug War1, nor the 39,000 whose bodies are tucked away in the country's morgues, still waiting to be identified by next-of-kin2.
When it comes to the downsides of the Drug War, the attitude of the reasonably well-off travel show host seems to be: "Don't ask, don't tell," or rather, "Don't worry, be happy."
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.
Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.
I wish someone would tell Getty Images to start earning an honest living. I bought AI credits only to find that words like "mushrooms" and "drugs" could not be used. Nor "blood," nor "violence." And they refuse to refund my $14,99. Who is their service for, Ozzie Harriet?
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!