Drugs

This blog is going to make a prediction. One I want to be wrong about, but I think I will only be wrong if we get some serious and decent politicians running the country, so I think I will be right.

Its about drugs. A topic I have blogged about before.

I last went to the US in 2014. San Francisco, I took in the tourist spots. I really liked it. Before that I went to New York in 2004, I wasn’t sold on the place. I was with my son and he was about 2 years old, perhaps its not a place for young kids.

Both times I saw the implication of living in a country where there is no safety net of social security or National Health Service. If you cannot afford healthcare in the US you rot and die. If you cannot afford a home, or are too mentally unwell to work out where to live, the streets become your home. And in the US it was very noticeable. I have not been back to the US in 10 years.

The US is very good at presenting polished TV anchors and Hollywood programs that show a sophisticated and shiney version of the country. Its not real. Its not the real US. There are some privileged people who live nice lives over there, but their poverty is the stuff of the third world.

I have read stories of the opioid crisis in the US and I know that the destruction this is causing in peoples lives is enormous. People overdose and die, if they are lucky, otherwise its highly likely they become addicted they literally rot as humans on the street. The program Dopesick on Disney presents the story really well and its horrific.

The story shows that our version of capitalism is killing people. We dislike communism because we say "but the Chinese government is bad" or "the Soviet regime was bad". And both of these things are true. There are some very bad stories of those regimes killing innocent people one way or another. But we mustn't forget that our regimes are little better. Communism doesn't kill Chinese or Russian people, bad regimes do. And bad regimes exist in the US and Europe as well.

The UK tends to follow the US. Our addiction situation is out of control. The police no longer police vagrancy so the addicts and mentally ill are much more visible as they congregate in city centres begging passers by for anything they can, yet we do not have an opioid crisis quite as bad as the US. Why is this?

One reason may be the commercialisation of healthcare in the US. Doctors are paid to prescribe drugs. Pharmaceutical companies prioritise profits and push drugs on Doctors. Dopesick actually shows Doctors being scared not to give their patients the drugs incase they were sued by the pharmaceutical companies. A situation engineered to put profit over misery. In the UK, the NHS and GPs do everything they can to keep people away from their budgets, so perhaps the scope to do something similar is more limited.

So what is the alternative for a pharmaceutical company who needs to push drugs onto people. Firstly you need to eliminate the competition. That competition is the drug lords who buy the opium grown in Afghanistan and Columbia.

When George Bush and Tony Bliar illegally invaded Iraq, one of their claimed benefits was that they would put an end to opium growing by Afghan farmers and thereby help the 'war on drugs' in the West. Whilst an American soldier might have significant resources at his disposal, if he tells you to burn your opium crop, you can still wait for him to leave and tell him to go fuck himself. This is something the Afghan farmers have been doing.

But last year the Taliban took back control. The Taliban could accept money from big pharmaceutical companies. Obviously this would never be done in a traceable way, but lets say they accepted it in return for telling the farmers that their kids would be killed if they didn't stop growing poppies, then it would be more effective than an American soldier.

And just like that, the Afghan poppy harvest has been wiped out.

99% of the crop gone. Most of it used to supply the illegal drug trade in the UK.

In the ridiculous world of the war on drugs this is a victory.

But don't worry, we still have supplies in Columbia.

But wait, farmers growing the coca crop in Columbia are going hungry because no one is coming to buy it from them.

Our economic 'scientists' will tell you that when supply falls, prices rise. Supply is falling radically now Afghanistan no longer grows the crop, yet in Columbia, not only are prices falling but the buyers aren't even turning up to haggle over the crop. The buyers have gone.

What has happened? Because something has happened.

Maybe I'm just thinking something is going on here when there isn't. There are many decent people working at pharmaceutical companies doing lots of good things. This is true. But lets not forget that the multi-billionaire owner of the company that produced the drugs behind the opioid crisis in the US is described as "the worst drug dealer in history", and his family as "the most evil family in America". None of them are in prison. They all remain billionaires.

When you have a society that is unhappy, they will look for escapes and legal highs, and when you combine that with an economic system that isn't bothered about a persons misery or suffering if profits are being made, then perhaps the collapse in crops in Afghanistan and the collapse of demand in Columbia isn't so surprising.

Stocks of opium may exist for a year or so, but after that a new drug will be need to be found. I suspect its already ready and waiting.

My prediction is that in 5 years time the UK will have a drug crisis similar to the US. It will be opioid based, but synthetic and much more addictive than heroin. Unlike the US our health service will attempt to treat all the side effects that addicts suffer from which will create a constant and unmanageable strain on the NHS. And I guarantee that somewhere along the line pharmaceutical companies will significantly increase their profits.