Mariah Griffin-Angus: Your Drug Addiction Is Costing Poor People Their Lives Mariah Griffin-Angus - The Huffington Post | |
go to original April 23, 2014 |
Nogales, right on the border of Arizona, feels a bit like a town where a modern day Fist Full of Dollars could be filmed. It's full of cheap tacqueiras, dust and uncertainty. There is a heavy feel of suspension hanging over the place, with families and young labourers from all over Central America waiting for a chance to slip into the promised land. Desperation, of course, breeds economic opportunity and in the past decade, drug cartels have moved into the human smuggling business, adding a new edge of violence and risk.
As if the congestion of desperate families is not enough for this beleaguered region, the drug violence that permeates northern Mexico makes the situation even more devastating. Nogales is just a dusty and small part of an illegal international drug trade where black markets for counterfeit pharmaceutical drugs rake in an estimated $200 billion a year and marijuana pulls in a tidy $142 billion in sales a year. People sure love their drugs.
There are high costs, however, for this international appetite for drugs. And it's usually the poor and disenfranchised who pay these costs.
Take Cuidad Juarez, another Mexican border town. In 2010 there were over 3000 drug-related deaths. Or Columbia, where almost a quarter of a million people have died in the past 50 years due to drug conflict. Many were innocent bystanders, trapped in a relentless cycle of violence.
... Drugs aren't cool. Or edgy. This is supply and demand at its most brutal and the poor are the ones paying the price.
Read the rest at The Huffington Post
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