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November 27, 2007

UN Drug Czar Rips European For Cocaine Selfishness

...and not considering the costs of snorting on West Africa, which has a new scourge, as if it needed another:

At times I am perplexed and frustrated. Europeans now understand that they should not buy blood diamonds, or clothes made by slaves working in sweatshops. Extractive industries from around the world publish what they pay to local exporters as a way of preventing corruption. Major initiatives are in place to curb illicit trade in ivory, endangered species - even precious wood from illegal logging. The corporate world, reflecting public opinion, is showing a greater sense of social responsibility.

And yet with cocaine, the opposite occurs. Nobody makes movies about blood coke. Worse than that: models and socialites who wouldn't dare to wear a tiger fur coat, show no qualms about flaunting their cocaine use in public.

As a non-enthusiast of drug use, it's a cost-free thing for me to oppose drug use. I gain no utility from the stuff, apart from the hospital grade ether I sprinkle on my Sleepyrags. So I realize it's rather easy for me to scold drug users for the unintended consequences of their actions.

Still, points like this demonstrate a truth: When you buy drugs, unsavory people are getting the money, aren't they? And they're not building public libraries with that money.

Of course, all of us impose bad externalities on the world at large through our decisions, and drug users may argue, perhaps plausibly, that buying drugs from a local warlord causes lesser bad effects than driving an SUV and putting money into the hands of Our Allies The House of Saud (TM), but all the chortling over the basic notion seems out of place.

Ehhhhh... I hate posts like this. They start so many arguments. And I'm all about the love.

Seemed too interesting, and too Euro-bashing, not to post, though.

Let's Focus on Eurowanks... and just note the hypocrisy. Europeans, it seems, are willing to give up everything they don't particularly want -- diamonds, economic productivity, children, a future presence on Earth -- and scold others for not doing otherwise to save the planet they soon won't inhabit.

But when it comes to stuff they do want, suddenly they just say, "That's not my problem, Old Man. Let the Africans figure their own shit out."

It's really not much of a moral gesture to abstain from actions you don't derive pleasure from, such as, for Europeans, vaginal sex.

Anyway. I'm aware that when I post stuff like this I really don't have any particular personal right to strut righteously, as I just don't like drugs. So it's pretty fucking easy for me to avoid inflicting all drug-related negative externalities on the world. I wouldn't do them anyway. Quite frankly, if drug purchases helped support orphanages and kennels for stray dogs, I still wouldn't buy them.

But for the Religion of the Perpetually Self-Righteous -- the hippies, the Eurowanks -- they're always browbeating and showing their pretty peacock feathers over their "moral stances" they've taken, almost all of which are cost-free or nearly so for them.

But when the rubber hits the road, and they're asked to refrain from drug use for all the same reasons they refrain from, say, "conflict grapes" or whatever the fuck they're on about this week, they balk. When there's a cost associated with their piousness, they're unwilling pay it.

When their hobby is threatened, suddenly it's not quite so imperative to "think globally, act locally" after al.


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posted by Ace at 07:01 PM

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