Drugs

I’ve just had my world rocked today, if what a young Indian man told me is correct. Apparently, drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy and many others are freely available in Nanchang’s somewhat seedy and sometimes respectable nightlife venues, should you wish to purchase them. I am particularly shocked that heroin is available and that there are enough people with money to buy cocaine, though the price of cocaine in some countries had fallen so I have read fairly recently*. I am further surprised that Ecstasy is available in a capital city of a largely agricultural province, with it being more of a ‘designer drug’. The young man is a business associate of several nightclubs in China and is a frequent visitor to Nanchang’s nightlife. Though, you’ll have to forgive my naivety on this issue, as I thought with China possessing a more direct ‘hands-on’ approach to political and social control that their vast political system wouldn’t be hampered by too many liberal sentiments in dealing with such issues - and I’m too old for nightclubs.

My wife has translated several tea-time news items from the television where armed police have made spectacular swoops on different local locations and caught and captured drug dealers and their vast array of loot, including drugs, cash, hand guns, stolen mobile ‘phones, false IDs, stolen credit cards etc. Just like an American film, the Chinese armed police line up outside a location, the signal is given, and the armed police officers rush in, bravely I might add, and arrest all whom they find. China too has many television programmes centred on policing, with drug busts and armed police making a dazzling finale to most episodes. It would seem television is not so far from reality here in Nanchang.

The young man suggested that the illegal drug business is controlled by an organised criminal element and displayed an impressive amount of detail - I am left wondering, given the money involved in illegal drugs, just how big could that organised element be? I read recently that Ghana’s political system is expected to collapse, because of drug-money infiltration from such counties as Columbia, as Ghana is ideally situated for strategic distribution and their government extremely susceptible to corruption. The power of drug money has the power to change or influence governments in the world it would seem. No better example of this is the film, ‘Traffic”, staring Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, which clearly identifies and explains why America has failed to win the ‘war on drugs’. The drug barons America is fighting against have more money, better technology, better lawyers, superior logistics, unlimited weapons and intelligence equal to if not greater than what the DEA or whomsoever can muster.

Today I have read in a British newspaper that British police have just swooped on a safe deposit box company in London and seized a treasure trove of drugs, money, guns etc, possibly totalling one billion pounds. This is on top of a recent raid on a street in a crime-ridden area in south London involving over six hundred police officers. Though, just how big is the tip of that iceberg will those raids prove to be? These raids are against constant criticisms of British policing, as they seem increasingly less concerned with every day crimes one might see on the streets and more concerned with fighting ‘organised crime’, in which terrorism is caught up in that perspective. Though, I have just recently read that America’s FBI invented its own bogeyman in the 1950s with the ‘mafia’, as a big enough force to justify its own federal existence.

Both China and Britain’s approach to the drug problem has made me think deeper about social / crime and political control by governments.


*Originally, I made an incorrect reference to cocaine and the growth of poppies. Cocaine, of course, comes from the coco plant, which is mainly grown in South America.

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