Of drugs and money

The lure of money is so great that people would ignore all odds. So great is the pull that people even risk death and many have died. At issue here is cocaine, the drug that has not only destroyed homes but has destroyed so many people that a country like Malaysia kill those who insist on drug trafficking. This is widely known but there must be something in the drug trade that would make people ignore the threat of death to smuggle drugs into that country. Guyana up until the 1970s was relatively drug free. There were the alcoholics and the tobacco smokers but the authorities considered these tolerable drugs. In any case, they were legal. Marijuana had been in Guyana from as far back as the days of indentureship. Back then people grew it for medicinal use and some even for recreational use. Those were the days when people even planted their own tobacco. The drug culture as we know it today developed at the same time some Guyanese embraced the Rastafari culture. Marijuana became the drug of choice. Its advent into Guyana was almost unnoticed but then people started to notice its potential for providing immense wealth. But even then the authorities were not unusually worried. In fact, arrests for marijuana were more for the purpose of entertainment. The people who smoked the drug were easily identifiable; they were bedraggled with knotted hair. Then came cocaine and the drug scene has changed irrevocably. The users were not the unkempt people associated with marijuana; they were the white collar people, the cream of the society and those who simply wanted an escape, no matter how brief, from the rigours of life. Before long, many had become addicted and there were others who recognized the potential to become filthy rich. While Guyana grows marijuana in extremely large quantities, it does not make cocaine. It does not even cultivate cocoa. The drug dealers in neighbouring South American countries were quick to spot the importance of Guyana as a transshipment point. Before long, cocaine was passing through Guyana by the tonnes. With the enterprising South American came the greedy Guyanese. For years the drug trade flourished because North America was not unduly worried about a few coke heads. When the gravity of the situation dawned there came a radical shift in the focus on cocaine coming out of Guyana. But by then cocaine trafficking in Guyana had become an enterprise which now seems indestructible. Traffickers recruit people from all over the world to come to Guyana to move cocaine. At the same time people develop ingenious means. We have had cocaine in stomachs and in any orifice in which drug could be hidden. People have attempted to smuggle drugs in just about every available container and object. Recently European authorities discovered cocaine in scrap iron. But some had tried to smuggle cocaine in molasses, in bottles of alcohol, in powdered milk, condiments and even seafood. With so many drug busts one would expect that drug smuggling would grind to a halt. Instead, far from it. Each day a new courier attempts to beat the system using one of the means that had been tried before. They are crowding the jails both at home and abroad. Guyanese women account for twelve per cent of the women in South African jails. One school of thought is that if young people are gainfully employed then there would be no need to smuggle drugs. The truth is something else. The money offered seems too much to let pass by. Some very academically qualified young people got caught in the trade. At the same time, many of the young drug mules are those who slipped through the cracks in the school system. There is no rehabilitation of drug mules. The addicts are ignored, discarded as the dregs of the society. At the other end of the spectrum are the gunmen who kill those that either hinder or disrupt the flow of drugs and consequently the money from the trade. There is no solution to the local drug problem.