The question has to be simple or it might blow your brains!
Should we be able to alter the workings of our own minds by the use of drugs either legal or illegal, natural or chemical, mixed in giant vats in a Bolivian rain forest or in brewery in Burton-on-Trent?
Or should we turn a smokily blind eye to something a bit herby grown at the bottom of your garden where the fairies live or in a terraced house in Manchester that glows like it fell off the back of a spaceship?
And what about cigarettes, no longer rolled on the trembling thigh of a dusky maiden but in Richmond, Virginia, where Marlboro unceremoniously wraps tobacco leaves in white paper for the betterment and legal enjoyment of the world.
WAIT!
Tobacco is estimated to be responsible for eight million deaths every year.
Really?
YES!
Anyway, let’s have a look at a slightly less popular drug than tobacco … cannabis!
It’s estimated that there are more than 200 million cannabis users in the world.
Many people claim that nobody has ever died from dope. Well, they are daft, unless they mean that no-one has ever overdosed to death on marijuana.
The reality is, you’ll either fall asleep or throw a ‘whitey’ (turn white, well a bit green actually. You’ll feel so sick you will want to die. But you won’t).
And masses of research shows that it is almost impossible for the human body to get just too much of this soporific which has been at the heart of so much laughter and inalienable funniness.
The truth is though that many people do die from health complications due to things they put in their bodies. And I don’t mean Second World War artillery shells which then won’t come out.
Marijuana is no different.
But now big burly blond BORIS has dropped a bombshell on recreational users – and some others – of illegal soporifics.
Boris is unleashing an all-out war on drugs generally – not just cannabis – targeting dealers, addicts and casual users who he believes are the root cause of half of all burglaries and violent robberies in the world.
He is introducing a ten-year plan to stop what he describes as this “pernicious” trade by cutting off supplies and demand.
Demand?
Cutting off supplies will end demand?
Eh?
Isn’t that how certain drugs became illegal in the first place?
Supply and demand?
Anyway, Boris says politicians have dithered over drugs too long — sometimes because they once dabbled in drugs themselves, he admits with his zany wit and charm.
He said: “Drugs are not going to make you happier. They’re not going to make you more successful. They’re not going to make you cooler. They’re bad news.”
Well, politics doesn’t make you look big and clever either Boris. But some people do it anyway, don’t they!
But you are quite right Boris, drugs don’t bring lasting happiness for anybody … but let’s not forget this old argument too. It does have an edge of physiocracy based on your plan to create an illegal drugs-free world.
Recently, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) published a report – Transnational Crime and the Developing World – saying that the global market in drug trafficking has an estimated annual global value of between $426 billion and $652 billion (US).
Figures are a bit shadowy on this but it is safe to say that illegal drugs kill at least half a million people across the world every year.
Now look at these figures …in 2020, the global market size of alcoholic beverages amounted to over 1.49 trillion U.S. dollar.
The World Health Organization estimates that alcohol kills three million people throughout the world every year. In other words, alcohol is the cause of 5.3% of all human deaths annually. About 1 in every 20 deaths worldwide is the result of an alcohol-related disease, injury, accident, murder, or suicide.
Now look at these … Sales for the legal global tobacco market (2019) were worth approximately$818 billion (US), according to most recent estimates. The largest global tobacco category remains combustible cigarettes. With over 5,200 billion cigarettes consumed annually, it is valued at US$705 billion.
Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of these deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
About 2 billion people worldwide consume alcoholic drinks and cigarettes are smoked by over 1 billion people, nearly 20% of the world’s population.
In 2020/21, tax receipts from alcohol duties in the United Kingdom alone amounted to approximately 12.12 billion British pounds, compared with 12.1 billion in the previous year.
The tax, both excise duty and VAT, raised through the sale of tobacco products continues to be a major source of revenue for our Government, contributing around £12 billion annually. This is, according to the Treasury.
It has been the policy of successive Governments to maintain a high level of tax on tobacco products in order to reduce tobacco consumption and the prevalence of smoking. Between 1993 and 2000 a tobacco duty ‘escalator’, which introduced year-on-year above inflation increases in tobacco duty, was implemented with the aim of reducing consumption still further.
Isn’t that a bit like saying to somebody:
“Ere we go – ‘ave a fag. It won’t kill ya!”
(Well, it probably will actually)
And then, once you are addicted charging you a fortune for your next hit?
There have been more than five million potential deaths from Covid according to figures as shadowy as those about deaths from illegal drugs …
Now read this: In the first half of 2021, Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. reported collective sales of $17.2 billion for vaccines. Johnson & Johnson reported more than $500 million in sales.
Well, well, well. No matter how you look at it drugs are big big business and big big earners for governments everywhere.
So, why is a bit of home-grown such a big deal?
I think I need to go and have a fag and a quick snifter and think about this!
#boris #drugs #marijuana #covid #bigpharma #fags #booze
