SITTING in the safety and comfort of their middle-class lifestyles, too many people are now experts about illegal drugs. There are only two groups that understand that business well—law enforcers and the producers and suppliers of the drugs.
The first idea that there is little difference between legal alcohol and illegal methamphetamine (shabu) is ignorant, naïve and dangerous. Often, if not regularly, most people do not drink to get drunk. When using illegal drugs, the only purpose is to get “high” and most regularly, as high as possible. No one ever said, “It was a busy day at work. I’ll inhale a little shabu to relax before I eat dinner.”
The idea that the police are specifically and maliciously targeting areas where the lower economic groups live in the antidrug campaign is also wrong. There is nothing malicious about it. Drug dealers and law enforcement know that is where the best market for mass-produced illegal drugs happens to be. It has always been that way.
In the novel The Godfather, crime boss Joe Zaluchi has this to say about the drug business, “In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people—the colored. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.” The middle and upper classes really do not care about mass-produced illegal drugs that their children will probably not use, except that they do not want the poor people stealing from them to buy those drugs. Notice the outrage about drugs only after the Ecstasy deaths at a P2,000-per-ticket concert. Not many tricycle drivers attended.
Several decades ago, a US radio personality asked listeners to each send him one US dollar by mail. He received millions. He said of the experience, “It’s easier to get a million people to give you one dollar than to get one person to give you a million dollars.” So it is with the drug business. We see drug busts of P5 million of the high-end illegal Ecstasy drug. We see the police take down P50 million of the low-end shabu.
Notice also, shabu is called “the poor man’s cocaine” not that “cocaine is the rich man’s shabu.”
Shabu is cheap to produce in massive quantities and as Sen. Edgardo S. Angara recently pointed out, “Hard for us to fathom a business with a markup of 650 percent.” A small purchase of P50 can give the buyer a good “high”. There is nothing fancy about shabu; it just does its job well at a price that everyone can afford.
Being so concerned about the “human rights” of the poor, maybe it is time to consider that also a human right is to be able to live in an environment that is free from the predators that supply killer drugs. If the drug business “experts” want to protect the “poor” people, then begin by protecting them from the evil drug suppliers that take their money, their future and the lives of the poor.