WARNING: Graphic picture at end of this article, placed after links.
The sound of rolling a joint. (Written July 2009)
Not so long ago my favorite series wound up, Battlestar Galactica re-imagined. ( Funny how that word re-imagined keeps cropping up around here, an LA connection maybe. )
Battlestar was known for it's cutting edge content and reversal of gender stero-typing roles; essentially rehabilitating the Sci Fi genre from the sole domain of socially maladjusted young men into a medium for everybody.
In the final season of the show, the directors slipped in a scene with a sly wink and nudge that reflected the ultra laid back progressive 'tude' of Vancouver Canada where it was filmed. A couple of my favorite actors playing naturally a couple of my favorite characters on the show pulled out a big phatty of a joint and smoked it. "Don't worry, it's medicinal." was the disclaimer line written in for the TV censors and the DEA to get the show safely on air and of course everyone here in Vancouver smiled at the cheekiness of displaying Vancouver's "other" most popular past time right there on mainstream TV.
With a puff, the characters, Laura and Adama enjoyed a quiet moment of relaxed insight amidst the chaos of their lives; she suffering from cancer and he herding the rag tag remains of the human race on a self fulfilling prophecy, just as most prophecies are. Dopamine cascade serotonin inhibited transcendence.
Why this moment stands out to me however, is for what I would read in the news a month or two later. The cast of Battlestar attended a mock United Nations and in it, the actor playing Adama, James Edward Olmos went on a bit of a hypocritical rant. Now, to be fair, James warned his other cast members that he probably should not attend this event because he tends to be a little outspoken - something I myself know nothing about. (Riiiiiiiight?)
What was James's rant about? He lambasted the governments of the world for not sending in peace keepers to help stabilize his cultural home country of Mexico in it's struggle to contain the drug cartels from taking over large swaths of the country. (Swaths - I love that word - more on that another time.)
This is where I did my double take. James lad, if you feel so passionately about fighting the new world royalty, the drug barons, why are you advertising their products in an internationally lauded series. If you want to send a clear message, start by refusing a scene where you smoke a joint. Is it really a stretch to see how sparking up here directly ties in to the bodiless heads found far to frequently in Mexico. Allow me to link the chain of how we are all connected.
Lets start by how we rationalize: Do you like it hard, or soft?
I know, I know, the Mexican Drug Cartels deal primarily in cocaine a "hard drug" and BC's main cash crop is pot, a "soft drug" so it's not the same thing right? Riiiiiight? This is part of the rational pedagogy that no longer applies in a drug trade where everything is interconnected. Mexican and Colombian coke, Asian heroin, ecstasy and methamphetamine, BC Bud. What about the other arguments?
How about, nature gooood, man made baaaaaad. Right?
Pot is soft, it is not addictive, right?
Pot is not as psychologically damaging, right?
We can rationalize anything. We can craft data to say anything.
I understand where James is coming from. In Mexico, just as it has been in Columbia for some time, the government is losing control to the drug cartels who use fear of their brutal methods to keep control. It is not just fear and violence that make the drug cartels so powerful, these organizations make the biggest of big bucks; upper millions to billions of dollars poured back into the sole task of circumventing government and selling more drugs. They make more money than many countries do and where they can focus their resources on the one task of selling drugs, the governments that try and control them have to spread their own budgets on governing a country of which policing is just one part. Governments are by design, at least in the west, out in the open and accountable to law which also makes them easy targets in the physical world as people, in the virtual world as accounts and assets and in the virtual world as information and identity.
Of the gangs in middle and South America, everyone knows you do not dare speak out about them or you will wind up having your head rolled out on a dance floor in a night club.... Have a look at the articles I have linked below if you want to understand what I am talking about. Don't say anything. Be happy and keep dancing and buying. Could that happen here?
I guess James, like I and so many others did not bother to find out that pot producers trade their product to coke dealers so that each business can move their product without a paper trail to be traced. Just like any other industry, it's all interconnected so when you smoke up a spliff on prime time James, your actually advertising for the drug cartels in Mexico. That product your enjoying was used to pay for the coke which comes form Mexico so they can buy the guns and gangs to......
Hey, we all mean well. We have all taken the hypocritic oath of saying one thing but doing another. It is always so easy to rationalize away our own sins and damn if it isn't even easier to point the finger at others than ourselves. Aren't I doing that right now?
In Vancouver, we have built a city on it.
You see in Vancouver, the quiet open secret is that the drug trade is one of the biggest economies in our province, employing more people than other major industries and worth upwards of 7 BILLION dollars. Put that into context of the VPD annual budget of about $170 million dollars and we start to get a picture. I would imagine that Police forces across the country where not already compromised like in South America, simply manage the very low end interactions to make it appear that something is being done. It's a loosing battle with significant consequences for everyone. We are all connected, remember.
Vancouver's "other" new culture.
While our law enforcement agencies have to stay accountable to our laws and follow procedures like applying for wire taps and warrants to track suspected baddies, (often those whom the drug trade sacrifices for bad behaviour), there is nothing to stop other organizations with funding and these days often better training and equipment from targeting individuals and companies at will with technology, hackers and moles.
A well funded drug trade has been reshaping Vancouver culture for the last twenty years with their technology, immense funding and no laws they feel responsible to except their own and manipulation of policy, policing and public. Lets put it another way; you know who you pay your internet and phone bill to, but do you know who your service technician or your IT guy running your network also gets a paycheck from?
At 7 billion a year Criminologist Stephen Schneider points out there are people from every strata in our society and in every profession, every income level involved. The ones at the top don't get caught as frequently because they are by definition, more powerful, sometimes smarter and have better lawyers. In short the drug trade is a defining industry for British Columbia, like film, lumber and tourism and of course you can find many of the same mixing from top to bottom because after all, the spice must flow.
Did you actually think the housing boom of the last two decades was just caused by investment from China? Well sort of. It was also funded by the commercialization of BC's mom and pop drug industry by international gangs from Asia and South America turning BC into THE production and distribution hub for ecstasy and methamphetamine for North America and no one wants it to stop because if it goes, so do all the shiny cars and realtor profits. A cultural mecca indeed.
But everything has a cost, even money.
Vancouver, once a quiet British Canadian town now the shining gateway to Asia and the Pacific is how this city is billed by some. It has indeed gone through a radical change as I have witnessed growing up in my hometown.. What no historian or anthropologist has looked at objectively that I am aware of is the effect on the society, the personality and culture of a city or region where most of it's population are hiding their participation in a large, lucrative underground economy about which they dare not speak out or they will risk loosing access to either their high income or just their high. It is a common misconception that democracy is attacked from the top down by oppressive governments and media, but I would say the opposite is true.
When the lessons taught by drug cartels are applied to interpersonal relationships in the streets of a city, there is a consequence. The dealer makes a circle of friends each she or he tests for loyalty and in turn promotes the best and censors the others and nothing builds strong bonds quicker than "chemical bonding" - the artificial sensation that a group of people have shared an experience caused by interacting while on drugs.
Relationships built on secretive cliques, pawning to demonstrate power, control, dominance and gang like loyalty become the accepted norm because now, relationships are business. Relationships are worth cash.
The culture of Vancouver is being molded by the industry that pays it's way; woe be it if you cross it's chain of command. The old stogy image of Big Brother oppressive big government has been replaced by a new force of Big Sister which may be worse. No blue line and billy clubs here, she rules with prada and facebook. Refined. Riiiiight
As Schneider points out, "BC drug gangs learned from huge Colombian cartels of the 1990's to create the corporate hierarchical structures," And those structures are changing the very nature of who we are on the West Coast. As local gangs work more closely in conjunction with gangs from Columbia, Mexico and Asia, the people, their power and value systems are also being imported.
Vancouver of the pre 1990'ies could have been described as quaint and eclectic where pot and mushrooms typified of a mom and pop style hippy culture, but that changed in the 90'ies along with everything else. The now industrialized drug trade became big business and attracted big players from South America and Asia and those in Vancouver wanting to move up the social and economic ladders of the city quickly made friends and the first rules of the new censorship were established. "We don't talk about that."
The question is, as this dynamic becomes entrenched, will we too see people here become as they are in Mexico or Columbia or even China, afraid to talk about what is going on around them for fear of being smeared by one side or the other, or worse? Is it s stretch to see the future of Mexico or Columbia here in BC. The renowned Economist magazine has already called BC, "Columbia North" because of our episodes of violent gang warfare. Some would say bitterly and uncaringly, karma. Karma for the Opium War but the truest harvest of our drug trade here in BC is only that bitterness. Bitterness growing in a shell of secrecy.
These drugs, soft or hard, natural or synthetic, herbal, sacred or recreational are traded for guns, favours, censorship and power. Is Mexico's present our future?
It is a lot to think about every time you do a bump, take a drag or draught of your favorite poison, I mean, along with how you have already rationalized that yours is less harmful that "theirs", they, the despicable "other". It's easy to forget it is all the same industry.
The War on Drugs. Its ours to win or lose and the best way to win might not be whats expected but first we have to decide who or what is the enemy.
Past Fading into the Future
Drugs have always been a part of history and societies one way or another, from European Druids to Native Indian Shamans. They are used by the very tops of society as recognized recently by the Alberta Solicitor Generals call for the white collar class of Alberta to stop doing coke if they want to see a reduction in gang violence. It is evidenced by the positive cocaine swabs returned from a test of bathrooms in the EU parliament. ( See the links below ). It is used on the streets.
So are drugs bad? Evil? It seems to me they have no self determination. Just as a bullet can be put in the gun of a police officer or a thug, who is to say how it will be used by either and so it is with drugs. If as a society we decide we want them then we have to legalize them because if we do not, the organizations making money off them and gaining power through them will continue to erode Canada as they have Columbia and Mexico. Left to powerful people with unspoken agendas different than the spoken ones of the crown of this country, our country will in a foreseeable future cease to exist as we know it and our laws will become meaningless; just like the shells of Mexico and Columbia. Countries tearing themselves apart from the inside.
If we decide we want to eradicate them then we have a huge task or re educating and enforcing this that will result in Canada changing as well into a military state, that is, if we mean business.
If drugs are evil it is because we let them be. The best way to control them it seems to me is to take them out of the hands of those that make them evil. "Re-imagine" how government and society use them and oh and in the that process, governments might make a dime or two for the health care system which otherwise would be treating illegal drug users and keeps getting cut back.
Then James, Mary and most of the world it seems could spark one if they choose without the sound of heads rolling.
Links:
Battlestar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stEZnuvQTac
Alberta Solicitor General
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/09/25/alberta-cocaine.html
The Economist
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Economist+magazine+compares+Vancouver+drug+violence+Columbia/1647467/story.html
Gang Wars
http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/bc/Gang+wars+Justice+times/1667974/story.html
EU Parliament Cocaine
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1494167/Cocaine-found-at-Brussles-parliment.html
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7794792.stm
Misc.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2004-02/a-2004-02-13-22-Canada.cfm?moddate=2004-02-13
WARNING: Graphic Picture Below
