7/31: Massive Brazilian drug incineration

[Undertoad]

Another Brazilian image for Count Zero (well I didn't know Count Zero was from Brazil when I found this). This is only 60 miles from CZ - weird coincidence. In the city of Cubatao, 140 TONS of confiscated drugs are being incinerated as a part of Brazil's anti-drugs week celebrations. It's a year's worth of confiscations.

This is supposed to be the biggest drug incineration ever. I'm sure it has precisely the opposite of the intended effect. If someone tells you "don't think about purple elephants!" of course you'll think of a purple elephant. If they show a huge lot of drugs in the media, news, Image of the Day, etc. drugs will remain predominant in the collective consciousness.

Can you imagine being an addict or even an ex-addict or potential addict and seeing this paraded around on TV? Wouldn't it be exactly like walking up to a drunk and pulling out bottles of various liquors? "Here's all the stuff that was available to you over the last year!" They say drugs make people stupid, well, here's the evidence: obviously, it makes public officials into idiots.

[TheDollyLlama]

In Hawai'i, there is a marijuana eradication project called "Green Harvest" national guard, dea, local police, would go around in helos can snatch pot plants and burn them all in huge bonfires.

The thing is, somehow, you never saw the buds getting burned... hmm...

Kind of like how one of my friends had half of his stash confiscated..

Fuck the Drug War.

[jaguar]

I just ahe to say - watch traffic, that fiml sums it all up so fucking well its not funny...
particualry what the new drug cazar (ironic that the US uses an origionally russian title for positions...) says when he finds out that his daugher is on smack. "how can you wage war on your own family, your own community?"

[dynamo]

forgive my stupidity, is this a public burning? where does the smoke go? wouldn't it go up the noses of all the attendees?

dynamo

[Count Zero]

Just a little factoid :

Cubatão (note the '~' over the 'a' ;-), is the most polluted city in the world. It's in the state of São Paulo (which is also the name of the state capital, which has the most polluted river in the world ), and the air there is not only unbreathable, but deadly.

I think they chose this city to burn this amount of chemicals because they thought it wouldn't really make any difference.

Just to give an idea of the problem: During the eighties, the percentage of children born without brains reached a peak of 10% in cubatão. Other types of genetic mutations (yes, mutations) were also more frequent than anywhere else.

There isn't any kind of nuclear facility near cubatão, it's only plain old chemical waste due to industrialization.

It has gotten much better over the years, but it's not a city I want to visit any time soon. The pollution of the capital is already too much for me.

On a side note, Rio de Janeiro is still quite beautiful, and most beaches kick ass. Most cities on the coast (outside of São Paulo) are quite clean and unindustrialized, most notably those in the state of Rio. :p

On a second side note, I think that drug pile is a good demonstration of the Brazilian drug market. And most of it is for export. Also keep in mind that the drug cartels are still completely untouchable, therefore that pile is only a small fraction of the total drug flow. You know, police propaganda.

[Undertoad]

Very interesting CZ. Thanks for posting that!

The thing that struck me, looking at the photo, was how little it really was. I mean it's definitely more drugs than I've ever seen busted. But on a different scale, how many coca plants, cannibus plants, and poppy flowers would it take to produce that? Maybe 2-3 fields or so? So it's definitely a very small amount compared to what one of the world's largest countries would produce.

BTW folx, to create the õ character in HTML, write õ. The ampersand tells HTML that a special character code follows; otilde is the name of that character; and the semi-colon ends the code.

[jaguar]

Tony i'm not sure if you've ever had any contact wiht the drug world but the number would amaze you, in a little place like melbourne up to 100,000 extacy tablets move a week, over $10,000,00 worth of heroin and god knwos what else, the law can't come close to keeping up.

[tw]

Originally posted by Tony Shepps
This is supposed to be the biggest drug incineration ever. I'm sure it has precisely the opposite of the intended effect. If someone tells you "don't think about purple elephants!" of course you'll think of a purple elephant.

Coincidentally, The Survey (a detailed discussion of a topice located as a center supplement) in The Economist is entitled "High time - A survey of illegal drugs". Have not read it yet BUT every survey from The Economist is a 'must read' and often can be a 'must save'.

[Count Zero]

Originally posted by Tony Shepps
Very interesting CZ. Thanks for posting that!

The thing that struck me, looking at the photo, was how little it really was. I mean it's definitely more drugs than I've ever seen busted. But on a different scale, how many coca plants, cannibus plants, and poppy flowers would it take to produce that? Maybe 2-3 fields or so? So it's definitely a very small amount compared to what one of the world's largest countries would produce.

I don't know the amount of plants necessary to produce 140 tons of cocaine, heroine, etc. But, since the plants must be processed, and except perhaps for marijuana, most of the plant is lost to get to the final product, it would be necessary much more than 140 tons of raw material.

I don't know how many hectars would be necessary to produce all this, but it's much more than what is made in Brazil.

I don't know if you know this, but the drug production in Brazil is mostly domestic (marijuana). Almost all of the cocaine and heroine is imported from Colombia, Venezuela and the like. Brazil works mainly as a redistribution point, and as a big marked.

The reason for this is that it would be much more expensive to produce drugs in Brazil. In Colombia, most of the economy is based on coca farms, so the government doesn't bother much. This is not the case in Brazil, so it would raise the cost of production trying to avoid persecution.

Also keep in mind that the border between Brazil and these contries is through the Amazon jungle, which is almost impossible to keep control. Look at all the trouble the US is having at the Mexico border, and it's a bare desert.

[modernhamlet]

I think this might be what you're talking about...

http://www.economist.com/surveys/dis...tory_id=706591

Good article. Check it out.

tom