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readbyashleyd's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Such an informative and interesting read! My only complaint was the authors attitude, it was quite arrogant and off putting at times.
asn1456's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
4.0
claudyne's review against another edition
5.0
This book is really amazing and full of cool info. I enjoyed listening to it.
hamsterisch's review against another edition
5.0
1.
So does Trump’s border wall stand any hope of reining in the cartels?
‘No, amigo,’ said Hector, now tucking into his French fries. ‘The gringos are the biggest customers in the world. If we can’t smuggle it, they will come get it themselves.’
‘Besides,’ he added with a smile, ‘I bring all my stuff by boat.’
2.
‘Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men’, said Anslinger and successfully lobbied for ganja to be outlawed through the Marihuana Tax Act 1937. And that’s how the war on drugs started. The real reason for banning drugs was straight-up racism.
3.
- ‘As a gunman I can tell you this: narco-traffic is so deep in the bowels of our society, it won’t ever stop. The violence will not stop, it will increase.’
- More black Americans are in prison today than were enslaved in 1850.
- The cops didn’t seem to care. They only wanted arrest stats. Every overdose is just one less problem to worry about. ‘Year after year, the drug trade becomes more violent and vulnerable people get caught in the crossfire.’
- But has the war at least reduced supply? Has it fuck. The amount of coke, dope and meth seized at the border remains the same. So it was all for nothing.
- Drug use going up and down has little to do with the law and everything to do with culture: the 1960s were all about herbal remedies and LSD, cocaine epitomized the greed 80s excess and now millennials are rediscovering the joy of opiates.
4.
- It’s the system - the laws which create the black market - that keeps everyone in the dark: what they’re buying, what they’re selling.
- A lot of times when someone suffers from an overdose it’s from taking PMA, not MDMA. The cooks make PMA when they can’t get what they need for the real thing. Of course the police would probably chalk this up as a success, because they’ve managed to “disrupt the supply”, but what they’ve really done is help poison everyone by being dicks.
5.
- Scare tactics don’t work: once you survive smoking your first joint, you might suspect everything else you’ve been taught is bullshit too.
- You can only hear yourself being called a lowlife, a useless smackhead, so many times before you start to believe it: ‘You know what? Fuck you. I WILL go out and steal things!’
- Someone, somewhere is getting high.
- The Portuguese system recognizes that people will use drugs, some will cope better than others, and had found a way to live with it.
6.
- The hippies were right: the future lay in drugs.
- The government is the biggest form of organized crime, dominated by the best gangsters, the international bankers. It’s always been there, it never went away.
So does Trump’s border wall stand any hope of reining in the cartels?
‘No, amigo,’ said Hector, now tucking into his French fries. ‘The gringos are the biggest customers in the world. If we can’t smuggle it, they will come get it themselves.’
‘Besides,’ he added with a smile, ‘I bring all my stuff by boat.’
2.
‘Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men’, said Anslinger and successfully lobbied for ganja to be outlawed through the Marihuana Tax Act 1937. And that’s how the war on drugs started. The real reason for banning drugs was straight-up racism.
3.
- ‘As a gunman I can tell you this: narco-traffic is so deep in the bowels of our society, it won’t ever stop. The violence will not stop, it will increase.’
- More black Americans are in prison today than were enslaved in 1850.
- The cops didn’t seem to care. They only wanted arrest stats. Every overdose is just one less problem to worry about. ‘Year after year, the drug trade becomes more violent and vulnerable people get caught in the crossfire.’
- But has the war at least reduced supply? Has it fuck. The amount of coke, dope and meth seized at the border remains the same. So it was all for nothing.
- Drug use going up and down has little to do with the law and everything to do with culture: the 1960s were all about herbal remedies and LSD, cocaine epitomized the greed 80s excess and now millennials are rediscovering the joy of opiates.
4.
- It’s the system - the laws which create the black market - that keeps everyone in the dark: what they’re buying, what they’re selling.
- A lot of times when someone suffers from an overdose it’s from taking PMA, not MDMA. The cooks make PMA when they can’t get what they need for the real thing. Of course the police would probably chalk this up as a success, because they’ve managed to “disrupt the supply”, but what they’ve really done is help poison everyone by being dicks.
5.
- Scare tactics don’t work: once you survive smoking your first joint, you might suspect everything else you’ve been taught is bullshit too.
- You can only hear yourself being called a lowlife, a useless smackhead, so many times before you start to believe it: ‘You know what? Fuck you. I WILL go out and steal things!’
- Someone, somewhere is getting high.
- The Portuguese system recognizes that people will use drugs, some will cope better than others, and had found a way to live with it.
6.
- The hippies were right: the future lay in drugs.
- The government is the biggest form of organized crime, dominated by the best gangsters, the international bankers. It’s always been there, it never went away.