IT'S NOT RIGHT AND IT'S NOT OKAY
THE 2009 UNITED NATIONS World Drug Report marks "the end of the first century of drug control (it all started in Shanghai in 1909)."
Your correspondent hasn't so much as smoked a cigarette in his lifetime, never mind snorted a line of coke or popped a tab of E. Of course, I'm an alcoholic, but societythe law says that's okay. But it seems to me that the line of coke many of you will snort this weekend has left a devastating trail of human misery in order to reach your nose. Call me righteous, but I don't know how you can live with yourself.
Yes -
you. (In a similar vein - excuse the pun - wealthy Westerners like Whitney Houston are lauded as victors triumphing over illness. A self-inflicted illness born out of pure selfishness and stupidity. The real victims are the people in these pictures. Their blood is on Whitney's hands.) These pictures, from
The Boston Globe's ever-reliable The Big Picture series, illustrate the reality of illegal drug use around the world.
Top: A man killed by a bullet to the head lies dead in the dirt in Tijuana, Mexico, in August this year. Make sure to check out the
rest of the series...
Above, the body of California state government official Rogelio Sanchez hangs beaten, naked and castrated in Mexico, earlier this month.
Above, in Afghanistan, an opium addict offers his grandson his pipe (July 13, 2009).
You are looking at the severed head of an unidentified man, above, pictured in August this year in Mexico.
Female opium addicts in a house in Afghanistan, pictured in July this year. Is the scene really any different to middle class housewives anaesthetising themselves with a bottle of Pinot Grigio?