Why Buying Cocaine Is Like Donating to the Nazi Party

[Iormlund]

Around 60,000 were executed as witches during 150 years at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

I very much doubt that. Not only did the Spanish Inquisition usually regard witchcraft accusations as a load of bullshit, but extant records suggest the institution as a whole executed about 2% of those who underwent trial, maybe 5 to 10 thousand in total.

[Razgovory]

Around 60,000 were executed as witches during 150 years at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

I very much doubt that. Not only did the Spanish Inquisition usually regard witchcraft accusations as a load of bullshit, but extant records suggest the institution as a whole executed about 2% of those who underwent trial, maybe 5 to 10 thousand in total.

Yeah, the author is confusing a couple of things.

[dps]

The unspoken thing here is that the reason Americans aren't more outraged or guilt-ridden is that the people dying are poor brown people—   

I don't buy this part.  I don't think their skin color has anything to do with it.  If instead of Mexicans and other Latin Americans, they were Frenchmen or Norwegian or other Euros, we'd be just as unconcerned.  Actually, we'd be even more unconcerned, because we worry about drug violence on a large scale spilling across the border, and the Atlantic Ocean would provide a better insulation than the Rio Grande.

[Valmy]

The unspoken thing here is that the reason Americans aren’t more outraged or guilt-ridden is that the people dying are poor brown people—   

I don't buy this part.  I don't think their skin color has anything to do with it.  If instead of Mexicans and other Latin Americans, they were Frenchmen or Norwegian or other Euros, we'd be just as unconcerned.  Actually, we'd be even more unconcerned, because we worry about drug violence on a large scale spilling across the border, and the Atlantic Ocean would provide a better insulation than the Rio Grande.

That and we suffer from guilt and outrage fatigue.  So much to be guilty and outraged about you just get overloaded.  Anyway we put a person of color in the Presidency and he doesn't seem particularly concerned about it either.

[Berkut]

You people are amazingly competent at missing the forest for the trees.

The basic premise of the article is spot on, and incredibly important. America's drug addiction (and the resulting "war" on the same) is causing misery, death, and torment at a scale that is nearly unprecedented, and there is no end in sight.

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

The author makes several errors in the pursuit of the basic point (why oh why do you need to throw in gratuitous accusations of racism?) but his basic thesis is exactly right. This is a horror story, and it should be an even bigger story, and while you can argue about the right solution (personally I think the blame should be on the "war" part, rather than on the users part), he is exactly right that people who choose to use these drugs bear some responsibility for what happens in the process of procuring them for their entertainment.

[Valmy]

The basic premise of the article is spot on, and incredibly important. America's drug addiction (and the resulting "war" on the same) is causing misery, death, and torment at a scale that is nearly unprecedented, and there is no end in sight.

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

Well what do you want us to do about it?  It sort of looks like the population at large is starting to just throw up their hands and want to give legalization a try.  The Feds seem determined to go down fighting.  It kind of looks like we have political battles about this a lot, what exactly do we need to do to care more?

[Malthus]

You people are amazingly competent at missing the forest for the trees.

The basic premise of the article is spot on, and incredibly important. America's drug addiction (and the resulting "war" on the same) is causing misery, death, and torment at a scale that is nearly unprecedented, and there is no end in sight.

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

The author makes several errors in the pursuit of the basic point (why oh why do you need to throw in gratuitous accusations of racism?) but his basic thesis is exactly right. This is a horror story, and it should be an even bigger story, and while you can argue about the right solution (personally I think the blame should be on the "war" part, rather than on the users part), he is exactly right that people who choose to use these drugs bear some responsibility for what happens in the process of procuring them for their entertainment.

Hell, Americans (and Canadians) apparently don't care very much about the hundreds of thousands thrown in jail or killed right here in America and Canada as a result of the drug trade. Why would anyone expect them to care about the lives of foreigners, when they seemingly don't care about their own? 

[garbon]

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

Not really. If we go down this route, we have to then care about all of the terrible things that go into the process of making every day consumer goods. That seems more of a tragedy given that the majority of people have some connection to that - not so much in the use of drugs like cocaine.

[DontSayBanana]

Not really. If we go down this route, we have to then care about all of the terrible things that go into the process of making every day consumer goods. That seems more of a tragedy given that the majority of people have some connection to that - not so much in the use of drugs like cocaine.

It takes a lot of effort to keep up with all the stuff that *should* be objectionable.  I happened upon an iPhone app, Buycott, that tracks controversies with a product's company as well as it's parents/subsidiaries, and ended up finding that most corporate families are mired in some form of controversy prompting some activism.

It's so prevalent that the app's set up to have you cherrypick causes, and it'll only notify you of problems on your list (but you can still manually go find what's what with the corporate tree).

[jimmy olsen]

The basic premise of the article is spot on, and incredibly important. America's drug addiction (and the resulting "war" on the same) is causing misery, death, and torment at a scale that is nearly unprecedented, and there is no end in sight.

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

Well what do you want us to do about it?  It sort of looks like the population at large is starting to just throw up their hands and want to give legalization a try.  The Feds seem determined to go down fighting.  It kind of looks like we have political battles about this a lot, what exactly do we need to do to care more?

[Capetan Mihali]

Buying cocaine is nowhere near as pleasurable as donating to the NSDAP.

[Malthus]

Not really. If we go down this route, we have to then care about all of the terrible things that go into the process of making every day consumer goods. That seems more of a tragedy given that the majority of people have some connection to that - not so much in the use of drugs like cocaine.

It takes a lot of effort to keep up with all the stuff that *should* be objectionable.  I happened upon an iPhone app, Buycott, that tracks controversies with a product's company as well as it's parents/subsidiaries, and ended up finding that most corporate families are mired in some form of controversy prompting some activism.

It's so prevalent that the app's set up to have you cherrypick causes, and it'll only notify you of problems on your list (but you can still manually go find what's what with the corporate tree).

... then, you discover from the app that the app itself was programmed by Chinese political prisoners in a re-education camp ... 

[Ed Anger]

Buying cocaine is nowhere near as pleasurable as donating to the NSDAP.

I love Illinois nazis.

[garbon]

We need a SLATE thread tag.

I'm bashing the article, so I'm not sure why that's neccessary.

To reply to this: we don't really need you to post articles from Slate for the purposes of bashing them. I'm not even sure we need articles posted from Slate that you like.

[Berkut]

The basic premise of the article is spot on, and incredibly important. America's drug addiction (and the resulting "war" on the same) is causing misery, death, and torment at a scale that is nearly unprecedented, and there is no end in sight.

It is criminal that we simply do not appear to care.

Well what do you want us to do about it?  It sort of looks like the population at large is starting to just throw up their hands and want to give legalization a try.  The Feds seem determined to go down fighting.  It kind of looks like we have political battles about this a lot, what exactly do we need to do to care more?

Well, one thing the author of the article would like people in his particular social class to do is stop buying coke.