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from the Don't look at me dept.
By ALEX DOMINGUEZ
JNS Special Correspondent
BALTIMORE (JNS) _ Your drug dollars help provide desperately needed news copy worldwide, a new study shows.
Cop shootings in Baltimore, guerilla warfare in Latin America, and presidential pardons are all examples of stories that benefited from the ``sniffle-down'' effect created by a healthy drug economy, said Duke economist Carver Daniel, the study's lead author.
``It may not seem like a lot, but those nickel and dime bags add up,’’ Daniel said. ``Whether it’s bullets in Baltimore, or land mines in Colombia, drug dealers and cartels worldwide need your drug dollars.’’
A $20 coke purchase by one suburban high school student, for example, was used to buy the 45-cent, 9 mm round that killed a 3-year old, the authors reported in the study, which appeared Thursday in the journal Narcotics.
Some of the money from that buy also made it back to the distributor, whose importing activity helped provide slush funds that kept in power a Third World despot _ who used his country’s military to kill off his opposition, providing entertaining reading for millions.
The war against drugs even makes good copy, but Daniel warned against targeting buyers which could dry up the supply of dollars desperately needed to keep the drug pipeline operating.
Drugs also give the country an easy scapegoat, the poor, to blame for its problems, including its addiction to narcotics, Daniel said.
``All around it’s a win-win solution,’’ Daniel said. ``The drug trade provides jobs working inside the industry and against it _ whether in local police forces or the ATF _ and loads of infotainment across the globe.’’
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Posted by Alex at April 11, 2001 05:57 PM