A step back to move forward

If the fight against drugs was a war, today after half a century of high drug use, Western governments certainly could not declare a victory. In Europe, about 16,381 people die each year on drugs, in Africa there are 1,341 (the figure refers to only three countries), in the Americas 68,039 (of which 63,632 in the USA), in Asia 32,719 and in Oceania 2,090 (data given only for Australia and New Zealand), then globally the drug reap at least 120.570 souls yearly (on data received from 99 countries out of 196 recognized by the UN and reported to overdose) [Ref.: United Nations Office on Drugs and crime]. The problem is very large, in Dehli in India, there are 70,000 children dependent on drugs [Viceland, Dateline, SBS, 06/14/2018] and it is therefore obvious that these statistics are not on a downhill road. With such a large number of drug-related deaths, the UN and the governments of the "civil" countries should logically intervene to seriously defeat this enemy of civil society, but this does not happen. The answer to the scenario of defeat or choice not to seek solutions, can be seen in another statistic which shows the governments interests: "68 States involved in wars" and 801"total Militia-guerrillas and terrorist-separatist-anarchist groups" in wars [ref. guerrenelmodo.it], a business that bears a lot, to the USA and the French (the latter have binding contracts for the purchase of weapons with their former colonies), because you can sell weapons to both contenders... Another huge business that suits the political class and their friends, that of refugees who, the true ones, are a good twenty-one million ... The second answer, at a global level, which does not need statistics but simple logic, is the corruption of many members of governments or of the armed forces, who are subjected or indirectly involved in the drug business or who, using it, are not certainly interested in fighting it. Silvio Berlusconi in the summer of 2008, threw "cocaine parties and party with escorts in his Sardinian’s residences" [La Repubblica, 24/03/2018] and it is so understandable what is the relationship between the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Federica Gagliardi (condemned to three years in prison for 24Kg of cocaine found in her suitcase at Fiumicino airport in 2014), known as "the White Lady" who was "included in the Italian delegation for the G8 in Toronto in Canada, where she travelled by State plane together with the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi "[Corriere della Sera, 13/03/2014] in 2010. So the statements of one of Berlusconi's "little woman" are to be very well taken into consideration, as she claimed that he was transporting cocaine for personal use on-board the State plane. But a certain confirmation of the level reached by a part of the political class we already had with the 2006 report by Matteo Viviani of the "Iene" (Hyenas), thanks to which we know that in the Italian Republic "one deputy out of 3 uses drugs" and, in detail, this was the data: 32% of respondents are positive: 24% (12 people) to cannabis, and 8% (4 people) to cocaine. To think that there is a sentence to that report for "violation of privacy", rather than the expulsion from Parliament of drug addicts, makes us think, in consideration to the fact that you cannot drive a car in a state of intoxication but obviously you can drive a State. The report of the drug agency (May 2010), informs that "5% of the world's population between 15 and 64 years has used some illicit substance, meaning 230 million people." The consequent turnover is enormous and, in 2009, at a global level crime has generated an economy equal to 1.5% of the world GDP and their traffic 7% of the global exchange of goods, to reach, in 2011, a round of crime affairs, including prostitution, drugs, arms, etc., valued at 710 billion euros (870 billion US dollars), of which the drug-trafficking yielded over 262 billion euros. The governments of many states send their soldiers in a "peace mission", but one wonders what it really takes, when, for example in Afghanistan, in ten years of war, the opium poppies for the opium, heroin and morphine market have increased thirty times, from 7,000 hectares to 224,000 hectares in 2014. In this regard the Princess India of Afghanistan, daughter of the former King Amanollah, a reformist monarch, who reigned from 1919 to 1929 and who died in exile at the beginning of the '60s, in a 2008 interview declared: "Why then did the USA never bomb opium fields so far?". Perhaps because, she still wondered, "is it convenient for others to keep drug trafficking in place?" Or why "is there interest in keeping a state of war in Afghanistan, and not elsewhere?" [ANSA] In the meantime, from 2010 to 2015 with the production of countries like Afghanistan, Laos and Burma reaching the stars, the annual production of dried opium in the world exceeded 7,000 tons but immediately after, in 2016-2017, the world production of opium has increased by 65% [Unodc estimate] reaching 10,500 tons [Askanews] but according to the UN agency "the global seizure of pharmaceutical opiates in 2016 was 87 tons", mainly in West, Central and Northern Africa, i.e. (87 out of 10,500) as a percentage of 0.83%, i.e. less than 1%, almost nothing. Given the statistics, it would almost seem that the police forces of many Countries prefer to follow "intelligence" tactics, everyone is 007 but from Hollywood to the streets of our cities the difference remains that the pushers continue to sell and the institutions lose control of the territory. It is obvious that we cannot think only of "big fish", because however the "small fish" are the closest to the death of citizens who fall into the drug’s fish nets. But not all police forces follow an aesthetic philosophy and in South East Asia they are armed with semi-automatic rifles and when needed they use them, a sign that Law and Justice in those countries are not as corrupt as in the whining countries. Some state in the world actually carries forward a war on drug trafficking, such as the "low intensity" one of Mexico but even there the situation is not clear, in fact the Mexican government said that their "main objective is the dismantling of powerful cartels of drugs, rather than the prevention of drug trafficking, which is entrusted to US officials". But those who have tried and applied real solutions to the problem of drug trafficking for many decades is the city of Singapore which has one of the lowest prevalence of drug abuse in the world, thanks to the introduction of severe penalties including the application of death penalty. According to Benjamin Chang, "in two decades the number of drug users arrested each year fell by two thirds, from over 6,000 in the early 1990s to about 2,000 in 2011". Things are clear in Singapore: every person who imports, exports or is in possession of more than the following quantities of drugs is sentenced to death: 1200 grams of opium and containing more than 30 grams of morphine 30 grams of morphine 15 grams of diamorphine (heroin) 30 grams of cocaine 500 grams of cannabis 1000 grams of cannabis mixture 200 grams of cannabis resin 250 grams of methamphetamine And death sentences are also mandatory for any person taken into production of: Morphine, or any morphine salt, morphine ester or morphine ester salt Diamorphine (heroin) or any diamorphine salt Cocaine or any cocaine sale Methamphetamine [Ref. Wikipedia] The progress in this struggle was thanks to the forward-looking and determined policy of Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), who was the first Prime Minister (1959-1990) of the Republic of Singapore, he was able to defeat crime and corruption, even at the government level (including having his brother-in-law arrested), reducing it by over 90% and the drugs business by 90%, which allowed his economic reforms to bring the state to its present splendour. But meanwhile the Western citizen debates whether it is right to legalize drugs, giving voice to those who use it or who have an interest in spreading it, a logic to be tried. So, with this new subculture that would like legalization, they make progress, changes in "fashions" and the effects: "in the United States the deaths from overdoses of "painkillers", drugs containing opioids prescribed abusively, continue to increase, especially between women, as well as heroin-related deaths, from 5,900 in 2012 to over 8,000 in 2013. And the tendency to hide the dependency behind the request for care is also increasing in Australia, where the improper use of prescriptions for morphine light continues to grow exponentially, while the cases of those who hide themselves are falling." The statistics therefore show us clearly that thousands of lives, young and old, are cut short by the effects of drugs, what they do not show are indirect deaths (that is, who is killed by those who are intoxicated by drugs) but despite this, part of the magistrature of some countries, such as Italy to give an example, deems it right, in fact, to decriminalize pushers with the most varied reasons and so recently we saw in Senigallia (Italy) the 38-year-old Gambian returned free, after being arrested for selling drugs and resist a public officer, going to the beach to shout: «I am a Muslim, I do what I want» [Il Secolo d'Italia, 09/09/2018], or the case of the Nigerian drug dealer arrested three times for heroin dealing in forty days and always released [Il Tirreno, 26/08/2018], or another pusher, also a clandestine, freed with the motivation of the court of Milan: "selling drugs is his only source of livelihood" [Libero.it 29 / 08/2018]. So it is logical to think that tomorrow the same magistrates will tell us that for a drug addict it is lawful to rob and, why not, maybe even kill, because crime "is his only source of livelihood" ... Where is the last stop to absurdity? The solution to the problems of drugs and crime more generally is not in the foolish goodness in vogue nowadays but in severe punishment and hard prison. Today's society is redoing what happened exactly one hundred years ago, when world war one ended, anarchy was spreading across half of Europe; The consequence in Italy was fascism, a reaction of those who were fed up with the chaos generated by the left. Today the situation of anarchy in Italy has several aggravating factors: part of the judiciary that no longer performs its duty in the appropriate manner, the fact that there isn’t a war just over, a left that is no longer as it should be as it doesn’t make the interest of the categories of Italians who should defend but their own interests of power and finally, more seriously, not to experience from their own history, "Historia magistra vitae" (history teaches) wisely said the ancient Romans. Matteo Cornelius Sullivan