The Ethics of Cocaine by Harry Downes

T H E E T H I C S O F C O C A I N E

Words by Harry Downes Image by Cúnla Morris

The 2019 Trinity Ball was marred by the arrest of twenty-six students for drug possession. Undercover Gardaí mingled with the crowd in pursuit of anyone suspected to be selling drugs, bringing suspects back to two reserved on campus for searches. All but two of those searched were found to be carrying drugs. The Garda and the Irish media rejoiced at the news. The Irish Sun reported that Gardaí had ‘smashed a drug dealing network at one of Ireland’s most prestigious universities’. Trinity’s reputation fed much of the media’s sensationalism around this case; one unnamed source in the Sun’s report remarked that ‘those caught with drugs come from privileged backgrounds’. This story of clever Gardaí dismantling a network of dangerous dealers does not cohere with the facts. Gardaí recovered a quantity and diversity of drugs valued at just €1,400 from twenty-six students, ranging from MDMA, ketamine and cocaine. This amounts to an average value of drugs on each detainee of €53. In a country where the street price of a gram of MDMA sits at €40, an average of €53 per person hardly suggests the operation of a shady drug-dealing syndicate at Trinity Ball. The Garda allocated serious resources to arresting and charging Trinity students, infiltrating what is a private party held by the College community and alumni, for possessing and using small quantities of drugs. This use of police time, and its celebration by our national media, is a direct result of the global phenomenon dubbed the War on Drugs. While the War on Drugs affects and targets psychoactive substances as diverse as heroin and magic mushrooms, the War has recently returned to the spotlight in Ireland over the resurgence of cocaine use. In 2018, the HSE’s National Drug Forum reported that cocaine use has ‘now returned to Celtic Tiger levels’ in Ireland. The apparent resurgence of cocaine has inspired moral panic throughout the country. An Irish Times editorial on the 2019 gang murders in Coolock blamed the drug and, most importantly, ‘the end user’ for gang violence. In December 2019, The Irish Mirror reported that a ‘cocaine epidemic’ had gripped rural Ireland, interviewing one farmer whose addiction saw him taking the drug ‘off the John Deere’ on an everyday basis. Other articles detail how teenagers are now budgeting for cocaine at their debs and that the drug is now a ‘dominant factor’ in domestic violence cases. Our national media portrays cocaine as a genuine source of evil. Why then is cocaine frequently associated with decadence and wealth? Cultural depictions of cocaine in Western media imbue it with an image of excess and dark glamour, tying it to a brand of amoral, elite hedonism best exemplified in popular cinema like Scarface and The Wolf of Wall Street. This image of cocaine as the communion-wine of the unfathomably successful gives it a sheen of legitimacy not afforded to other, cheaper party drugs like MDMA or ketamine. As Robin Williams said, “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money.” In Western culture, cocaine is an icon of deviant materialism. This image is far removed from the destructive realities unleashed by cocaine production and trafficking in Latin America. The production and export of cocaine has a deleterious effect on the politics and environment of Latin America. Cocaine is almost entirely produced in Latin America. For a region that contributes only 17% of the world’s total production of psychoactive substances, it produces almost 100% of its cocaine. Even within Latin America, cocaine is primarily made within three countries; Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. Cocaine, in its familiar form, is refined from the coca leaf, a native crop traditionally chewed by indigenous peoples as a mild stimulant. Cocaine is only present within coca leaf at a concentration of around 1%, diluting its effects sufficiently to make coca leaf tea

and baked goods popular in the Andean region. The refinement of powder cocaine from the coca leaf is a complex, costly procedure requiring the cultivation of gigantic amounts of coca leaf; it takes approximately three-hundredand-seventy kilograms of coca leaf to make one kilogram of cocaine. The industrial scale of coca leaf production and cocaine’s incredible popularity in Western consumer markets follows through in the massive profitability of coca leaf farming in these countries; in 2004, cocaine was estimated to make $34,221 in profit for every hectare of coca leaf farmland. Cocaine in Latin America is a major, multinational industry. It contributes about 1% to Colombia’s gross domestic product – for comparison, agriculture contributes the same value to the Irish economy. Its illegality forces coca producers to migrate to remote, unused areas on the periphery of the Amazon, opening new land to deforestation. In 2008, the Colombian vice-president Francisco Santos Calderón claimed that every gram of cocaine cost the destruction of four square metres

In 2008, the Colombian vice-president Francisco “ Santos Calderón claimed that every gram of cocaine cost the destruction of four square metres of rainforest, amounting to the destruction of 300,000 hectares every year. “

of rainforest, amounting to the destruction of 300,000 hectares every year. Recent scientific analysis has also focused on the indirect effects of cocaine production, noting that the initiation of coca production in any area results in further deforestation to grow crops and provide settlements to support coca plantations. In 2018, the Colombian biologist Liliana Dávolos calculated that deforested regions used for coca production had a 7% chance of reversion to forest, compared to a 13.5% probability for agricultural land; in this way, coca helps ‘signal a transformation of the landscape toward forest loss’ in a permanent manner. Large-scale production of cocaine thereby leads to catastrophic rates of deforestation, with one 2002 estimate suggesting that 50% of forest loss in Colombia

could be attributed, directly or indirectly, to cocaine. Cocaine’s effect on deforestation extends beyond those countries where it is produced. With 86% of cocaine travelling through Central America on its ways to commercial markets in North America and Europe, millions of acres of land have been lost to the creation of drug trafficking routes. A 2017 study suggests that up to 30% of deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala is caused by cocaine trafficking. Deforestation is a devastating threat to ecological diversity and the planet’s ability to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide; any increase drives us closer towards catastrophic climate change. Cocaine production and trafficking also drives corruption and political instability in Latin America. The illegality of cocaine means its production and distribution depends on largescale organised crime. This normally manifests in cartels – such as the famous Medellin Cartel led by Pablo Escobar, recently depicted in the Netflix drama Narcos. However, state institutions are often co-opted or corrupted by drug traffickers. The historian Belén Boville suggests that the Bolivian military (UMOPAR) was directly involved in cocaine production and trafficking throughout the 1990s and 2000s, at the same time as the Bolivian government ordered a draconian offensive against cocaine and drug cartels rife with human rights abuses. Cartels themselves can often rise to seriously challenge state power and occupy significant swathes of territory; in the year 2000, for example, drug cartels were estimated to control 40% of Colombia’s national territory. Most shockingly, cocaine carries with it a heavy death toll. Over 100,000 people have died in the ongoing 13-yearlong Mexican Drug War alone. The use of cocaine is a political issue; by using it, the consumer implicitly endorses a trade system that destabilises the developing world and results in thousands of deaths. Cocaine has a deleterious effect on the politics and environment of Latin America. While awareness of its effects should discourage its use by Western consumers, their underlying cause is not rooted in cocaine in and of itself. Prohibition of cocaine forces the involvement of organised crime in its production. The destruction of vast tracts of rainforest to produce and circulate cocaine is also directly connected to the need for seclusion driven by cocaine’s illegality. Cocaine can be produced in a laboratory setting – there is, in other words, no actual justification for the devastation caused by drug prohibition. The decision to use cocaine, regardless of its illegality, is ultimately a personal choice; whether it is morally right to use a drug renowned for its addictive effects on the human brain and body resides with the individual. These choices should nevertheless be informed by an awareness of their impact on the world and humanity at large. Most importantly, an ethical attitude to drugs rooted in concern for humanity cannot justify the environmental and human toll of prohibition. Within current market conditions, the purchase of cocaine is undoubtedly immoral; the focus, then, should lie in reshaping the tired, archaic drug policies that make it so.