In short, the problem is with the bleary-eyed addicts. They create the demand. All others are simply meeting the needs of consumers. No one is forcing these consumers to use all this garbage – right?
There is one caveat here. Neither ecstasy, nor LSD, nor even heroin, grow freely in nature or are formed as deposits in caves. They were all developed in a perfectly legal manner, in laboratories, built on moneys from pharmaceutical corporations, and even from public funds. Prior to their appearance as medications against bad moods and runny noses, the demand for them did simply not exist. Initially, the supply was created. Ecstasy was spread to the masses through nightclubs with rave and other elements of culture for the befuddled “free individuals”. Remember how marijuana and heroin became fashionable. They also entered under the guise of music.
The path of ecstasy was as follows (no one was forced to use it, that’s for sure). First, Alexander Shulgin, a Dow Chemical employee, a biochemist and pharmacologist “tested a substance” invented by Anton Kelish (employee of Merck) – the MDMA drug. He found this drug to be excellent and began to advertise it among his friends in the scientific community. Obviously, these also periodically experimented with the effects of psychoactive substances. Practitioners, psychotherapists, upon recommendations from the scientific community, began to use this drug in their practice. They told patients something like: “Throw away all the fears in year head, I will give you the latest medication and all your bad moods will disappear – in just five minutes.”
In the meanwhile, MDMA, aka Ecstasy, in the 1950s was tested in the U.S. Army, on animals naturally, or on those that the American generals considered as animals. Obviously, the experiment subjects also found the drug to be excellent. Without extensive clinical trials, you know, no medication can go into general circulation, and at the Pentagon work some very serious guys. In the early 1980s, the properties of this new wonder drug were trumpeted by the free press, and ecstasy became one of the best friends of American youth. In 1985, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration banned MDMA. Eventually, this had to be done, and they did it – but the demand had already been created.
If you claim that neither U.S. government agencies nor pharmaceutical companies are involved in the development and promotion of ecstasy, then you are simply not interested in anything, or, during the last twenty years, you have been studying the behavior of penguins, never leaving Antarctica.
With pharmaceutical corporations, in principle, everything is clear. These are capitalist predators, ready to cash in on anything, including human health. However, how can the government of the United States, this bastion of freedom, humanism and all kinds of democracy, be engaged in drug trafficking? There is a suspicion that it is, and in large volumes, i.e., hundreds of tons and billions of dollars.
We will not delve back into those heavenly days when the British Empire was selling opium in China. This trade came to an end with the coming to power of the CCP and Comrade Mao Zedong. Poor, unhappy England suffered cruelly, watching the torment of Chinese drug addicts in prisons, but to help, alas, she could not. The Communists have their own ideas about the needs of the working class and cultural workers. It is possible that this part of the communist ideology was the real reason for the invasion of Vietnam by the U.S. Army.
Yes, the United States government was not lying when it was saying that it was trying to stop the spread of communism in Indochina. I.e., Private Jones had to take his rifle and go thousands of miles from New Jersey and kill the Vietnamese, because the commies are bad and read books written by Karl Marx.
The question – “What were the Americans looking for when they entered poor Vietnam? – still remains unanswered in contemporary political studies. Meanwhile, the answer is simple. Communism is indeed an expansionist ideology, and the Vietnamese had established themselves as brave and skillful fighters. The problem at that time was this.
What do you know about the so-called “Golden Triangle”?
After Afghanistan achieved design capacity for the production of opium and heroin, people forgot about the “Golden Triangle”. Today, this region has lost its former importance, though, why so suddenly? Well, here it is. The “Golden Triangle”, is a geographical area located in the mountains on the border of three countries of Southeast Asia – Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. Here at one time, an overwhelming quantity of the world’s heroin was being produced.
And now imagine this, in the immediate vicinity of this pirate chest, stuffed with hundreds of billions of dollars, there is a harsh communist regime, hostile not only to the bourgeoisie, but also to the drug trade. What a collision!
The people in the “Golden Triangle” lived like in a colony. Collection of opium and heroin production was in the hands of local generalissimos. But who was behind all this, and controlled all this, was not clear. I.e., here was a pure free-market democracy, until finally, in the immediate vicinity of the plantations, came the looming specter of communism. First, the South Vietnamese government tried independently, with technical support from the U.S., to bury this scourge. However, the latter was terribly tenacious. And then onto the scene came the real owner of this flower garden – the United States. On August 2, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin the first armed incident occurred, a clash between the ships of the U.S. and North Vietnamese Navy. The war had begun.
The U.S. military received orders from the president of the country. Presidents of the United States are extremely respectable people – they know nothing about drugs and have never even tried marijuana. They are saints. It is their generals that are bad and prone to corruption.
How was heroin delivered to the U.S.A. from the “Golden Triangle”? You will not believe this, but everyone who really wants to know this, knows that this was done in military transport aircraft the U.S. Air Force. In 2007, Ridley Scott’s film, the American Gangster, was released, which in detail describes the organization of large scale wholesale heroin supply from the territories of American air bases to small wholesale dealers and then down to small retailers. The film was produced based on real events.
In Russia, it is customary to cite specific studies, while in the USA – Hollywood blockbusters. So, we will now proceed like the American free press. According to the film, bales of heroin were transported from Vietnam to the U.S.A. on transport aircraft, and then small wholesale traders from the mafia came to pick up the supplies directly on the territory of the military bases, then packaged these “goods” into small containers in underground factories and spread the heroin to addicts through the retail network.
The film American Gangster received two Oscars, and Ridley Scott was sued for defaming the military and the U.S. Government.
(To be continued)
Konstantin Penzev, author and historian, columnist for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook