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Narcos obstructs the obvious truth – The war on drugs is a crime against humanity

posted 7 years ago by Monti (5)
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I started watching Narcos last week and finished the first season yesterday. The series itself is well done, but I was disappointed by its complacency with the basic assumptions of the disastrous war on drugs campaign.

Already in the first episode (minute 10:00) the narrator explains that cocaine is an addictive drug that hijacks the brain’s pleasure center so that a rat would prefer it to food, water, sleep, sex, and even life. Unfortunately, this common myth just doesn’t hold up. In fact, since the 1970s there has been a lot of research to show that rats prefer cocaine water to plain water only if you keep them isolated alone in small cages where they basically rot in boredom. If you give them a nicer environment with friends and toys they will actually prefer plain water and living a full (rat’s) life. Don’t believe me? Search “Rat Park” on google, or watch this video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg) or if you really want to dig deeper read the papers and books of renowned psychologist Bruce Alexander who debunked the cocaine-slavery myth (Globalization of Addiction is a masterpiece of a book about this topic).

This is not to say people don’t get addicted to cocaine. Of course they do, but people also get addicted to shopping, sex and working out. Addiction is a complicated thing, and is related to many social and personal factors, but less so to specific substances. The fact that only a very small minority of cocaine users ever get addicted is a testimony to that.

By giving the plot’s narrating voice to a DEA agent Narcos implicitly complies with the logic of the war on drugs. Throughout the first season agent Murphy keeps saying that even though he sometimes violates formal procedures of law enforcement he is not a bad guy, because the narcos are the really bad ones. Well, that might be so. No doubt the Narcos are awful, and perhaps agent Murphy is not a bad guy, but he is definitely a useful idiot working in the service of those who commit the biggest atrocity of all.

It is worth noting at this point that the war on drugs has cost more than a hundred thousand lives in Latin America so far, and that throughout that time the price and potency of drugs in the US has not dropped, quite the opposite (See Werb, Dan, Thomas Kerr, Bohdan Nosyk, Steffanie Strathdee, Julio Montaner, and Evan Wood. “The Temporal Relationship between Drug Supply Indicators: An Audit of International Government Surveillance Systems.” BMJ Open 3, no. 9 (August 1, 2013). The war on drugs, in other words, was so far utterly useless.

It is also worth noting that there is an obvious solution to all of that. Legalization. Since people who want to do cocaine tend to be able to get it whether the state likes it or not, why spend billions to try to stop them all the while incarcerating millions and killing thousands of innocents. After all, until well into the 20th century cocaine was legal and beloved by many including Freud, Robert Louis Stevenson and even the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes.

Back at the time cocaine was freely available yet addiction rates were surprisingly low. Only later in the 20th century was cocaine prohibited basically as part of a racist campaign against blacks who were considered the prime users of the drugs at the time. Perhaps legalization or decriminalization won’t really bring about mayhem – perhaps things under prohibition are actually much worse…

Unfortunately, you won’t see any of that mentioned in Narcos, or anything that would really challenge the destructive logic of the drug war: Americans want cocaine but we don’t want them to use it so we will fight drug traffickers even if Americans are willing to pay billions to keep the cocaine flowing making this fight virtually impossible to win all the while killing thousands of innocents and destroying whole countries.

To be sure, I’m not saying cocaine is good for you, nor do I deny the seriously deleterious effects which cocaine abuse can have on individuals, but there are wiser ways of dealing with such problems (such as treatment and social support) then starting futile and ineffective wars which cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.

By not stating this obvious fact, Narcos commits a grave political sin. I do hope things change in seasons 2 and 3, because so far Narcos might be an A cinematically, but ideologically it gets an F.

[–] Monti (5) 7 years ago

Just finished the third season of Narcos. Again, I thought it was pretty good as an action/crime series, but again I thought it is was an ideological disgrace.
I was hoping that by the third season of the series will start getting more critical of the drug war and its horrific consequences. Instead we get Agent Peña in season finale, ranting about “governments who don’t give a shit about the war they’re supposed to be fighting” and while Peña admits that the war on drugs “can’t be won. It’ll never be won” he again blames it on some obscure forces: “at least not until people see it for what it is. Not until they know the truth.”
What is the man talking about? Instead of blabbering on about corrupt politicians, and how, in a different universe the war on drugs could be won, it would be better if the series acknowledged and reflected a bit on the evident facts:
A. Drug-taking has been part of human culture in human communities across the globe since the dawn of mankind and for all purposes it appears to be a fundamental human need
B. that the vast majority of the people on the planet consume some kind of drug (when you include legal drugs such as alcohol and caffeine) and will continue to do despite the persecutions of people like agent Peña.
C. The vast majority of drug users will not develop destructive habits of use and when that occur this has more to do with social and personal context rather than the identity of a substance being ingested (cocaine vs. Ritalin or Adderall for instance).
D. The deaths created by illegal drugs are negligible in number (counted in the thousands) when compared with those of legal drugs such as sugar, nicotine and alcohol (counted in the millions) which puts the war on drugs in kind of a ridiculous light
E. Over the past decades the war on drugs has been responsible for dozens of thousands of innocent lives lost, incredible cruelties, and the corruption and collapse of state apparatuses. Much of this is the result of ruthless drug cartels yet the existence of drug cartels and their accompanying levels of corruption and violence is only made possible by an illegal economy brought to life by unrealistic drug laws and draconian attempts to enforce state discipline on its citizens. No drug war- no drug cartels..
F. Judging from all that we know about drug use across history and societies, a drug free world is an unachievable and therefore destructive fantasy. Those pushing for this fantasy are therefore playing with fire.
Instead of telling us at least some of these evident facts, demonstrated by countless sociologists and drug policy experts we again get a DEA agent Peña explaining how only we had more force, perseverance or political support we could win the war on drugs. What a bunch of baloney. It is people like agent Peña who are the true criminals of the drug war. People who’d rather go to all out wars against cartels and see whole countries go down in flames (see Peña’s insistence to prevent the Cali cartel from peacefully dismantling itself, and to hell with the consequences). The real danger to society are people who promote the unrealistic, paternalistic and authoritarian logic of the American drug war which has led to many dozens of thousands of deaths, collapse of entire countries, civil rights violations, corruption of democracy and racial profiling.
Coca was legal and used by south-american people for centuries without much evidence of addiction. By prohibiting cocaine as well as coca leaves through international treaties the US has destroyed such ancient traditions and led to the flourishing of malignant culture of cocaine abuse instead.
A different world is possible, but not by forcing the hands of global citizenry. It is achievable through more humane policies that will be based on inclusion, communication and commitment to social work and public health. This is a lot more difficult then barging into homes and wiretapping drug dealers. Narcos should have told us at least a bit of that story. Instead, now in season 3, it is still perpetuating the destructive narrative of the drug war. This is inexcusable.