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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Griffiths / Taxis, trips and drugs

RECENTLY, we had an interesting story out of Sydney.

A cocaine-trafficking cartel had been broken up.

John Griffiths.
John Griffiths.
Otherwise functional human beings had established a network with taxi drivers whereby a text message to a number (oft changed) would lead to a quick ride around the block with monies exchanged and substances passed over in return.

They would then proceed to enjoy their Friday night before going home and continuing to be productive members of society.

Thankfully, the NSW Police were down on this like a tonne of bricks with portly taxi drivers humiliated in their underwear for the benefit of “The Daily Telegraph”.

I have to admit, at the moment I’m a drug user myself.

Feeling sore, awful and rundown, I pop a fexo and suddenly the world is an awesome place.

Luckily for me, a fexo is a generic analog for the old Telfast and it clears up my hayfever.

Popping down from the palatial “CityNews” offices to the Garema Place chemist I pay $9 for a pack of 10 fexos. No prescription and no questions asked.

For archaic reasons, other people with other drug desires need to enter the criminal sphere to satisfy their needs.

Canberra, for instance, boasts a cadre of mothers who get their children over-prescribed with ritalin so they can swap part of the prescription to dope dealers.

Returning to the busted taxi ring, it’s worth noting that Pablo Escobar, in his meteoric ascent to being the richest criminal in human history, according to the wonderful Netflix series “Narcos”, used three taxis in Colombia as a money laundering front that saw the taxis also be the most profitable ever known.

As a civilian standing on the sidelines, it’s certainly worth noting that the cartels in “Narcos” were willing to lose 60kg of drugs in a day to law enforcement to make sure the other 600kg got through.

When we hear about our police making a major drug bust “acting on intelligence” it’s worth remembering that intelligence was likely a rival drug gang effectively making our police their own muscle.

Furthermore, when we talk about the war on drugs we should know that in World War II every major power doled out amphetamines to the troops like it was candy, the British alone making 70 million doses, and early James Bond books were redolent of the hero huffing bennies.

A lot of people caught up in the ice scourge are trying to hold down two jobs after coffee isn’t enough to get them through the split shift.

It would be nice if we could all be trusted to act morally in our own self interest. The economic models would certainly be a lot cleaner.

The reality is that huge swathes of the population engage in self-harmful behaviour and nothing the rest of us say or do is ever going to change that.

The most messed up people I’ve ever known were chronic alcoholics. A week long binge on pizza and Netflix will take years off your life.

I’m not saying drugs are good. I just wonder why we all can’t walk down to the chemist and pay a dollar a pill for something that will make us feel how we want to feel.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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