Right Under Your Nose

For obvious reasons, you’ve probably been feeling nostalgic lately, so maybe it comes as a relief that the 80s are back. We didn’t bring back the Sony Walkman, phones attached to walls, VHS rental stores, the glory of personal computers not connected to the internet, our want for MTV, peak John Hughes films, Studio54, or an era before glucose monitors told us exactly the impact Fun Dip was having on our bodies. But, as you may have noticed in movies and TV shows, or perhaps on a more personal level, cocaine is back. If that surprises you, consider this: A Trump policy seems to have actually lowered the price of an internationally shipped good. The war on fentanyl and the refocusing of federal agents from drug interdiction to deportation efforts has led to a drop prices for cocaine—which combined with resurging demand, has resulted in an economic bump that’s nothing to sniff at. That’s left El Señor Mencho to toot his horn as the latest top dog in drug dealing. WSJ (Gift Article): America Loves Cocaine Again—Mexico’s New Drug King Cashes In. “Cocaine sold in the U.S. is cheaper and as pure as ever for retail buyers. Consumption in the western U.S. has increased 154% since 2019 and is up 19% during the same period in the eastern part of the country … Oseguera, who grew up poor selling avocados, is making a killing from cocaine buyers in the U.S. His cartel transports the addictive powder by the ton from Colombia to Ecuador and then north to Mexico’s Pacific coast via speedboats and so-called narco subs.”

+ Our whac-a-mole drug policies always seem to have unintended consequences. For example, the decriminalization of marijuana has somehow led to a lot of marijuana arrests. The Atlantic (Gift Article): The New War on Weed. “States with some of the loosest marijuana restrictions in the nation arresting and charging sellers of a drug that was made legal at least in part to move away from such charges.”