Drugs and money laundering

–Did their impact REALLY benefit our economy?

LAST Friday I argued the point that the lack of effort by past governments to create new employment, through the enhancement of those small and medium-scale businesses and cottage industries existing within the workable resources of our borders, had helped spawn the parallel economy.That parallel economy, I contended, upon its coming into being, matured from one social mutation to another: From suitcase traders, flour and general merchandise smugglers, back-track cartels, arms and human traffickers to marijuana importers and exporters and eventually growers, all became enveloped within the tentacles of cocaine.
Of the lot, the latter is arguably the most malignant of the invasive species to engage our unleashed parallel economy, no longer through secret airstrips or aircraft drops, but directly into the vulnerable areas of ‘the organic self’ of our grass-root humanity, for the human economy is our real economy.
It is often argued that drugs is what drove our economy up to 2014; that the current stagnation of the economy is evident of that fact. This is an argument our economists need to address, and urgently, as, from my humble layman experience, I say NO! It did NOT help our economy! In fact, it DEVASTATED it!
THE TRUE ECONOMY
And my argument, of course, revolves around the true economy of Guyana: Its humanity. ‘We’, the true economy, with our talents, intuitive ideas and human gifts are the potential of where and what the nation will achieve; and to preserve that potential, we must preserve, at least, the majority of the people.
Once large sums of money are injected into the economy of any nation from a source that inhibits any competition as to the economic expression of that monolith of finance, as it imposes itself with vast resources unrelated to unquestionable industry that swiftly changes the landscape from what is sanely possible to the incredible.
Look closer! An imbalance is evident! History is, despite crafted inconsistencies, a profound example of nations using criminal practices to enrich themselves. Slavery, caste systems, bond servants, all, with justifying religious doctrines, have worked in the interest of the perpetrators.
One factor, however, resonates. ‘The others’; the victims, who were the populations of slaves, the caste system, the bond servants etc. paid in the hell created for them on earth. And those who survived bear the marks within; the vision of their self-worth corrupted enough to want to mimic their perpetrators against others anew.
This paragraph outlines a background of exploitation that could, in each segment, justify the wealth generated; the mansions built; the servant or staff employed and the monopoly on the talents and ideas of subjected humanity extracted for the resource pool of the exploiter.

THE DAMAGES
The infusion of the drug business into everyday Guyana, with the masquerade of not being a criminal enterprise and being a ‘normal business’ through political callousness, did the following damages:
1: Through money laundering and the dumping of cheap clothing on our market, seamstresses and tailors were made redundant.
2: Furniture producers and workshops found no administrative support in protecting them against the mass importation of imitation wood items; they have now shrunk to a miserable percentage of what they were.
3: Bids to buy houses; say, the old house for sale across the road, or the house on auction, were thwarted by a particular clique of money launderers who upped a citizen’s evaluated property to tens of millions of dollars, until the Real Estate market was inflated to reach the special offers of the cartel-driven shoppers, thereby strangling the rest of the population.
4: I have done this in other articles; I need not indulge in the body count of the period of the drug cartels, except to remind readers that Roger Khan boasted that he would field 300 armed men to protect his PPP patron government from forced external or internal removal. Who were those people? Where are the weapons? Who in the now opposition would have this information?
5: The most devastating impact revolves around a current generation which has witnessed, and is still witnessing relatives, friends, and neighbours being dragged into the abyss of drug addiction. For some children, it is parents; some parents have traded their offspring to the apparent impregnable ‘Drug Yards’ for a ‘Black Joint’. How do we repair these young minds?
6: People gravitate to the simple, easy way of life; that is, most people. Many of the 19 -35-year-olds in 2000 who were street-wise; many young men, among them ex-joint servicemen, were entrapped by the lure of being bodyguards and enforcers. “De bossman give yuh ah ride; get a piece. Nobody can’t tell yuh nothing! Cause we bigga than de police!” Without skills and with the wrong attitude; abandoned by old bosses. Yes! We do have a crime rate! As illusions burn, the heat is apparent.
THE REAL ECONOMY
7: The real economy is the citizens of this nation; not hotels, bridges and dredges, or fancy vehicles. Those are the extensions of our progressive humanity.
We are all challenged by day-to-day problems that torment us, but we can’t refuse to think and slide along with logic formed out of sea-sand that will disappear with the froth of the next wave.
I discussed this article with my wife, based on a conversation I had with a friend. She reads the Bible more than I do these days; I don’t go to church, but the Bible is an incredible source of metaphors, and also antiquity’s timeline. She made reference to a specific biblical villain: The Israelite, King Ahab, husband of Jezebel, who fell in love with the mystique of Jezebel; worshipped her god, Baal; remained in compliance with her whims.
I realised that he, Ahab, did nothing of his own volition, but agreed with everything; as long as he was comfortable. His lack of social conscience made him a hated villain.
How many Ahabs are there in politics, business, the legal profession, the Guyana Police Force that knelt before the BAAL of the drug trade, as its high priest, Roger Khan, beckoned? Not only did they turn a blind eye, but even supported political excesses in exchange for Passovers to their excesses.
Guyana has suffered immensely. Today, with hardly an economy, normalcy has to be restored, by the efforts of every Guyanese.
Today, 2017, our laws do not even accommodate some of the substances like ‘XTC’ (better known as Ecstasy) and the equally dangerous ‘Molly’; these are distributed in certain quarters by students of a certain discipline. How many of our technical workforce are affected by mind- altering substances that can, in the conduct of their duties, cause death to innocents? These ‘sex-play drugs’ are byproducts of cocaine and heroin; high-powered, dangerous prescription sleep aids are also sold in the most unlikely of places.
Now, tell me: Has the drug trade truly benefitted the true Guyanese economy?

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