.
To the Venezuelan Drug Runners Sleeping in the Sea
To Tren de Aragua—congratulations on your new life
as Caribbean flotsam.
Hello there, fellows—great to see you there.
I guess you never thought you’d be like fish.
One minute in a boat, and then a flare
Of hot exploding metal. In one swish
You and your obscene cargo of cocaine
Are down in Neptune’s cold and kelpy tangle.
It hit so fast I’m sure you felt no pain—
Surprise, perhaps. You overlooked this angle:
We won’t take crap from terrorists like you.
From now on you’re a target for our rockets.
We’ll hit you without warning, and your crew
Will have their arms and legs blown from their sockets.
We know, we know—you hoped our stupid Left
Would scream about “due process” and “the right
To sail on the high seas.” Well, you’re bereft
Of those illusions now. Our Navy’s might
Will now sink any goddamned boat you fill
With fentanyl and cocaine or the like.
The U.S. now has leaders with the will
To smash you with a straight and lethal strike.
Forget about your liberal friends. They’ll moan
And write their letters to the New York Times.
As for us, we’ll make you sob and groan
In penance for your arrogance and crimes.
This isn’t vengeance—this is retribution.
We’ll pay you back with interest for your drugs.
We’re sick of you, and this is our solution:
To turn you into fish-food and sea slugs.
Make phone calls to your friends at CBS;
Send plangent whines to Britain’s BBC;
Complain to liberals that you’re in distress;
Quote lawyers on your “right to sail the sea.”
All in vain—we too long have endured
Such blatherskite and sentimental dreck.
There’s this one way the sickness will be cured:
You send a boat, we’ll send shells through its deck.
.
.
Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide. He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.
Joe, this is a brilliant poem which you must have written at breakneck speed — fueled, no doubt, by the adrenaline-rush of seeing the United States finally stand for something moral and right and actually act rather than just dither. We have come many miles from the witless, impotent Biden administration. Thank Heaven.
Yes, there are plenty of liberals who are appalled by Trump’s decisive action. I couldn’t care less. They seem to love dead addicts and are willing to sacrifice families and decency and sanity and lives on the altar of their perfect, unchallenged ideologies. To me, they are angels of death who have become so astonishingly intelligent that they can no longer discern right from wrong because it’s all relative and complicated. I pity them. If they had ever actually experienced the life-changing horror of watching a poor, hopeless addict who came from a good home and had so much potential but who got hooked and then overdosed and died in front of them and then attended their funeral and tried to help a family understand why no one would help… Well, they might feel differently.
There is a grim satisfaction to seeing these evil drug lords and their mules receive retribution — those who have killed so many and destroyed the souls of so many more. As Doc Holliday observes in Tombstone — it’s not revenge. It’s a reckoning. And now the bad guys sleep with the fishes. Good. Our country is infinitely better off for it.
Deepest thanks to you, Brian. Yes, I was in a state of exultation and I wrote this poem in less than a hour.
I am baffled and infuriated by the absurd and pettifogging objections raised by left-liberals to our government’s action. When I read that some jackasses insisted that we should “have gotten a court order first,” or we ought to “have consulted with Congress first and had a debate,” or that our obligation was to “stop the vessel first and search it,” it becomes quite clear to me that the Left is completely brain-dead, or enslaved by TDS.
We are in a war with these rotten cartels, and decisions in combat do not wait upon stupid, petty, procedural rules.
No bark – all bite, Joe, and I’m with you all the way! The right wing media needs to AI up an image of 100,000+ corpses piled up on a football field and leave it on screen for a day or two to strongly accentuate what the cartel is doing to our country and let it frickin’ sink in. We have the perfect president in charge of how to fight back against both the drug runners and, like you say, the ‘brain-dead’ Left. Well done-
Dr. Salemi, this is another one of your magnificent poems that shows your mastery once again and sends a great message not only to the reader, but to the cartels and the media. I have felt for a long time that the secret head of the Venezuelan drug trades/cartels is the “President” of that country who profits in more than one way from dealing death to Americans.
I say, good show! (both the poem and the action). I, too, am exceedingly impressed with your ability to write the perfect poetic response to this event with such speed!
Thank you for your brilliant and energising poem. You are so right to be euphoric about this hit. For once someone took a decision. In our country, the UK, leaders should applaud and learn from you, unfortunately, as you mention, we have the abominable BBC here and the European Human Rights Act….
gotta love it Doctor Joe!
Requiem in Pisces!
Thank you all for your comments. I am in the midst of the new teaching semester and I cannot reply individually.
Joseph:
I love the poem and its sentiments, and am in awe of the fact that you wrote it in under an hour! Incredible!
A very enjoyable read, filled with lovely phrases: “cold and kelpy tangle” is magnificent, as is “plangent whines.” I was familiar with “blatherskite” as an insult for a person (and a favorite of Cornelius Vanderbilt), but apparently it refers to what such a person says, too.
A bit of saber-rattling sounds refreshing, in much the same way as “Department of War.”
Joseph, an awesome write, I will read over and over! No sympathy from me on these scum. Siure! Debates for people coming to do no good?! Not a chance. Love a poem like this! Why? I can feel your anger and fist …….coming right through the screen…, many thanks,,,,P.R…..l cherish poems like this why ? Because they have real teeth in them.. no kidding.!
Go, Joe! Where you lead, others follow. I love your smash-mouth attitude and your skeptical view of diplomacy for diplomacy’s sake. I’m glad to have a no-nonsense Sicilian on my side.
Many thanks, Kip. What really prompted this poem was not the destruction of the drug boat, but the utterly off-the-goddamned-wall objections that liberals were making in Mainstream Media about “court orders” and “the law of the seas” and “maritime protocols” and “proper search-and-seizure.” These brainless and idiotic whingeings sent me into a blood-rage, and I just picked up a pen and began writing furiously.
Interesting poem. A structurally sound poem.
It interests me how direct you Americans can be sometimes. I feel that sometimes it can help to hide behind illusion or metaphor. For example, write of monsters trapped beneath the ocean, rather than literally writing a poem about a Venezuelan drug cartel.
Again the poem is awesome, no criticism there. But for posterity and future generations, what is a bombed Venezuelan gang going to do for them in 50 or 100 years time? In keeping up with current affairs do we make our poetry chained to the jargon and events of our generation, excluding future readers?
You raise an interesting point, Christian, regarding the lifespan of poetry. Not all poetry is meant to be “for the ages” any more than all songs are meant to be thus. But sometimes it works out that way. There were a great number of songs that were written around World War I and yet most of them have fallen into obscurity. You have the occasional “Over There” but rarely will you hear “The Rose of No Man’s Land” or “Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser.” Does that mean those songs were a waste of time and effort? Should they never have been written or published? It depends on what you believe the ultimate purpose of poetry. They inspired people who needed it. They articulated ideas and observations that the writers apparently needed to articulate. I myself hold to the idea that poetry is a form of bearing witness. Sometimes — just like in music — what is described will be eternal. Sometimes it will be of interest only to historians. Why is that a problem?
To Christian: the poem is polemical and satirical, so it must make its real-world references clear. In situations where a poet is writing in a land under the control of political dictators, then there is a reason for metaphorical or figurative disguise. But why should I do that in a country that has a First Amendment?
Brian Yapko is correct about the fact that not all poems are “meant for the ages” — some simply deal with current events, and are written to have an immediate powerful effect on contemporary readers. So what if such poems are unclear centuries later? That’s why we have literary critics and commentators to explicate them.
An early 19th-century American poet (his name escapes me right now) wrote and published a savage and highly personal attack on President Jefferson, attacking him as a freethinker, a Jacobin sympathizer, and a slave-owner who had children with one of his female slaves (Sally Hemings). I recall clearly two lines:
Go scan, philosophist, thy Sally’s charms,
And sink supinely in her sable arms.
That poem is as direct and as violent as a shotgun blast. Why should the writer have disguised his points with metaphor?
I am surprised and saddened at the reaction here to this event. This was a clear violation of international maritime law and our Constitution. Also, it was the outright murder of 11 ‘alleged’ gang members with no presentation of corroborative evidence as well as the lack of any drugs reportedly found at the scene. There is not even a report of who alleged the gang membership or the possession of drugs on the boat. I certainly hope my professional colleague in Miami Beach is not ‘interdicted’ the next time he is coming home from Bimini!
Nice try. The Constitution applies to U.S. Citizens. It is not a world-government document and it certainly does not apply to foreign nationals who demonstrate a clear and present danger to American citizens. Going all the way back to the Barbary Pirates, threats against our country do not require the pearl-clutching guidance of magistrates. Poor Osama bin Laden didn’t get a fair trial. Give me a break.
Quite right, an historically executive branch abused section of the Constitution, but it was nevertheless an act of war without Congressional approval so the violation of article 1, sec. 8 clause 11 stands. Perhaps it could be viewed in a different light if there was proof.
The bottom line is we only have the US Government’s word for any of this, and if mistakes were made and laws were broken, we’re hardly likely to get an admission.
I loathe drug traffickers like I imagine most of us do, but it’s an unfortunate precedent.
The millions dying from fentanyl and other drugs is also an unfortunate precedent. Also, please name any government anywhere in the world… city, county, state or any other government that we should trust.
Paul, I don’t think you actually care one way or another about that boat or who was on it or what it was carrying. All you want is another occasion to attack Trump and his administration, so that you can virtue-signal about your left-liberal piety.
Agree Paul – where’s the evidence?
Pointing out something emblematic of an increasingly authoritarian regime can easily be dismissed by jargon like ‘virtue-signalling’, but isn’t any less true for that.
In my dystopian-Americana novel, ‘The Movement’, I predict this targeting of boats carrying supposed ‘lawbreakers’ in a future where authoritarianism is the accepted form of government.
Paul, you have just admitted that your entire purpose in this exchange is propagandistic against the American government.
You want to turn this simple incident of drug interdiction into another “Rainbow Warrior” situation, or another Gaza “Freedom Flotilla” spectacle, in order to generate rage against Trump. Like France and like Israel, the United States will protect its interests, come hell or high water.
To Robert Elkins: What you are asking for is the government to give you all the intelligence-gathering details and sources that proved this boat to be a Tren de Aragua smuggling craft. Are you serious? Do you have any understanding of how an intelligence service works? Revealing details and sources concerning an operation would be insane!
Let me just point out one simple observed fact that very few persons seem to have noticed. That boat was powered by FOUR top-of-the-line high-speed motors, each one costing $50,000. That means that the craft cost $200,000 apart from its hull structure and other equipment.
Do you know of any poor Venezuelan fishermen who could afford something like that?
Combat is not a courtroom. You don’t need stated evidence and depositions and sworn witnesses and legal briefs, and you don’t have to “prove” to anybody by adversarial contest between lawyers that the facts you have about the enemy are what would satisfy a juridical forum.
If your professional colleague is coming home from Bimini, let’s hope it’s not in a high-speed craft worth close to a quarter of a million dollars, and traveling at a velocity clearly meant to avoid capture.
No, I am asking the government to show proof of their identities and gang affiliations… and proof of illegal drugs being on the boat. That can be done ex-post-facto without revealing sources.
You are aware that there are thousands of very expensive boats in that region, yes? Driving an expensive boat in that region means nothing, your guilt by asso0ciation argument fails.
I would like to talk to any Venezuelan fisherman who would want a boat like that, it is clearly designed for high-speed run and not fishing – just like the various style boats in the marinas of the fishing port I live in.
You are quite right about combat, but this ain’t that. Those were 11 civilians in international waters under a foreign flag not at war with the US. International law applies, not military rules of war.
You are obviously not familiar with boat traffic between Florida and nearby islands. Travel between them is typically done at high speeds for the same reason you drive at max speed between cities on the interstate highways… time! A velocity clearly intended to avoid capture!?! LOL, do some research, go to SOBE and charter a ride to Bimini or any of the others just east of there.
A fine poem, just misinformed.
You still don’t get it, do you, Elkins?
You’re talking in abstract terms like “international law” and courtroom “proof” and “foreign flags” and all the other chickenshit trivia that left-liberals love to bring up when they are desperate to find a reason why we shouldn’t defend ourselves.
Get real. Nations defend themselves from enemies, both proven and perceived, in whatever way they see fit, and they always have done things that way. Every government on this planet has intelligence agencies that maintain departments of “wet work” and “secret ops” to get rid of threats to their people. And no proof of the necessity of those actions is ever released ex post facto.
Combat is combat. Has it occurred to you that the United States has not made a formal declaration of war since 1941? And we have fought many wars since then, against both nations with “flags” and against shadowy terrorist groups like ISIS. Everything in your argument reeks of lawyerly nitpicking and fault-finding.
We are going to continue to blow these boats out of the water when we have intelligence that tells us they are drug runners, and we are not going to spill the intelligence in public so that Democrats can hold endless hearings and investigations and TV talk-forums to undermine Trump. So tell your rich friends who ride fast in speedboats with $200,000 engines to watch their ass. Got that?
Dr. Salemi is so right about national intelligence. I wrote the intelligence methodology for the Defense Intelligence Agency for the MFR Treaty. Here is the certainty we had to have:
1. Human Intelligence (HUMINT): Reports from several reliable sources and reliable eyewitnesses such as spies who were able to count the order of battle items covering documents and sightings of manpower and vehicles that could be physically proven (which I shall leave unexplained as to how).
2. Photo Intelligence (PHOTINT) now called Imagery Intelligence (IMINT): On the ground and from the air proof.
3. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT): Verification via intercept.
4. Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT): GPS and sensors. We had sensors, but not GFS in my time.
5. Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). Documents, news sources, and slips of the tongue.
6. Measurement Intelligence (MASINT): such as covered vehicles, packages, and boxes found by HUMINT and PHOTINT.
We concentrated on the first three in my time as the most reliable and had to have material proof from all three sources.
Now tell me about this not holding up in any court in the world!
Sorry Joe, it’s you who still doesn’t get it. It’s not combat when there is no conflict. 11 “alleged” gang members allegedly running drugs in a high speed runabout off Venezuela allegedly going to Florida. Having read about, and viewed on TV videos, many intercessions at sea, I note that neither the US Navy nor US Coast Guard showed up at the scene to retrieve bodies or evidentiary flotsam – which could prove the allegations. Why was that protocol not performed? If the allegations are true, where’s the evidence? Some unidentified accuser? That’s not the American way I grew up with and served in a war to protect – do you support the assassination of people based on that?
Robert, the following two paragraphs quoted are recent quotes from the Daily Wire as a follow up:
“In a fiery show of force echoing the new Trump Doctrine on narco-terror, the U.S. Coast Guard over the weekend captured, burned, and sank a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific — just days after the U.S. military obliterated an alleged cartel-run vessel from Venezuela.”
“As part of Operation Pacific Viper, the USCG Cutter Stone conducted three separate drug interdictions in one night, seizing nearly 13,000 pounds of cocaine and capturing seven suspected traffickers, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday.” (Source: Daily Wire)
In 1972, as a Phoenix Advisor to the South Vietnamese in the Delta Region (MR4), I was one of the last Americans in the Delta. The Phoenix program was designed to eliminate the Viet Cong, the internal South Vietnamese enemy traitors. One day late in the fall I received a phone call from Colonel Kelleher who was in Saigon. He asked me, “What are you doing down there?” I replied, “My job.” He then said I had been credited with more than 4,500 dead infiltrating North Vietnamese. I told him I had given the order/recommendation that anyone caught out of their village at night to be eliminated or put in a concentration camp. My reasoning was I had reports of expanded efforts by the North Vietnamese to infiltration the Delta, since we were soon to depart. With my order/recommendation I believed it would eliminate the Viet Cong commo-liaison types who were to guide the infiltrators around South Vietnamese outposts. Apparently, my advice succeeded beyond even my own expectations.
My points? 1.) I eliminated anyone even suspected of aiding the enemy. 2.) I did not require a justification or legal proceedings. 3.) I know that was in a declared military action, not a declared war, but the same principles apply. 4.) We are in a drug war (undeclared as a war, but a war nevertheless) and any actions we take are justified. 5.) Read Mike Bryant’s posting near the end for further information. 6.) Any kills or destruction are justified in a drug war especially when targets are identified.
Thank you, LTC Peterson. When Elkins says “It’s not combat when there is no conflict” he reveals the otherworldly and legalistic nature of his mindset.
As you point out, we eliminated thousands of Communist sympathizers and likely terrorists during the Phoenix program in Vietnam. There was no officially declared war by Congress, these persons were not in uniform, and the killings were extrajudicial. But they were NECESSARY and SALUTARY, and therefore a normal part of fighting a dirty and vicious enemy in an asymmetrical war.
Elkins should remember this statement from a Roman historian: “Justa bella quibus necessaria.” That means “Wars are justified to whom they are necessary.” It is an urgent necessity for America to destroy the drug cartels. I wonder if Elkins knows how Pablo Escobar was taken down — it wasn’t by lawyers with writs or police with arrest warrants or pious liberals quoting from the Geneva Convention and demanding “evidence.”
Sorry, Bobby, but you need to go back to your cocoon — you are still on the no-flight list. The Law of Survival supersedes Maritime Law. Maybe one of the “victims” was a cousin of yours.
Sorry CB, you should move to a country that’s more aligned with your un-American ideas. However, I would love to hear your support of such a phony hypothesis.
Joe, the moral outrage is real… on both sides. Piracy has been the subject of many poems over the ages and this is a notable addition to the list.
This is what Grok AI had to say about the incident…
So, people will pick their sides. God help us all.
Mike, that was a fabulous exposition! Thank you for sharing Grok AI, whatever that is. I was so pleased you posted it as a comment, since I suspect there are many who would not click on a link.
Joe, this stark poem is admirably written with grit and passion. Blatant criminality has been normalized and given a governmental pass for decades. Something has to be done. I haven’t got all the answers because my trust in government is at an all-time low. The aspect that bothers me is that the majority crying out over the injustice of the act you have poetically depicted, have NEVER stood against the danger posed to our children in an era of sick and twisted ideologies that ignore immutable truths and non-government approved scientific finds, all in the name of “education” and “healthcare”. It’s about time the untouchable fat-cats behind the drug and sex trafficking racket (those sitting behind the desks benefitting from the very acts they encourage privately and condemn publicly) suffered the consequences of their crimes against humanity. It’s not until this happens that I will be convinced our children are on a path to safety. Joe, thank you!
Many thanks, Susan. I appreciate your words.
We’ve blasted a second high-speed drug-runner boat in the Caribbean! Another one bites the dust — or should I say, swallows the seaweed?
To quote an old song, “Many bold hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware… BEWARE!”
This poem has that typical vim (I don’t know if it’s quite the right word, but it’s close enough) any Salemi piece has. Drug traffickers, especially the cartel, who cut a lot of their products with fentanyl, should be dealt with in the way these guys were. Though, how many rockets will it take to stop all the boats? Even if the US had a billion, some would still get through.
Coming from a background of doing a pharmacy degree — so I like to think I know what I’m talking about — I do think a better solution would be legalising all drugs (with much nuance that would be too much to get into here but I don’t mean walking into a Walmart and getting some heroin!), and then these drug cartels would collapse within a week or two. Who in their right mind would not choose a pure, medical grade drug, over some fentanyl-laced cartel death powder?
Overdose deaths would pretty much also drop close to 0, since most of the time it’s due to doing too much of a drug, while having no idea the purity, so if one is used to a certain dose at a certain purity and gets a product much purer, they can die from misdosing and overdosing. Fentanyl is also highly toxic and even doing normal doses of other drugs could kill someone due to the fentanyl added in. You might disagree with my take, but I don’t see how carrying on with a failing strategy is a good idea, either.
Drilon, I have frequently toyed with the idea that a free market for all drugs, with quality control, would preferable to the situation of fentanyl-laced drugs, massive smuggling and crime, and wrecked lives that we have now. This is what is known as the “demand-side” solution: satisfy demand legally, and the drug business collapses. But I have seen here in New York how the legalization of marijuana hasn’t done anything except fill our streets and public places with the acrid stench of burning weed, and people seem to be buying more and more of the stuff. Because of the general collapse of strong character in America, I think the legalization of other and stronger drugs would only lead to a massive uptick in addiction and deaths.
That leaves us with the “supply-side” solution of arrests, confiscation of contraband drugs, legal prosecution, and all the rest of what are called “the drug wars.” This simply has not worked very well, but if we up the ante by actually killing a great number of drug smugglers and sinking their boats without warning, we will frighten a great many potential drug-runners. Remember this: the South Americans got rid of Pablo Escobar by killing everyone associated with him and his drug cartel, without mercy. They didn’t do it with legal briefs and arrest warrants.
I can’t speak for New York, as I don’t know anything about the effects of legalisation over there, but I remember when Colorado and Oregon first legalised recreational cannabis, the use of it did rise initially, but after a few months it returned back to pre-legal levels. This makes sense and suggests some people don’t parttake because of the barrier of illegality and once that’s removed, they’re more willing to try it (but if that was a big enough barrier, you didn’t care enough to smoke it, let’s be honest) but the people who ignored the barrier before, now don’t need to bother. It also prevents office workers from losing their job due to pointless drug tests — I don’t think the Excel paper pusher is a danger to anyone if they smoke after hours.
Either way, I think if more harmful and pernicious drugs like alcohol and tobacco can be freely bought from the local newsagents (I think you lot call them bodegas), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let cannabis users visit dispensaries for their drug of choice. Though, you make a point about the smell, I especially get annoyed when I’m passing down the street and some dickhead blows a cloud of some fruity bullshit vape and it goes right in my face. I’d rather have cigar smoke, that’s been kept in Tutankhamun’s crypt for millenia, blown into my face! People should be respectful of others in that sense.
Factually, it’s the changing of purities between illegal street dealers that causes most overdoses and deaths. If addicts were given ampoules for use, where the dose cannot be lethal — at least to an addict — this would make deaths very rare. Also, if someone (a non addict) did theoretically want something like heroin, they’d have to attend harm-reduction classses and will be dissuaded from doing it by any means, but adults should have free reign to do what they please. And the other point to make for heroin specifically will be to tell people to just wait: when you’re dying the doctors will always say yes if you ask for more morphine — wait until you have nothing to lose and when the doctors will make sure you’re “comfortable”. And by “comfortable”, I hope you know what I mean, haha. Why risk addiction and ruining your life when the time will come to load up the 75mg oxycodone IV infusion and go to the land of Morpheus, while being looked after by doctors? I think that’s a compelling reason to never do heroin, or rather, waiting for the best time.
Maybe a half-way approach like Portugal’s might be the best, where they decriminalise drug use and treat it as a public health issue rather than a criminal issue. Because, honestly, when I think of criminals, I think of murderers, rapists, drug lords and the like — I don’t picture a withering, emaciated addict as a criminal — they need medical help, not punishment.
Actually, drugs like heroin, cocaine, and morphine were perfectly legal and purchaseable over the counter here in the U.S. up until about 1905. You could buy them at the pharmacy as easily as you could purchase aspirin or an antacid. After that time, the restrictive laws came in, and naturally the trade fell into the hands of criminals, and the price of these forbidden drug flew upwards.
I still think that such a free market was ideal, and the idea of making certain drugs illegal was one of the typically intrusive asininities of the “Progressive” movement (like their push for the prohibition of wines, beers, and liquors).
But notice I used the past tense: WAS. Back then people had strength of character, moral spine, self-respect, and toughness. Only the weaklings and the losers became prey to addiction. Today there has been such a major decline and degeneration of our citizenry’s pith and vigor that a free market in hard drugs would turn much of the nation into a herd of zombies. Look at the current massive demand for cocaine today among middle-class persons. A “demand-side” attempt to solve our drug problem would simply create huge numbers of new addicts out of people with a desperate need for a new high, or a new escape, or a new experience, or a new way to socialize.
By the way, if you don’t think that drug addicts are criminals, it’s clear that you haven’t been mugged yet by a junkie, or had your flat burglarized by them.
Yes, in fact, morphine was advetised as a cough suppressant, primarily. Imagine that today, the doctor would be sued and lose their license quick time.
I completely agree with you on the fact that society is weaker now than it used to be. Before, young men would be shipped off to war and wouldn’t complain and now if the coffee shop runs out of a pumpkin spice latte, they’re having a mental breakdown. People need trigger warnings to watch Rush Hour movies, but our grandfathers were pulling triggers fighting wars. And an increasing demand could be a side effect of mass legalisation, naturally. And from a scientific point of view, if someone was to do cocaine once a week vs someone drinking 4-5 times a week, I’d say the cocaine doer has better health outcomes. How many high-powered tech bros and lawyers do cocaine regularly?
And I guess we’re just gonna have to disagree on addicts, because I don’t share those views. But, yeah, fuck the criminal ones, indeed. The majority aren’t like that though.