The Drug War Exacerbates Deadly Brazilian Mosquito Plague
If you don’t know that the drug war is to blame for all the world's problems, everything you do know will only confuse you. For example, the drug war is helping sustain a deadly mosquito plague in Brazil called the dengue fever:
It's true no vaccine exists for the fatal strain, hemorrhagic dengue, which causes internal and external bleeding. But there are preventative measures one can take to avoid being bitten by the Aedes aegypti black mosquito – keeping the body covered, using mosquito nets at night, and avoiding standing water where mosquitoes swarm.The trouble is one in four people in Rio live in poverty in the favelas or shanty-towns where pools of water are common in the rainy season. Efforts to contain the spread of the disease are being hampered by the never-ending drug war which impedes access to the favelas. [thefirstpost]
This is probably not what most reformers have in mind when calling for an end to international drug prohibition. But anyone who takes a good hard look at the war no drugs will find a million problems they never imagined. Any cost benefit analysis of drug prohibition is incomplete unless it accounts for every last inconvenience and injustice that we've unleashed in the course of this great fiasco, including the fact that you can't conveniently disinfect puddles in the slums of Rio to prevent plagues.
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Comment posted by Anonymous on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 9:33pmTo the last gentleman or lady who responded to this story, I have a question to ask. Please read deeply, or you'll miss the question.
The Drug War is directly responsible for the death of unknown numbers of people and you could liken that number to the number of people in Brazil who are dying of a plague that could be prevented given the proper measures.
Chocoloate research, while I agree is not paramount to human survival, gets its funding from some unknown benefactor and very possibly a small amount of money is donated to this cause via the federal government.
The federal government is the sole benefactor of the Drug War that is directly responsible for deaths. The amount of money dumbed (note: intentional misspelling) into the this 'war' could be better spent on any number of social policies, both foreign and domestic (least of all, starving people around the world, universal healthcare, or perhaps, just perhaps mind you, education both here in the U.S. and abroad).
Better to throw people in jail, kill foreign nationals that grow crops in high demand by the American public, and prevent people from having access to useful medicine than to embrace the idea that the Drug War is a failure, right? (note: sarcasm).
While I agree in part that it may not be a direct result of the Drug War (though it has been stated that the reason the Drug War is to blame is because it 'hampers the ability to reach the small towns where the outbreaks are more common) that these people in Brazil are contracting this disease, it might perhaps be true that if there was no Drug War, then the U.S. could send ample funds to Brazil to help protect the residents there. And maybe we would.
If you are looking at the
Comment posted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/20/2008 - 8:30pmIf you are looking at the cost benefit, there are many senseless things you can take budget money from to put toward the disease in brazil. Your rant singles out drug prohibition. The drug war itself is not actually exacerbating the problem. Thats a slippery slope fallacy. If its a loosely connected matter of putting the money to better use, you better re-think some of your rational. I can think of larger wastes of money that could more than equate to that spent of the war on drugs. Have you heard of some the ridiculous research projects that are being funded? i recently read that not too long ago millions of dollars were given to research organization to research chocolate. Would you say that chocolate research is exarcerbating the disease in brazil? Because that is the line of logic you are following....