The invisible scourge

From Are, from above, you see nothing; There are those who say, ‘It is down there’ and we can only believe it; The places are deserted. At night, leaning the ear to the floor, sometimes you hear a door ”.

Italo Calvin in Invisible cities.

The issue of the drug has disappeared from the media radars. This is obvious, by the seizures, the increase in drug trafficking, the result of the empowerment of cartels in Latin America but also of political changes. The new Portuguese legislation only facilitated the distribution chain: we have a ‘dry law’ improved by the complicity of political power. It would be therefore normal that there was, in the party spectard, who defended the regulation and formalization of the sale of drugs by the state, breaking the illicit business. And who defended harder measures, such as the aggravation of penalties and coercion measures for consumption in public space.

Instead, politics ignores the theme. Even when there is a connection between trafficking and immigration, as in Operation Porthos, in which it was found that tons of cocaine entered through the ports and that the employees were accomplices and were at the orders of the CCP – First Command of the Capital. This multinational crime originating in Brazil already has, through uncontrolled immigration, tentacles in Portugal. Did you hear the arrival talk about it? I do not, even though everyone knows that trafficking is directly related to the laundering of capital, illicit enrichment and corruption, as is notorious in the aforementioned operation.

Drug revenues are extorted to society as a tithing through the dealers that operate to the egg whites. They are protected by the law that allows them to invoke that the drug is for their consumption, when in fact they sell it ready for toxicode dependents. These pay the addiction by committing crimes against property and stealing low -value things, but causing expensive and annoying damage to owners.

Substance abuse is also a direct cause of the increase in homeless and has an impact on domestic and public health violence, with the exponential increase in infectious diseases. It is a real threat to many families whose children are tempted to try until they are hostage to the product; For people who, living in the epicentra of trafficking, are forced to abdicate their freedoms; For many old men whose little earnings are extorted by family members alienated by consumption. Yes, the normalization of the drug contributes to the inexorable cycle of poverty, to the unfolding of society, to impunity before the law.

On the edge of the municipalities, the right will argue that a police are missing on each street and more video surveillance; the left will summarize a social problem and will not fail to assert that traffickers and dealers They are entitled to social housing, even if they use it as a distribution deposit. If any is therefore dumped, while the neighbors applaud the measure, the moralists from the left arrive to ensure that ‘poor trafficker, he has even been arrested, has been punished, and can not be without his home’.

There come the summer festivals, where it is as easy to buy drugs as beer. The children of the richest can consume or not, but they know and tolerate those who sell the drugs of fashion. The children of the poorest also know, because the family members of the dealers show their purchasing power in the neighborhood and school.

Yes, this is the largest social scourge, transverse in mode and target. And mess with a lot of money. Things that we are insensitive and want invisible.