Poor man’s high

LET me start with a couple of disclaimers.

First, nothing I say here about drugs comes from experience. I got everything from basic research. Second, nothing here is meant to justify whatever extrajudicial killings have been or might be happening in the war against drugs. Extrajudicial killings by anybody are simply morally reprehensible.

I am simply speaking on the objective level where sociology explains, without moral judgment, the generally known fact that the poor have been almost exclusively the direct or collateral victims of the drug war.

Of course, one can never totally discount a possible anti-poor intention of those doing the killings. Humans always act for a variety of motives they alone know in their hearts. But on sociological ground zero, regardless of intention that is, the drug war has victimized only the poor mainly because meth or locally shabu is the drug of choice of the poor.

The drug of choice of the rich is cocaine or coke. It is a great deal more expensive than shabu because it is organic hence scarce. It comes from the leaves of the coca plant that takes months to grow and only in South America making it an expensive import for Filipino users. It is also expensive because a coke’s high does not last very long and one has to snort (hence buy) more of it and often to maintain a hi gh.

Coke is not as socially problematic as shabu because it is less addictive. It also takes longer to be addicted to it and the coke addict knows he is an addict and is, therefore, able to hide his addiction as he performs his regular day to day activities in between snorts of the drug. Shabu, cheaper and more available, is the poor man’s drug. It is a chemical substance compounded in large amounts in laboratories.

Shabu takes less time to make one an addict and its high lasts a long time. But unlike in the case of coke, a shabu addict is not aware of, does not admit to, his/ her addiction.

If the poor are mainly the victims of the current antidrug war, it is not necessarily because the war is antipoor although it could be. It is more because of the sociological reality that only the pooruseand/orpushshabu in order to earn a living or feed an addiction or both.

No rich man will be caught peddling coke to feed a habit or earn a living. They have their coke discretely delivered to them which they snort in the privacy of their homes and exclusive parties. Rich drug lords who distribute shabu naturally have the poor pushing the drug for them.

Shabu is the poor’s affordable go-to drug for a high. This is the sociological underpinning of why in the current war against drugs only the poor are its direct or collateral victims intentionally, extra judicially, or otherwise.

— Orlando P. Carvajal