Opium, Tobacco, Guns, Wars, ..... Have Mercy!

Just beginning to read Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

One small surprise at the very outset as one begins to read this book is that this is not about the recent Afghanistan, but about India over a century ago, when opium trade was beginning and escalated by British and China was forced to accept the trade from European (and US) powers during the famous Opium wars. India, post independence, made a conscious decision not to use opium trade which could have benefited the then poor nation weighed under with debts of the legacy of the British rule, and forego the profits of the opium trade however high, since it was a substance mostly misused to get people addicted and thereafter not good for health.

It took most part of the remaining century, however, to get tobacco industry (mostly centred in US) to be contained in any way at all, and that too mostly in US and Europe - while in the rest of the world tobacco smoking is promoted aggressively nevertheless. In Thailand for example police were used to arrest anyone protesting against the tobacco promotion being held outside schools and colleges by US corporations or local subsidiaries thereof, handing over free cigarettes to teenagers, from what one read within last couple of decades at the most - so even as court battles were being fought in US and Europe was banning smoking in most places, minors in other parts of the world being inculcated into the ill practice with aggressive use of law enforcing agencies was used to make sure the profits at expense of world health would continue.

Even Bible has something about sins coming home to roost, doesn't it! Only, very unfortunately such roosting is not as accurate as it ought to be and instead of those that practice such ill practices being affected by their own sins coming home to roost, it is other innocents of their own society being affected by what is misnamed party drugs even as innocents of all ages across the world are being bombed so the weapon producers ought to not suffer losses post cold war.

Now post 2001 some parts of the unhealthy trade have not only resurfaced in countries that deal more in arms and uses thereof than in health of their own people or their needs of food, education, and a good life even at the most basic level, the trade is escalated at cost of all other farming and of course the health of those that are paying hefty amounts across the world to use the substance in a highly altered form.

Addictive substances for killing weapons trade is not new, it was exposed during the Iran - contra scandal and trials, and some rightwing publications in US published the details (during mid to late eighties) of military airplanes being used to bring such substance back in what would be otherwise empty planes returning from a run to central America to supply the favoured with weapons.

But now the scale is escalated beyond recognition and uses too, and the tales of women not remembering a day or two of rapes or men deprived of their organs are covered up under the (what ought to be confusing logically but is very well understood) name of party drugs, falsifying both the words that make up that name.

Hence the surprise at the outset about this book so recently being up for Booker prize being not about Afghanistan today but about the British empire of yore - one tends to overlook the roots of a problem in the concerns of today, of being tangled in the vines and branches we are attempting to free health of the world from.

Heaven have mercy on people of the earth under yoke of all these profit needs.