Hyperbole of the Day

From George Monbiot in an article where he ferociously attacks casual cocaine users then pleads for help for addicts:

Every year cocaine causes some 20,000 deaths in Colombia and displaces several hundred thousand people from their homes. Children are blown up by landmines; indigenous people are enslaved; villagers are tortured and killed; rainforests are razed. You'd cause less human suffering if instead of discreetly retiring to the toilet at a media drinks party, you went into the street and mugged someone. But the counter-cultural association appears to insulate people from ethical questions. If commissioning murder, torture, slavery, civil war, corruption and deforestation is not a crime, what is?

Let's take this wonderful paragraph bit by bit. Now, where does the figure of 20,000 people come from? And are those deaths directly linked to cocaine? How? Fine, if it can be proved that they are directly the results of cocaine I'll believe it. But the article - along with the claims of slavery, landmines, torture and killing - fails to offer any evidence to really back up the hysterical claims, leaving it not so much a fact as a factoid. Cocaine has negative implications both at home and abroad, but when dramatic numbers and other wild claims are thrown around it is always best to reference where they come from.

The second part of the paragraph is my favourite. I have this wonderful image of media types, of bankers, of sales people, all leaving parties halfway through, then going out and smashing the living fuck out of a poor passer-by for their wallet. Brilliant! Mind you, might disrupt the party/drinks event a bit. But more seriously, I'm not entirely sure that the mass muggings proposed by Monbiot actually would be better than having a toot in the toilet. 

Then we have the claim that it is the counter-cultural associations with cocaine that makes people ignore the ethical questions. My observations are that a lot of those people taking coke* aren't thinking about the ethical questions or the counter-cultural associations of the drug. Rather, they are thinking about getting loaded and having a good time. 

Then, finally, we have the idea that those buying coke commissioning heinous crimes. I'm pretty sure that those buying coke from dealers aren't throwing in an extra twenty in return for a bit of murder and civil war in another country. And whilst I understand that the purchase of coke has consequences on a global level, the argument that it is effectively the commissioning of torture and slavery is the sort of leap in logic that would have most sane people shaking their head and wondering what Monbiot is on. And whether they can have some of it as well.

No doubt Monbiot believes he is making a strong ethical case for people to stop using cocaine. Unfortunately, the likely result of his shrill tone and insane claims is that people will ignore him rather than coke. Something that will be compounded by his staggeringly stupid sign-off:

Until that happens, Costa's opinions on this issue are worth as much as mine or anyone else's: nothing at all.

Your opinion is worth nothing at all. You said it, George, not me...

*I don't use it myself. Can't stand the stuff. Makes me edgy and paranoid. And I'm already edgy and paranoid. I don't need to pay for white powder to help me with that. Besides, it tends to make people self-absorbed and arrogant. And people don't need too much help with that either...