
Blow up: how half a tonne of cocaine transformed the life of an island - CDSlice
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-half-a-tonne-of-cocaine-transformed-the-life-of-an-island
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GreeniFi
I sometimes wonder about the psychology of people who try this sort of money-
making venture, ie smuggling vast quantities of illegal drugs across the
ocean.

Do these “entrepreneurs” understand the risk they take, or do they pretend to
themselves that there is no risk? Excepting where there is coercion, is it big
balls or small brains?

I’d love to hear from a smuggler to hear how they manage psychologically the
huge downside risk of being caught. Do you have to be a neurological outlier
to undertake this sort of project?

~~~
jacquesm
I'm not a smuggler, but I know one. Let's call him George. He's not currently
available to tell his story so let me give you the abridged version.

George ran a (very) successful business here in NL and in Belgium, made a lot
of money and was doing just fine. Then in a short period of time his wife died
and his business took a hit both from competition, regulation and because he
wasn't paying as much attention to it as he did in the past.

One thing leading to another the business failed. George panicked a bit being
left behind with a child to take care of and a huge drop in income so he
figured what's the harm in taking a boat filled with pills into Australia.
That didn't work out too well and George is now on an extended visit to
Australia, I don't think we'll meet again in this lifetime, that's how long
his sentence was.

Now, before you judge: George was in every sense of the word a start-up type,
serial entrepreneur with a lot of hustle and in general doing just fine. All
it took was a couple of cards dealt from the bottom of the pack to turn him
into a criminal.

So no big balls, no small brains, just plain old desperation and momentary
lapse of judgement. If not for that you'd all be proud to swap places with
him. The really sad person in that story is the kid, first to lose mom and
then dad effectively too.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
But you could just suck it up, get a regular job and do 9 to 5 5 days a week.
If you lived in those countries, they have a great social network. It's not
like he was living in Somalia and this was his only way out.

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bartimus
Nice article. But the title is a bit misleading since it's hardly mentioned
how life in the island got transformed.

~~~
yowlingcat
That's fair. It's unfortunate that The Guardian's editorial has been slipping.
The TLDR is that half a ton of cocaine is 453 kilos, which at a conservative
estimate of 20k/kilo is (according to Quora wholesale values so take w a grain
of salt) $11M street value of product if not more. So you take that and put it
side by side by the economic day to day flow of the Azores. What do you get?
For a 20k gdp/capita across a 250k population well...it's a lot. I dunno if it
would result in narcocapital, and i dunno enough to comment but that's a
gigantic shipment with an equally gigantic potential outcome.

~~~
canuckintime
but the effect wasn't primarily economical! After reading the headline I also
assumed that the story would be about the economic changes resulting from the
infusion of such a 'valuable' resource i.e. I assumed the islanders would
become smugglers/distributors themselves with the accompanying violence and
risk such an occupation usually carries. The police quickly found and isolated
the gang that lost the cocaine so there wasn't the usual violence from the
owners coming to reclaim their product. Also the article says the islanders
sold the found cocaine locally AND the street value plummeted:

> Before Quinci’s cocaine had washed up on shore... the flow of drugs was
> usually small and predictable. Often when the police made a seizure, they
> would make such a dent in the drug supply that local prices would skyrocket.
> But now police faced an unprecedented situation. As well as the 500kg of
> cocaine they had seized in the previous two weeks, Lopes thought that at
> least another 200kg were still unaccounted for... that summer, [the village]
> became a hub for the sale of the missing cocaine. “People from all over the
> island came here to buy drugs,”... A product so valuable in the rest of the
> world was rendered almost worthless through abundance. “They had gold, but
> they didn’t know how to work with it,”... Other Azoreans “were selling beer
> glasses full of pure cocaine”... Each one of these “copos”, which were about
> a third of a pint, contained about 150g and cost €20 (£17) – many hundreds
> of times cheaper than what it would cost in London today... [a] man had
> apparently paid a friend 300g of cocaine just to charge his phone...

The effects were mostly cultural and affected mostly public health. There were
some economic capital accumulated (used to "build coffee shops") but I thought
the article did a good job with the subverted expectations and providing an
overview of some long term effects

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daodedickinson
"The stories they told of how the drugs changed the island were by turns
bizarre, thrilling and tragic. No one expected in early June 2001 that they
would still be talking about the effects of the cocaine nearly two decades
later."

Reminds me of when a copy of the New Testament reached the Inuits on Belcher
Island...

"The hunting was poor in Canada's Belcher Islands in the winter of 1941, and a
meteor shower led some Inuits to suspect the world was coming to an end. It
was around this time that a 27-year-old tribal shaman named Charlie Ouyerack
proclaimed himself Jesus Christ, and anointed his pal Peter Sala—the tallest
man on the island who also happened to be the best hunter and ice navigator—as
God..."

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vvvm44/how-two-men-
used-t...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vvvm44/how-two-men-used-the-
bible-to-unleash-mass-murder-in-the-arctic)

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atomical
> “The paradox of the Azores is that you are always wanting to leave when
> you’re here, and always wanting return when you’re not,” Tiago Melo Bento, a
> local film-maker, told me.

I felt that while spending time in the Azores but I can feel it anywhere. Now
I think it's quite lucky if a person never wants to leave and feels content.

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galaxyLogic
[https://www.litcharts.com/lit/freakonomics/chapter-3-why-
do-...](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/freakonomics/chapter-3-why-do-drug-
dealers-still-live-with-their-moms)

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devteambravo
Wu-tang forever? Sometime I wonder about the full extent of privilege.

