American drug abuse affects my homeland
Carlos Restrepo
– Editor-in-Chief –
Luzeida Sanchez, a housewife and mother of three, did not get the news that in 2008 the United States had the highest level of illegal drug use in the world, according to a CBS article of the same year.
She doesn’t have a TV, or a radio, or internet, but that’s not the reason why she could not receive the update on America´s addiction. Sanchez lives underneath a bridge in Medellin, Colombia.
She does not know much about the export of drugs from Colombia to America, nor does she care much about what people in the United States do.
However, every time someone lights up a joint, people like her and her family are paying the high price. They are paying for America’s blind drug addiction.
In my most recent trip to my home country, I had the pleasure to meet the Gomez family.
Sanchez and her husband, Hilario Gomez, have three kids: Jorge, 18, Juliet, 14, and Damian, 9. They are all going to school in spite of poverty.
“Drugs affect us in so many ways, especially with our children,” Sanchez said. “That is why I pray a lot that my kids never get involved with that stuff and continue in school.”
The Gomez family used to live in a town near Barranquilla, a city in the north coast of Colombia. They had a recycling business through which they earned enough money to have a house and a decent life, until the drug dealers came banging on their doors.
These dealers were paramilitaries, part of an illegal, right-winged army heavily funded through kidnapping and the sales of cocaine, marijuana, and opium, mainly to Europe and the United States. There are twoother major illegal armies funded similarly.
The paramilitaries asked the Gomez family to leave because they were about to take over that town to make it a cocaine lab. They had three choices:
They could pay about $50 a week to stay, double of what they made in a week. Of course, it was impossible for them to pay that high price.
They could stay and not pay the money, which they did for a while, until they were threatened with their house being blown up, or their oldest son kidnapped.
Or they could leave all they had and become desplazados, or displaced ones. All together, in Colombia, there are an estimated 3 million people forced to leave their homes by illegal, drug-backed groups.
These facts, however, seem to be shadowed by a hip and cool slant that society has on drugs nowadays. Drugs are illegal in the U.S., but people have a certain fascination, appreciation and even support for these substances. Drugs not only harm them but can destroy entire nations.
It’s funny to see people doing drugs at rallies or concerts and calling for peace when it is those same people who fund the massacre, displacement and poverty of millions of people.
Sanchez, and her family, won’t give you ten reasons why smoking marijuana is not harmful, but they can give you a thousand reasons why it is harmful for them and a whole nation.
Sanchez asked if people the U.S. were going to read this article.
“Because I can’t get involved in anyone’s life. Everyone takes its own decisions and I respect that,” Sanchez said. “But I just hope people look into their hearts and learn about our situation here. There are people in a much worse situation than me. Much worse.”
