The Trumpmeister certainly seems obsessed by the idea of “The Wall”. But his imagination is, to say the least, a bit limited and so is the imagination of all the parasites who want to build it for him. In a recent competition, various companies were paid millions to come up with designs for “The Wall”, and predictably they were all variations on the “Barrier” theme. As if that concept has ever worked. But as noted – no imagination here, just dumb greed.
Minefield, Guard Tower, Electric Fence – Still Didn’t Stop People
The East Germans tried it. Hundreds of miles of electrified, barbed-wire fences with vast stretches of mined open ground on either side and guard towers manned 24/7 by killers with heavy weapons. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were blown up by the mines, shot dead by the guards, or torn apart by the dogs before they even got to the fence. Still, many made it across – to “Freedom” in the West. As a little boy I lived a few kilometers from that Wall, and sometimes in the night I would hear a “crump” in the distance, and I knew that someone trying to escape had just died stepping on a mine. But they kept coming, and over time things changed, and now the wall is gone.
French Engineering At Its Best
The French tried it. They built an impregnable “Maginot Line” of linked pillboxes, artillery, machine guns, minefields and searchlights to keep the Germans from invading. It stretched from the sea in the East to the impenetrable Ardennes Forest in the West. Mon Dieu! One foggy morning several Panzer divisions simply plowed through the “impenetrable forest”, flanked the Maginot Line, and rolled on into Paris. Vive la France!
That’ll Stop Those Mongol Hoards In Their Tracks!
The Chinese tried it. The “Great Wall of China was built all across their northern frontier to keep out the deadly Mongols, and it worked! No Mongol invasion. They were safe for centuries – but then along came the British in their warships. From the South. No Great Wall. No problem for the Brits. China fell, and the Brits used to go on holidays to see the wall and snicker.
So, the evidence says that barriers along borders don’t work. They will be defeated by those they are intended to keep out, or by others who turn out to be a greater danger than those the wall was built to defeat.
I do, however, have a suggestion for Trump and all the fools who think that a 2000 mile long wall will keep out Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Columbians and – oh yes – drug cartels and terrorists.
Some of the wall has already been built, so forget that part for the moment. Let’s look at the remaining 700 or so miles. The low-ball estimate for building those 700 miles is $16,000,000,000 ($16 Billion) and the realistic estimate is $32,000,000,000 ($32 Billion). At the top end that comes to $45,714,286 per mile and at the bottom end that comes to $22,857,143 per mile. So let’s say it would wind up costing somewhere in the middle – say, $25,000,000,000 ($25 Billion) for 700 miles, or @ $35 Million per mile.
1500 SF 3/2 modular for @$250,000 -can be helicoptered to site
Now imagine that you build 1 completely self-sufficient village every mile, with 50 houses in each village. Let’s figure $300,000 per house, or $15 Million per village. For that $300,000 you build a very nice modular house – not some foul FEMA trailer, but a genuinely nice house – that is self-sufficient in terms of solar electricity, water, communications, and plenty of amenities. The water might come from groundwater, or catchments, or even the Rio Grande depending on location. All power would be provided by solar. Communications would be through satellite with ground station backup where needed. My guess is that since 35,000 homes would be needed that at $300,000 per-home the amenities that the modular home providers could install would be pretty nice.
You could also install a nice high-tech food-producing facility in each village whether it was a hydroponic garden, greenhouses, conventional gardens, or whatever solution fits best in each location. These villages would all be extremely remote from the rest of the country, but not from each other – remember, they are only a mile apart. Still, they would have to be 100% self-sufficient, but since each village would have two other villages only a mile away, so in the end residents wouldn’t be all that isolated.
So with a budget of $35 Million per mile, and a cost of $15 million for the houses that are fully off-grid independent energy, water and communications, we have $20 Million per village left over. $1 Million per village would build and equip a pretty nice school with high-speed internet access through satellite links. That leaves $19 Million per village.
“Clinic-In-A-Can” 100% Solar
Then every 20 miles or so you could have a fully-equipped clinic with a med-evac helicopter permanently stationed there for emergencies, with each village in the 20 mile stretch contributing $1 Million of it’s remaining $ 19 million to build and maintain the clinic facility. That leaves each village $18 million. Let’s staff that clinic with doctors who volunteer to spend a year or so in each clinic after completing their residency, using the same model that brings fresh new doctors to remote Native American communities in return for scholarships while they are in medical school. And let’s set aside a couple of million per village to fund all the costs of running the clinic – 20 villages @ $2 million per village and you have an operating reserve of $40 Million per clinic, and a remaining reserve of $16 million per village.
Now, how about work? Easy. Every adult in the village would receive a stipend of $50,000 per year, just for living in the village. Let’s say 2 adults per household @ 50 households = $5 Million per year. That leaves a reserve of $11 Million per village. The primary mission of each village would be to patrol the ½ mile on either side of the village to make sure that bad guys like drug mules and human traffickers didn’t cross the line. With 50 families per village, putting together a force of deputized men and women to serve wouldn’t be a problem, especially if some of the $11 Million left over from the $35 Million per village budget went to the adults who served on patrol with an extra $50,000 per year. Let’s allocate $2 Million to that function. These deputized villagers could be backed up by a rapid-response force of professionals who could be there in minutes by fast helicopter if someone like the drug cartels tried to penetrate the border by armed force. Now the village has $9 Million in its reserve.
Electric ATV
Each village could also have a marketplace where people sell what they grow or make, just like every remote village in the world, but the difference would be that all the villages could be served with Drones by Amazon from a couple of Amazon warehouse locations along the 700 mile stretch. With an income of between $50,000 per adult per year just for living there, and an extra $50,000 per year if you were on patrol duty, and with zero living expenses, it isn’t hard to imagine that live would be pretty sweet, even if a bit remote. But don’t forget – two other villages with hundreds of people living there would always be within 15 minutes or so walking distance. And I imagine that some pretty nice all-electric ATV’s would show up in each village pretty quickly.
And let’s not forget – after all this has been accomplished, there is still a kitty of about $9 Million per village for things like maintenance.
Now the big question – who would volunteer to move to these villages? You are going to have 700 villages with 50 homes each, or 35,000 homes that will need families to live there at no cost, with all the amenities, and a household income of $50 – $100,000 per adult. And all they have to do besides enjoy life a long way from “civilization” is to monitor the surveillance technology and patrol a half-mile stretch of land on either side of their village. Ya think there would be 35,000 takers? I think the waiting list would run into millions of families.
Oh, and by the way, each village would have to be legally incorporated and have a village council whose statutory authority would include deciding on a case-by-case basis whether anyone intercepted crossing the border was to be turned over for arrest and deportation, simply turned back, or issued a special permit that allowed them to proceed into the US for re-settlement. The legalities would have to be worked out, but that should be do-able, right? Who knows, maybe some of the legitimate immigrants might want to build homes next to the village and become part of the community. The law could make that possible.
Well, I am sure I have missed some details here, but I am presenting this as a plan for a better, more humane and much more productive way of ensuring peace and stability along our border with Mexico than repeating the failed model of trying to build a barrier wall – without even any minefields or homicidal guards in towers.
I mean – is that what does our “Genius” president wants to buy? Really? A Barrier Wall? There has to be a better deal for the Great Deal-Maker to come up with. Let’s think about building a wall of humanity.
When most of us think of Peru and drugs we naturally think of Cocaine, and of course I hope that readers of this blog also think of Coca Leaf and say to themselves – “La Coca no es la Cocaine.” It’s probably a fair assumption that few people link Opium and Peru in the same thought, and of course there is not a lot of Poppy production in Peru – unlike Mexico, Cuba and a number of other Latin American countries.
However, as I have been researching the historical record for my book-in-progress “The Poppy Juice Papers” I am finding some fascinating Opium-Peru connections, with an interesting England-China-California-Peru axis.
To fully appreciate this connection we have to remember that the British in the 19th Century were the world’s greatest drug dealing empire, far eclipsing the dreaded “Cartels” of today in scope, wealth and power. Of course, just as it is highly unlikely that the American CIA, or at least some of the main people involved, got out of the heroin business just like that after the war in Vietnam ended, it is equally unlikely that the British ever actually left the lucrative worldwide Opium trade after the 20th Century saw the birth of the “War On Drugs”.
While the propaganda machine popularly called “the media” go on and on about the Latin American Drug Cartels, complete with photos galore of the tacky wedding cake mansions built by the “Drug Lords” and gruesome photos of their leaders lying full of holes and bleeding out in some filthy alley in a slum, one never hears a peep from the media about the network of American and European financial and business institutions that operate from well-groomed British estates and ultra-private American clubs with the Latino Drug Cartels as the front men. Does anyone really think that monsters like HSBC really arose from nowhere, or started life as legitimate banking institutions?
If one had the resources, and the careless disregard for personal safety, it would be a relatively simple matter to trace a great deal of the dark network behind today’s international drug trade straight back in an unbroken line to the British Empire. The goobers who control today’s worldwide drug trade are, in large part, blood and marriage descendants of the “legitimate businessmen” who ran the worldwide drug trade under the legal protection of the British Crown – which I am sure takes its share of the profits today just as it did hundreds of years ago.
In the following post you can clearly see how one small part of this global network began and flourished in the 1800’s. Again – does anyone think that such an immensely profitable enterprise simply went away at some point in time? After all, the drug trade isn’t like any other industry – it has continued in unbroken succession over many generations because its basic products have not changed and cannot be supplanted by technological advances. Of course the initial trade in Opium evolved into Morphine and then Heroin, but good old Opium is still King. And of course Cocaine evolved into mutations like Crack, but nothing yet has replaced Queen Cocaine. Even Cannabis, which in modern times has evolved from crumbled bags of mostly-leaf Mexican weed to today’s gourmet 10X-20X THC buds hasn’t really changed, and there are still huge amounts of money being made by growing it south of the US border and smuggling it in in spite of all the legal growing now going on in some of the more enlightened US states. Even alcohol hasn’t changed that much, even though we now have esoteric markets for hundreds of brands of micro-brew and boutique liquors like Blue Agave Tequilas to choose from, most of the world still gets drunk on plain old beer and cheap booze. Joe Six-Pack still rules.
So without further ranting (which I hope you find at least somewhat entertaining dear reader) here is some documentation and correspondence from an English gentleman in the mid-1800’s discussing how he found, and grew to love, the Opium trade – in Peru of all places.
113 London, 10th June, 1880.
My Lord, The undersigned British merchants haying establishments on the West Coast of South America, being deeply interested in the development of the agricultural resources of the Republic of Peru, desire to call your Lordship’s attention to a matter of the greatest moment in connection with this subject.
As your Lordship is doubtless aware, Peru has for some years past been making steady progress as an agricultural country, and more especially in the cultivation of sugar and cotton, the exportation of which articles to this country has rapidly increased in importance from year to year. A large amount of English capital has found remunerative employment in fostering this industry.
It is also no doubt within your Lordship’s knowledge that, owing to the peculiar conditions of the country, those concerned in the development of its agriculture have been mainly dependent upon Chinese labour for the cultivation of their estates. The chief reason for this is, that the lands best suited for the growth of the sugar cane and the cotton plant are situated on the coast, the inhabitants of which region are not sufficiently numerous to supply the necessary labour.
On the other hand, the inhabitants of the mountainous region of Peru, who would find abundance of occupation on the coast and are far more numerous, are nevertheless unable to withstand the effects of the climate of the coast.
Chinese immigrants have, on the contrary, been found to thrive on the Peruvian littoral, and many thousands are now settled in that region, where they readily find employment both in agricultural and in other pursuits. Large numbers of them have acquired competencies, and it may be said that none, except those suffering from bodily ailments and infirmities have become destitute, whilst comparatively few care to return to their own country, the larger proportion remaining as permanent settlers. The majority of these were brought to Peru from Macao under the old coolie system, which was abolished in 1874 through the intervention of Her Majesty’s Government with the Government of His Majesty the King of Portugal, as it was found that that system gave rise to many abuses.
The great demand which existed and still exists for Chinese free labour brought about an attempt which was made in 1877 to establish a regular line of steamers between the ports of Hong Kong and Callao, the latter being the chief port of Peru, and situate in the centre of the agricultural district of that country.
This attempt was unsuccessful through the failure of the firm owning the line of steamers. The scarcity of labour has in consequence greatly increased, and has reached such a point that the large sums invested in sugar and cotton plantations in Peru are jeopardised through this cause.
The principal cultivators, under the denomination of the “Agricultural Society of Peru,” have therefore commissioned a gentleman now in Europe to proceed to China with the object of contracting free labourers on their behalf, and providing them with the passage money and requisites for their journey to Peru, of which Her Majesty’s Minister Resident at Lima has been duly informed.
An ambassador from the Court of Peking is now on his way to Lima, and it is thought will establish Consulates in Peru, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Commerce already in existence between that country and China. We have thus briefly laid before your Lordship the principal features of this important subject, our object being to solicit the countenance and support of Her Majesty’s Government in facilitating the free emigration to Peru of labourers, both from the British colony of Hong Kong and from ports in the Chinese Empire.
We are Your Lordship’s obedient humble Servants, Graham, Rowe & Co. Duncan, Fox & Co. Antony Gibbs & Sons. Isaac & Samuel. Frederick Huth & Co. Bates, Stokes & Co. Haines, Batchelor & Co. Baring Bros. & Co. Henry Kendall & Sons, Bute, Taylor & Co. Matheson & Beausire. GRtoiNo & Co. To the Right Honourable Earl Granville, K.G., -Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whitehall.
Edinburgh, August 6th 1882.
H. H. SULTZBERGER, Esq.
Dear Sir, – I am obliged by yours of yesterday, and should be glad to hear at your entire convenience how you like my translation. My experience of the Chinese was acquired in Australia some twenty-five years ago. I was then conversant with prepared opium as an article of merchandize imported from China for the use of the Chinese.
It was a dark-coloured viscous fluid, somewhat resembling treacle, and was contained in small metal packages covered outside with paper wrappers, inscribed with Chinese characters. The contents might be about from four to five ounces, and the wholesale importer’s price, if I remember right, was about 30 – 32s. for that quantity. I have often sold it to the Chinese dealers, amongst whom there were many highly respectable and very intelligent men.
They assured me that the use of opium, except in excess, was not injurious, and although a considerable quantity was at that time imported and consumed among the Chinese population, I never heard of its doing any harm. If death had been in any case caused by it, the Coroner would have had something to say on the subject, and the public would have heard all about it.
Considering the low rate of wages current in China, it seems to me that opium must be unattainable by the bulk of the population on account of its costliness, and that this fact must be a powerful check on any tendency to excess. I think your Lima correspondent is right in saying that the use of opium by the Chinese is very analogous to that of tobacco amongst Europeans, neither better nor worse.
I remain, yours truly, R. WAUGH MACARTHUR.
The above referred- to Lima correspondence runs as follows:
Lima, June 24th, 1882.
Dear Sir, – Replying to your private letter I have to say that as far as my practical experience goes with our Celestial customers, I do not believe that they are the worse, either physically or mentally, for their habit of smoking opium, except in very rare cases where through excess the habit has developed into real vice.
I have on many occasions discussed this question with the leading Chinese merchants of Peru, and I have always been assured by them that the habit is not deleterious. Employers of Chinese labourers all along the Peruvian coast allow their men a moderate use of the drug, and facilitate even its sale to them, which they certainly would not do if it impaired their energies.
In my own opinion the use of opium by the Chinese labourers can be fairly compared with the use of tobacco by Europeans,
Yours faithfully, G. A. B. H. H. SULTZBERGER, Esq.
THE OPIUM TRADE WITH PERU
Under this heading I must give a short account of my own experience in the article, because I had the rare advantage of being the very first engaged in this particular trade with Peru. While a pupil in one of the numerous educational establishments in and near Geneva (Champel Venel) during the years 1849-50, an intimate friendship sprung up between one of the masters there and myself, in consequence of which I procured him the means of undertaking the journey to Peru, whence he was offered the post of private tutor in a family of position, residing in Lima, on condition of risking the journey at his own expense.
From mere family tutor my friend soon rose to the position of secretary to his wealthy master, and through taking also an active part in the business of the same, whenever not engaged in his educational duties, he was finally admitted a partner, and thus became a most enterprising merchant.
At first his principal’s chief business consisted in the importation into Peru of Chinese Coolies from Macao, which circumstance afforded my friend an early opportunity to acquaint himself with the Chinese habit of opium-smoking, and soon induced him to ask me for a trial shipment of one or two cases of that drug as a small venture on joint account, which turned out so exceptionally profitable that I repeated the operation at frequent intervals, and on an increased scale, when the matter attracted the attention of his principal, and the business, from a joint speculation between ourselves, changed into regular orders from the firm to be executed by me on the system of commission business pure and simple.
The importation of these Chinese Coolies having taken a rapid development, my orders too steadily increased, and soon attained such importance that without this intervention on the part of the firm, we never could have kept pace, between ourselves, with this ever increasing demand. While at first the article was admitted entirely free, it soon became subjected to a pretty heavy duty, when my packing instructions assumed such a peculiar character, as to leave me no doubt whatever respecting their real object, and years afterwards I learnt from my said friend, when on a visit to this country, that not one-fifth part of the opium consumed in Peru was properly declared at the Custom House there, but “was got through somehow or other”.
The effect of this systematic “evasion of the duty,” as my friend called it, probably because the word “smuggling” was not to his taste, was that the duty was lowered to one-half of its original rate, when the effect following this change took everybody completely by surprise. Lowered still further, and to such a point as to render smuggling no longer worth risking, the result was another considerable increase in the receipts of the Peruvian Exchequer. The business now had assumed an importance such as to attract the attention of several other firms, and owing to this competition it lost considerably of its former profitableness.
Some Chinese merchants, too, having settled in Lima, a good portion of the supplies of the drug was now imported by them from China, via San Francisco, which rendered it rather difficult to keep any longer a true record of the trade in this article with Peru.
However, by putting this down somewhere between 120 to 150,000 lb. per annum, previous to the breaking out of the war with Chili, I think I am not far from the mark.
During the worst period of this protracted and most ruinous struggle between the two sister Republics, the exports of opium from here to Peru, though at times entirely suspended for a month or two, yet never fell below the figure of 40,000 lbs per annum., from which undeniable fact I draw the conclusion that “coute que coute,” John Chinaman – in Peru at least – must have his pipe of opium.
Considering that before the war, with the exchange on London at 30d. per sol, or thereabouts, the selling price of opium averaged only from 7 soles to 9 soles per lb., it looks all the more surprising to see him pay gradually up to say 90 soles and even 100 soles per lb. for the article, after the rate of exchange had fallen, and if it be true, as I was assured by a presumably well-informed friend that, notwithstanding this unprecedented depreciation in the value of the paper currency of the, country, John Chinaman’s wages out there are now very much the same as before the war, the wonder really is that he should be able to manage at all to remain true to his pipe.
To my knowledge there never was any attempt made in Peru to “prohibit” the importation of the drug, which most likely may be accounted for by the entire absence out there of those well-meaning missionaries who think that John Chinaman cannot take care of himself, and who, with respect to this article, manage to see things which, to less fantastic observers, simply remain invisible.
On the other hand we see that those most directly interested in getting all the work they can out of John Chinaman, i.e., his employers, actually “facilitate” the sale of this so-called deadly poison to him. When we consider that a rapid rise in the cost of the drug, up to ten and even twelve times its former price, only partly affects the consumption of the same, it is obvious that no amount of “duty” is ever likely to do so; but, at the loss of the Custom House, is sure to benefit those who are spirited enough to run the risk of “quietly evading such duty.”
As I thought it useless even to try to obtain any information respecting the death rate amongst the Chinese in Peru, I will attempt to make a rough guess at it by way of comparison, and thus I would simply record the following three facts:
1st. That the wholesale importation of Chinese Coolies from Macao, as shown by the document reproduced at foot, has entirely ceased ever since 1874.
2nd. That the “free immigration” of Chinese from San Francisco, on account of the very costliness of this route, can hardly be worth while being taken into consideration.
And 3rd. That abstraction being made of the very worst period of the war, the consumption of the drug keeps on a wonderfully regular scale, from all of which it may be fairly concluded that this “death rate” cannot possibly be anything extraordinary.
Yours faithfully, G. A. B. H. H. SULTZBERGER, Esq.
Drug Cartels are fond of giving people who they want to cooperate with them a choice between “Plomo ó Plata” – Lead or Silver. Clearly most people facing a group of nasty psychos armed to their gold teeth with AK-47s will choose Plata – who wouldn’t? Well, evidently the Cartels themselves, for one. It is as if they are destined to choose Plomo, even though some of them do manage to run their hands through a little Plata before they wind up in a bloody heap at the bottom of some god-forsaken ditch in the middle of nowhere. And while it’s completely understandable that the violent, angry men who make up the troops of the Cartels get a thrill out of living and dying this way, it is truly amazing that the more mature people who actually run the cartels, and those who finance and control them from gated communities far away from the flying Plomo, don’t seem to understand what an incredible financial opportunity they are missing because of their obsession with smuggling a few tons of drugs here and there for what amounts to chump change.
It’s amazing that these guys, some of whom are very smart, don’t seem to realize that instead of spending their short, dangerous lives chasing small change in the form of drugs they smuggle into the US and Europe they could instead relax, get rid of all the heavily-armed military and police bozos who love chasing them down and killing them at every opportunity, and instead live lives of real wealth, perfect relaxation and great respect. While estimates vary widely, a very liberal estimate of the amount that Americans spend on Cocaine alone is approximately $50 Billion a year. Marijuana, Heroin, and Meth add roughly another $50 Billion, so the total is somewhere around $100 Billion a year. And that, my friends, is chump change compared to what the Cartels could be making – if they were smart.
Here’s why. In researching my new book “The Coca Leaf Papers” I read practically everything that was ever written in the 18th-19th centuries on the medical uses of Coca Leaf in preventing, treating, and curing disease. The list below reveals the major diseases and conditions that were known to be curable or successfully treatable by simple Coca Leaf tea and extracts – not by Cocaine, but by Coca Leaf tea – along with some of the diseases and conditions not well-known in the 1700s-1800s that are at epidemic levels today and that might be treatable/curable with Coca Leaf Tea.
So it should be clear that there is plenty of empirical evidence that Coca Leaf tea and tonics can effectively treat a wide range of diseases and conditions that either Pig Pharma can’t touch, or that Pig Pharma charges a fortune to “treat”. And that, of course, is leaving aside the fact that Coca Leaf tea is harmless, non-addictive, and 100% natural while Pig Pharma’s “treatments” all too often fall under the category of that sick old joke – “The treatment was a success but the patient died”. So now let’s take a look at how much Americans – just Americans – spend on Pig Pharma’s ‘medicines’ every year for treating just a few of these terrible maladies, and then we’ll lay out why we think the Latin American Cartels are blowing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Approximate Annual US Spending On Selected Diseases/Conditions Asthma $18 Billion Obesity/Overweight $270 Billion ADHD $35-40 Billion Depression $77 Billion Rheumatism $19 Billion Diabetes $245 Billion Congestive Heart Failure $35 Billion Ischemic Heart Disease $110 Billion Gut Diseases $65 Billion Alzheimers/Dementia $203 Billion Pain $560 Billion Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease $45 Billion Pneumonia/Lower Respiratory Disease $10-$15 Billion Stroke $53 Billion Hypertension $95 Billion I’ll save you the trouble of adding it all up – the total comes to $1,832,000,000.
That’s almost $2 Trillion a year, compared with the $100 Billion or so the Cartels earn from ALL the Coke, Marijuana, Meth, Heroin and other shit they smuggle into the US. Can you see why I say that the Cartels are working for chump change? So, one might reasonably ask, what’s the plan? Well, the entire plan can be summarized in three words. Coca Leaf Spas. Look, the Cartels control huge territories in the Coca growing regions of the Andes in South America, right? And they also control, one way or another, most of the governments of the region, as well as much of the other essential infrastructure. And of course, they control Coca plant production, and they have plenty of capital that they need to invest and are having an increasingly difficult time handling and keeping safe.
One of the wonderful things about the Andes mountain range is that it is home to thousands of the world most wonderful mineral hot springs and other spa-like spots. There are already hundreds of world-class Spas in the Andes, and many thousands of locations that are little more than pools of hot water surrounded by some of the most breath-taking beauty on earth. So let’s say that one or two of the smarter Cartel leaders decided to get out of the drug smuggling business altogether and instead to go into the Spa business, and to concentrate just on weight loss for people who are medically endangered because of their weight issues. Americans alone (let’s not even mention the rest of the overweight world at this point) spend $270 Billion a year on obesity “treatments”.
Now of course not everyone who is obese or severely overweight could afford a month in a Coca Leaf Spa in the Andes, but what do you want to bet that the moment that a Coca Leaf Spa opened in some beautiful location in Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, or Colombia that it would be booked solid? How about a hundred Coca leaf Spas? My guess is that the Cartels couldn’t build those things fast enough to accommodate all the people ready to fly to South America for a month or two of treatment, plus of course an annual follow-up.
And that’s just for medically dangerous weight treatment. How about people with more money than anyone deserves to have who just want to keep that girlish/boyish figure? You know, movie stars and models and trophy wives. The revenues that would flow from just weight-loss Coca leaf Spas would make that $100 Billion in drug smuggling look like pretty small change.
Now, what if those same Coca Leaf Spas could also help people get on top of their Diabetes, their Depression, their Heart and Gut diseases? And what if you could take Mom or Dad, who have Alzheimers and whose only prospect in life is a slow, drooling, diapered decline into nothingness, and go with them to a Coca Leaf Spa high in the Andes where they could gradually make a complete or even a partial recovery? And where you, by the way, could lose a few excess pounds and get that funny little tic in your heart to go away. Of course, we don’t really KNOW for a fact that Coca leaf treatment can slow, reverse or cure Alzheimers (because we can’t run medical/scientific studies with Coca Leaf), but when you read the medical and scientific evidence about Coca Leaf’s effects on brain issues from the centuries before anti-drug hysteria swept Coca Leaf out of existence as a legitimate medicine you’ll probably agree with me that it may be worth a try and almost certainly can’t hurt.
It would certainly be interesting to watch DEA/US Government thugs try to stop thousands of families with loved ones in wheelchairs or hobbling on canes or walkers heading for South American Coca Leaf Spas, and it would be even more interesting and uplifting to see those same families returning to the US a month or so later minus the wheelchairs, canes, and walkers. Just imagine for a moment what it would mean to millions of families if they could bring their parents back from the dark hole of Alzheimers/Dementia. And even if it turned out that Coca leaf tea isn’t a successful treatment for Alzheimers/Dementia, think of the impact on families if they could get control of even a few of the diseases listed above, which we know for a fact could be effectively treated and even cured by a month or so at a Coca Leaf Spa in the Andes. And of course there probably isn’t a single DEA thug (or NSA/CIA spook, or corrupt politician, or moralistic Bible-thumper) who doesn’t have someone who they love in their family who is suffering from one or more of these eminently curable diseases – so you have to ask yourself how much resistance would there actually be to an initiative that holds out the promise of a cheap, pleasant, and safe cure?
What would it take for this vision to become reality? Actually it would take just one person – the right person – in a position of power within a single Cartel to take a serious look at the possibilities, to order his bankers and accountants and lawyers to create a workable scenario for implementing an initial small string of Coca Leaf Spas, and to ensure that there would be no in-country hassling of Spa visitors from police or politicians. Then it would be a matter of appropriate staffing, ensuring that there was first-class medical support on-site, and then stepping back out of the way of the flood of people seeking the kind of relief and healing that only the leaf of the “Divine Plant” can offer. So I have to ask the Drug Cartel leadership – Plomo ó Plata señores?
