Just finished a lousy 5K--but although my time is still poor, I had a good chuckle while passing a news broadcast.
Colombia may be known as a land of drugs, but fentanyl only showed up last year, & I've done a lot of PSA'ing with street folk about its dangers & how N Am'ns have built a culture around naloxone readiness.
The chuckle: Authorities just took down some fentanyl smugglers, but are still warning Colombians about the scary drug from beyond. Every culture has its outside menaces eh? 🙃
@MLClark What drugs do the Colombian cartels typically traffic? Fentanyl is an import, so curious what they export.
Cocaine is still the big trade! Followed by weed. I see heroine, morphine, and meth among street users, but fentanyl arrived with a bang last year in my city / region, and tons of news broadcasts and articles needed to explain it to locals.
Funny/sad aside, though: Many classic narcotraffickers have moved to gold and other mining because profits are better. Clan del Golfo claims that the drug trade is so bad that it needs to exploit migrants at the Darien Gap to make ends meet. 🎻
@MLClark Thank you. One has to wonder if the traffickers reach the age where they decide it's not worth the headache any more and decide to go legit, e.g. gold.
Hey, traffickers, one word -- crypto! 🤣
Sadly, the illegal mining trade is quite brutal too. Clan del Golfo staged what it called a "strike" a year back, taking some mining towns hostage for a few weeks when legal miners were advocating for safer working conditions and more state protection.
In the blended jungles of Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, some groups also poison the waterways with runoff from their operations, and brutally enslave the local Indigenous. Suffice it to say... crypto would 100% be a step up!