Smack baby, smack

If there's one thing that always impresses me, it oversized statements of power and might. I've recently being toying with the idea of buying a BMW 7 Series, the Bavarian luxury battleship with up to five litres of engine, leather seats and a boot the size of a small swimming pool. Thanks to monumental depreciation, such a machine is well within the grasp of mere mortals like myself. Do I need such a ridiculously massive vehicle when I'm making do nicely with it's 3 Series smaller cousin? Of course not. But I know I'd love the feeling of invincibility and the perception of respect from fellow road users. It's the same reason I feel awed when I visit the Trafford Centre, humbled when I listen to any of the songs on Oasis' Be Here Now album, transfixed when I watch Youtube videos of the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test, and feel in the presence of the domestic shopping god when I shop amongst the catherdral-like congregation at Tesco Extra.


Maybe my faith had been tested recently, or maybe I needed to stock up on jalapenos. Nevertheless, I found myself once again contemplating the my meagre existence in the grand scheme of the universe while navigating the isles looking for spicy mexican food this evening. It's hard to believe there can be so much choice in the world, but ultimately, Tesco's size is its undoing - for every choice you are offered, you actually have to make a decision, and after a while, survival instinct kicks in - I select the base items I need to get and make my way to the checkout, leaving the more regular shopping to the more regular sized local Morrissons.

Because of the heavily reinforced shopping steroetypes that seem to be perpetuated in British society, I always feel acutely aware that I am a single male 20-something when I start emptying my trolley onto the checkout conveyor, and tonight was no exception. Bless the late teen girl who efficiently scanned my £18 worth of sauces, pickles and naans through the till - although she failed to actually acknowledge my arrival or offer to pack my bags (a personal bete noir of mine - even though I always decline the offer, it's nice to be asked), she didn't cast the same disparaging look of half condescision, half pity that I've had in the past from her ilk. We nevertheless engaged in that unspoken battle of wills that is trying to fill the bags at an at least equal speed to the items coming through the scanner.

The demographic of this particular Tesco is somewhat different to the Morrissons I frequent, and it's inner city location gives me a glimpse into certain lives I wouldn't normally encounter. So it was this evening, a couple of checkouts up from me, a young man who I would estimate to be in the mid stages of heroin addiction was barking orders at the slightly older looking woman he was with (she looked similarly afflicted), and they were accompanied by a young girl who I would have guessed was maybe 15. For a moment I tried to imagine what the nightmare of their lives must be, no future, nothing to believe in or work for, just the misery of being slaves to the drug. I thought about the girl... was it too late for her to get out of that situation and make something of herself, or was she just resigned to heading down the same path in life.

I've never understood why people get into heroin. I've never done any drugs whatsoever and have no intention of doing so, but I understand from various people who have that most of them can be done - to a greater or lesser extent - on a recreational basis. Obviously you hear of marajuana casualties (every saturday on the centre pages of the Daily Mail), people who've got strung out on coke, and you only need to look at Brian Wilson or the late Syd Barret to see that LSD can seriously mess about the wrong kind of person.

But heroin - and the other real hard stuff like crack and meth-amphetamine are the one's that really seem to take over people's lives and send them to the worst depths and probably death. What puzzles me is that there are people who just don't seem to get this. I mean, has anyone ever heard of anyone saying "yeah, I did a bit of smack but i thought it was shit" or "I do heroin sometimes, but only when my dealer is out of poppers" (I'm sure there's all sorts of proper lingo for what I've just written, but you get the vibe). It's therefore very difficult for me to have any sympathy for people who get involved in it, just for the poor families who have to suffer as their love ones selfishly degenerate into drones with one single purpose in life.

Sometimes, I wonder how this stuff gets onto the streets in the first place, since apparently some massive proportion of crime is drug related. Alas, in this country at least, it seems that that only way a drug dealer will feel the force of the law is if he or she drives too fast through a speed camera. I'm sure we could stop it if we wanted to, if there was a sufficient will.

The headline on todays Independent got me thinking about all this in the first place, and my experience in Tesco made me think about it even more. Apparently something like 90% of Britain's heroin starts its life in a little Asian country called Afghanistan. Some of you might have heard of this country, its the one we hurriedly invaded after 9/11 and have subsequently occupied ever since. Despite our occupation, opium production is actually up, which will no doubt mean that there'll be more, cheaper heroin on the streets of Britain.

Now, if we can send our boys halfway around the world to bring democracy to this county and help the Afghanistanis become free, then how about, y'know, while we're there, sending some of the guys in with Black and Decker strimmers and cutting the damn things down? Supposedly the opium profits are going in the back pockets of the Taleban, so it's not like out government would have to pretend it was actually acting in the sole interests of the people, there's some element to which we'd actually be fighting the enemy, right? Perhaps we could employ the farmers to grow bio-fuel and pay them fairly for the crop, thereby going some way to building a legitimate economy? Hell if I was a soldier in Afghanistan, I'd damn make sure I discreetly carried a bottle of SBK Brushwood Killer and sprinkle it on the poppies while I was patrolling the plantations. If we can smuggle prisoners for torture around our domestic airports, surely it's not beyond the means of man to send small crop-dusting plane over one of these fields one cold night to kill some of it off?

Alas, I have only questions, and an anger that this is allowed to carry on while people back here are dying. They are the enemy, and it seems that their weapon is killing our own people. What kind of government lets that go unchallenged?