What does it mean that it's 100% Americas plus South Africa? US exporting guns to adjacent countries explains some but what other factors?
Also they should totally change the spelling to Filadelfia.
Based on my memory of Guns, Germs, and Steel, it is because they are vertically oriented continents.
1. The US drug trade explains an awful lot of it, I think. A lot of the cities are along major drug distribution routes.
How does the US have such a uniquely bad illicit drug industry?
This is an appalling waste of human life. IMO US weapon exports more than drug imports are the international. Comparing undocumentable activity is a challenge, but I don't know about either uniquely US or uniquely bad.
European heroin comes mostly from Afghanistan. I think that South America supplies at least the middle east as well as the US.
inetrnational outlier in the second sentence there. In much of the rest of the world, I think that the drug trade is more tied up with political conflict rather than being controlled by criminals interested in just profit.
As for the listed murder rates, partof that list is administrative competence in South America. I truly wonder how safe say Tripoli or Asmara are; Gaza seems like a bad place to be also. I doubt the police there open a file every time there's a body discovered.
The other day, when I weirdly had a view of the island of Ireland from the island of Great Britain, it popped into my head "Poor Ireland, so far from God, so close to England." Which is of course, not the quote, the quote is Mexico and the US. But what I hadn't realized until I googled it is that it's a quote *from a Mexican* (a quasi-dictator from late 19th century).
4: I think the combo of the drug trade running one direction and the gun trade running back makes things even worse than either would alone. You already have the logistics set up for drugs and then you can basically just get huge amounts of dangerous guns almost for free because you're shipping along the route anyway.
I also wonder whether the US being much richer than Europe plays a role here in drug demand. Also Europe being much drunker.
I do wonder if possibly Mexico looks somewhat worse than it is because it's a middle-income, fairly developed country with good record keeping as well as a violence problem. I don't have a specific other candidate, but a poorer country might have a less thorough accounting of homicides.
10. I would argue age distribution most prominent, but who knows.
Out of curiosity, how many degrees of separation here for connections to addicts/overdoses in the US? I had two friends die as teenagers that way, any friend-of-friend connections to destroyed or ended lives are through basically childhood friends for me. For my U and post-University connections-- a friend's neighbor's nephew I think is closest, three degrees. Connection = someone with whom you'd say "let's have coffee" if you met unexpectedly and it would be a normal sentence.
For me, far enough that I don't know what my shortest route would be, but I don't have a big network.
A college classmate's older sibling (who had gone to the same school) OD'd while we were undergrads, in the mid-1990s. I feel odd including it because it seems like a pretty different situation than the contemporary opiate situation.
8 That's one of my favorite quotes about a country. That and "Brazil is the country of the future. And it always will be."
My intention in asking was to check whether my experience of serious drugs in the US in this century is typical here-- for me, something I basically read about rather than have indirect personal knowledge of. Also of course to balance thinking about numbers and broad social statements with at least acknowledgement of the real suffering they describe.
Barry, are you in DC soon? I think Cyrus is the other local who comments regularly, potchkeh as well. Upetgi, are you in Baltimore?
I'm coming down on June 22, should be there by 5 or 6 and leaving on the 28th
I suppose I request a meet up post soon
I'm in DC and flattered to be considered a regular commenter but not sure I could make it to a meetup June 22-28. Maybe the 27th, but that's a Monday. The mother-in-law is visiting and the kid is in kind of a limbo between school and summer plans then. Plan something without me and if I can make it, great.
17: No, though I did grow up near there.
I brought a kid to a meetup on two occasions. Only one was at a bar.
I can believe that AMLO's policies have been ineffective, but the way the linked text describes it comes off as super reactionary.
I'm looking forward to visiting Mexico City at some point as they've apparently been mounting a rapid transformation of the cityspace away from cars, like Paris has.
8: As you might guess, the quote is probably spuriously attributed to Diaz. Someone apparently tried to verify it and couldn't find it before 1940.
12.2 I read about it, no direct connection. I would have to broaden it out to include my niece, who got sucked out of her family and into drug stuff by a manipulative older boyfriend, but the lowest point was some jail time and an ankle bracelet so not the same thing. Happily, boyfriend finally ditched five years ago, clean and happy and productive now.
I don't know anyone, but it might be more common in younger crowds. Also, like LB, I have a small network.
I just had a college reunion and there's a book where you can write about your life. One of my classmates who I know casually wrote that he had lost a couple of extended family members to the opiate crisis.
22: I've brought the kid to meetups before too, and brought the mother-in-law to meet my friends at a bar for that matter, I'm just saying spending time with family is going to take precedence that week.
the way the linked text describes it comes off as super reactionary
Mexico certainly does have a violent crime problem, but going to that site's front page (NB: I know nothing at all about the group), that is their one and only issue, so I take it with the same caution I would a PETA report on animal conditions in laboratories. Not that they are necessarily wrong, but still an advocacy group advocating.
"Hugs" can replace "drugs," because they rhyme, but not bullets.
I'm not aware of any ODs in my direct network, but 2 fairly close ones through AB: the husband of one of her best friends while his kids (classmates of ours) were little, and a 1st cousin once removed who was closer than that sounds--she was a teen when he was a baby, saw him once a year or so his whole life.
I'm not sure either really fit into the Sackler or fentanyl stories of modern addiction/OD: they were both long-time addicts who couldn't stay clean and it eventually caught up with them. Possibly the husband was more of the modern story, I don't think I ever knew the exact details.
Oh jeez, what am I talking about: my oldest college friend has been on-again off-again addicted since she went to Denmark (?) on a junior year abroad thing. She was sporadically in touch (sometimes quite closely) for years and years, but she's gone out of sight for at least 5 years now, maybe more. Can't find an obit, though, so hopefully she's still kicking around.
I know lots of people who have died of alcohol (either alone or in combination with cars or guns), none of other drugs.
I had a cousin who died using inhalants but I don't know if he was also on anything else.
I'm sorry. That's rough. I had a colleague who had worked as a therapist in the past. He said he tried to get a kid to switch from inhalants to heroin or cocaine as a safety measure.
31: FWIW it does rhyme in Spanish and AMLO didn't invent it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrazos,_no_balazos . Not that I think much of him as a leader but it's machine translation that's making him sound like Barney the dinosaur.
"I love you, you love me. We're a narco family."
I also have far more friends & family who are in recovery from alcohol abuse rather than drugs. Thankfully, only two friends who have died from what was most likely drug abuse, and the friend I have who is still actively abusing drugs is a HS friend. My dad is a recovering alcoholic, though, and he has lost a large (but also unsurprising) number of support group friends to drug overdoses. One of my cousins used & sold drugs, but I think (hope!) he's gotten clean. Generally speaking, I don't feel particularly impacted by or close to the opioid epidemic.
33: I mean my Dad kind of did that, in an ultimate cause kind of way. His best friend from grade school with whom he first started drinking at age 12, clearly died of alcohol use. It was cirrhosis in his 40's. I remember going to visit his mother as a kid, his wife had died suddenly while visiting her family in Europe, and my Dad went with him to the funeral etc. maybe that's when the guy relapsed. Alcohol kills just as much; it's just a slower process.
33: Me too, and I have known many people with drug problems.
One guy from my high school killed a guy. He's in prison for other stuff, but did not get convicted for the murder. On topic because he moved to Arizona to do this.
He moved out of his parents' house right after high school and my mom gave him an old couch.
He admitted killing the guy, but said it was self-defense.
He went to jail for "gross abuse of a corpse". Which apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant at first but was because he hid the body. Nobody found it for a while.
I can certainly think of much grosser ways to abuse a corpse.
But can you think of a completely novel way to abuse a corpse?
The killed guy was like 500 pounds (and called "Tiny"), so you have some options. I can't find an article that sums it up, so here's the start of the story.
48 did he use a forklift to hide it?
I didn't find that in the news and I couldn't ask because when he was out of prison, I had to unfriend him on Facebook because he was really racist.
The statistics for Mexican cities are closer to the U.S. statistics than I had thought.
I knew quite a few people who died when I was a teenager, but it was a mixture of solvents and amphetamines (not necessarily at the same time). On year, there was multiple deaths in my year at school alone. My next door neighbour died, a good few people that I knew at high school died (although none were very close friends), and one friend that I'd known all through my childhood and teenage years died semi-accidentally the same way. He was depressed, but his closest friends don't think he intended to overdose.
I've known far fewer people with serious heroin or crack problems, although I did have a relative who was a serious heroin user at the peak of the Scottish heroin wave of the 80s and early 90s. Her life was extremely miserable for a time--prostitution, etc.--but she did get off drugs by moving to a different country. Sadly died from cancer a few years later, but heroin free. She was lucky, though. She had a network of friends and family who really cared about her. Her former employer went to huge lengths to keep her safe and well and he remained a close friend for years, long after they worked together.
I just don't move in those circles now, though. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people I know have drug problems, but they all have enough money and resources that it would be something they could hide or live with.
did he use a forklift to hide it?
I found a later article via a newspaper database. From the Arizona Daily Star, 2006 Oct 31:
Siettmann's body lay inside Steele's house for 12 hours before Siettmann's accomplice delivered a truck with a hoist. ... Although it was broad daylight and neighbors were out going about their business, Steele said, he used a pulley system to move Siettmann's body out of the house through his patio door and into the bed of a pickup truck.
The full story seems to be that two men showed up at the guy's house and the guy who ended up getting shot had a gun with him. The guy who shot him and hid the body managed to get a shotgun, shoot the man with the gun, and then get the second man to help hide the body. Supposedly, the hiding the body was out of fear of retaliation.
There are even more complications and details than that, involving other crimes, but I don't feel like re-writing the article. Just answering the question about the forklift.
Halloween in Tucson was always a weird day.
Our school was really good at preparing us for solving novel problems.
I searched for the first sentence of the quote in 53 and it brought me to a Fark page with a dead link to that article.
I can inform you that the wash where they dumped the guy is next to the landmark McDonald's dinosaur that got (trollingly?) protested by creationists. They must have thought the body would be less noticeable there.
I tried to find a free link but only got commercial news databases (one of which I can access through work).
12.last: I had a high school friend die of an overdose a couple of years ago (so decades after high school). We weren't especially close friends, but he had a drug problem back then that worsened every year. (His locker was next to mine senior year until he dropped out, then a couple years later was so messed up, he didn't recognize me.) I'd assumed he'd died years ago, honestly, until I got a friend request from him. It was pretty obvious he was still using and seems likely at least some of his family were casual users. He died of (AFAICT) a bad batch (fentanyl mix? rat poison?). The person who sold it to him was convicted recently.
In Mexico, someone shot and killed a spider monkey in a tactical vest, which hasn't happened even in Florida yet.