Camsterdam?

It’s too bad Cambodia has been caught up in conservative, mostly US-fueled, drug-war fervor since it’s easily the most tolerant, laid back society in Asia. It was only 20 years ago, before UNTAC came in to conduct Cambodia’s first post-KR elections and coincidentally tell the country it had to crack down on drugs, that you could buy a shopping bag of ganja at Russian Market in Phnom Penh for about a dollar. In talking to locals about cannabis who remember the times before prohibition, I’ve heard comments like, We used to smoke it when we couldn’t afford tobacco, or We used it to flavor our soup.

Back then I was able to toke up in almost all the bars I frequented in the capital. The police hardly ever came out at night and nobody ever seemed to care, though some people were definitely turned off by the sweet smell of pot smoke. That all changed a few years back when the police paid a visit to all the bars and told them that the evil weed would no longer be tolerated. Still, though you can get busted today for pot possession, though probably not for small amounts, it’s somehow okay to spike your pizzas with the stuff. We’ve even got our first happy pizza restaurant in Kampot - Happy Dreamily Pizza.

Use of recreational drugs is best left to individual choice. Everybody has a right, or should have the right, to choose their own poison. There’s no way to stop people from doing what they want in a free country, even just a nominally free place like Cambodia. Moreover, education works as well or better than prohibition in curtailing drug use. In a class I taught in a local university some nine years ago I led a discussion of drugs. The general attitude of the students was that drug dealers should be executed. They didn’t need threats of prosecution to keep them from using drugs, they were already fanatically against them, their education and upbringing was enough.

The only thing you accomplish by prohibition is to raise prices to very high levels and thus draw in criminal involvement and the violence that often goes with any trade in contraband.

In Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam drug dealers are killed. One of Taksin Shinawatra’s claims to fame when he first took office was his ordering Thai police to summarily execute lots of drug dealers and 2500 people were offed in short order. I had a conversation at that time with a Thai based expat visiting Cambodia. He was all in favor of that murderous rampage, talking about how bad yaba was, until I pointed out that without giving people the opportunity to defend themselves it was likely that at least 5% to 10% of that 2500 were guilty of only minor crimes or were innocent but had gotten their names on the hit list because someone in the police department didn’t like them.

In Singapore possession of as little as 15 grams of heroin or 200 grams of ganja is a mandatory death sentence. Not long ago a Singaporean couple returning from a trip to Australia were drug tested and wound up spending two years in the brink for smoking pot on their vacation; who knows, it could’ve been only a puff or two. Ganja, being oil based stays in your system for about 30 days. The hard drugs, on the other hand, are all water based so shoot up heroin, cocaine or meth on Friday night and you’re clean Monday morning when you get to work. Today every corporate job in America requires drug testing and the vast majority of positives are from pot.

The fundamental problem with state murder of people for small amounts of drugs is that drug laws are based on cultural bias and change with the times. It wasn’t that long ago  historically speaking - 1920 till 1933 - that marijuana was legal in America while alcohol was prohibited. There’d never be a disagreement on the legality of murder, robbery, extortion and such, but it takes a staggering amount of arrogance and hubris for Singapore and many other countries to kill someone over marijuana when it’s easily available and practically legal in other places in the world.

If you want to drink yourself to death in Singapore, or merely imbibe till it destroys your family life, you’re perfectly welcome to it, though it’ll cost a bit since taxes there are really high. When backers of drug prohibition are asked why alcohol is legal and ganja is not, though by any scientific, existential, non-emotional standard alcohol is much worse, they often respond by saying, We already have one bad drug, we don’t need another. They should be honest and finish their statement by saying; besides I like a cold beer on a hot afternoon, I like a glass of wine after dinner, I like a shot of brandy before hitting the sack. If I like it, it’s okay, if I don’t, you go to jail or get offed.

Now that squeaky-clean Singapore is promoting casino gambling (Have you noticed they don’t call it gambling anymore, it’s now gaming. You know, it’s just a game, just for fun.) you can blow your life savings and your family’s future, but that’s okay because it brings tourism and makes lots of money for the state.

If you want to stuff your face to the point where you can barely walk and your life has been shortened by decades, all assisted by constant TV advertising encouraging you to do just that, then no problem, knock yourself out, it’s your life, after all. But if you take one puff of the evil weed, you’re a scourge to society and must pay dearly for your dastardly, miscreant behavior.

The other point prohibitionists like to make, which is not born out by the statistics is that a lot more people will do drugs if they are legal or more easily obtainable. Holland provides the best example. Fewer young people smoke pot there where it’s virtually legal, than in America where nearly a million people are languishing in prison over non-violent marijuana related offenses.

Portugal also provides a good example since in 2001 all drugs, not just cannabis, were decriminalized. Portugal now has some of the lowest percentages of drug use in Europe, when for instance it once had the highest percentage of heroin users. Today, a smaller percentage of people in the country have an experience with ganja than those who’ve used cocaine in America. Ten percent have tried cannabis there compared to nearly 40% in America.

Around 40 years ago Tricky Dick Nixon was shown a government report that suggested ganja should be decriminalized since its effects were essentially benign. Instead he did the opposite and began America’s War on Drugs. He could clearly see that the majority of people opposed to the Vietnam war were tokers so he rightly figured he could use drug laws to suppress the anti-war movement.

His ‘War’ has done nothing to suppress drug use, but has served to disrupt and/or destroy millions of people’s lives and helped to create a massive industrial prison system. Now that many of America’s prisons are corporate owned, there’s profit to be made from incarcerating lots of non conformists as well as common criminals.

Changes, though are afoot. Bolivians have elected a former coca farmer as president, and Latin American countries as a whole are rethinking the ‘Drug War’ military response to what is essentially a public health problem. They suffer far more from drug war mania than the US, the world’s biggest user country. The drug cartels have millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal to bribe and/or threaten police and public officials. It is an especially difficult situation for smaller countries but even Mexico, a large middle income country has seen 50,000 drug war related deaths since the current president started his ‘crackdown’ on the drug trade six years ago. The cartels have a gruesome cant; in the latest example nearly fifty headless, handless, footless bodies - hard to identify that way - were dumped in a prominent urban place. As a result the Latin’s feel they have to find a different path.

Changes are also afoot in the US. Polls in some states are showing majorities in favor of legalizing and regulating cannabis. When you subtract the cost of apprehending, adjudicating and incarcerating large numbers of pot users from public budgets and then add the tax take from legalizing it, it should be a no brainer; still, regressive, narrow-minded, idiocy dies hard. The movement to decriminalize pot began in 1973 in Oregon, when possession of less than an ounce - 28 grams - was turned into a violation similar to a traffic ticket with a $50 fine. About 16 states have since followed suit.

About the same number now permit medical marijuana. In Oregon, one of the first states to allow it, the change was propelled by the experience of a conservative constituent of a conservative Republican rural state legislator. This woman had suffered for a long time from glaucoma. She was scheduled for an operation on a Monday, but having heard of pot’s healing qualities thought it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. She started smoking on Friday evening, kept it up all weekend and went into the hospital for a pre-op checkup on Monday. The doctor looked at her eyes and proclaimed that they were fine and she needed no operation. After she related her experience to her state legislator, he became an advocate and the die was cast. It isn’t a miracle cure for all types of glaucoma, but a couple of joints in place of an eye operation… also a no brainer.

Just recently - mid-May 2012 - a New York judge wrote an op-ed in the New York Times urging the state legislature to legalize medical marijuana. He’d been undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and try as he might to find a legal drug to combat the nausea and lack of appetite that goes with chemo treatment, nothing but smoking pot worked. He broke the law in order to receive proper treatment, this doubtless after putting lots of people away for marijuana related offenses. Meanwhile the federal government has classified pot as a class A drug with no medical uses and Obama’s justice department has been going after medical marijuana dispensaries, which are legal under state law, with a vengeance. This from a president who admitted smoking, and inhaling, as a youth… effing hypocrite.

The one good aspect of prohibiting pot is the healthy distrust of government it engenders. With all the dire warnings you’ve been taught about the descent into perdition that comes with the first puff, you’re expecting far more impact than pot delivers. Even if you don’t like the feeling and have no intention of smoking again, the one thing you come away from the experience with it is that it’s essentially harmless and all that you’ve been told about it by the establishment is bullshit and hype.

A major lie foisted on the public by the anti-drug establishment is that smoking pot is dangerous to your health, equal to tobacco. While smoking anything can cause irritation, coughing and other respiratory problems, there’s nothing in ganja smoke that can develop into cancer or other diseases. Back in the 80’s I knew a guy who was doing marijuana research. They had gathered together a group of guys, gave them as much pot as they wanted and told them to smoke themselves out. After a couple of months they became afraid and called off the study because the subjects’ respiratory systems were becoming congested with cannabis tars. Two months later they were completely clean with no permanent damage. That’s in contrast to tobacco which permanently scars the small passages, the cilia, in the lungs.

Also, it’s not possible to OD on pot. According to America’s Drug Enforcement Administration you would have to smoke about 700 kilos in 15 minutes to OD… even my son who’s a legendary wake and baker can’t do that.

What about the hard drugs: heroin, cocaine, meth? For sure you can OD on them, but that’s partly a result of prohibition, since you never know the potency of what you’re getting on the street. All three will make you look wrinkled, washed out and old before your time if you let them control your life. At the same time you could use all three and continue to carry on a reasonably normal life if prohibition didn’t make them so expensive you were required you to steal and rob to get your fix. If you have a life, feel good about yourself, you can experiment without ever becoming addicted.

A relative who’s never been part of the hip scene asked me why people do heroin. The answer is simple: No matter how stressed, depressed, unhappy or sick you are in mind and/or body; no matter that you consider yourself a worthless turd and have no hope for a better future, when you shoot up you’re on top of the world. Nothing can hurt you or phase you. Morphine which has one tenth the potency of heroin, is one of the best medicinal painkillers because no matter how banged up or diseased you are, with sufficient morphine in your system you can handle any contingency.

A guy I met traveling related an experience he’d had with opium, which is one tenth the potency of morphine. Before he and a friend settled in to smoke in comfortable chairs he’d put an Eagles tape on his cassette player. Unfortunately, it was on continuous loop so they wound up having to listen to the whole album 7 or 8 times before either one could bring himself to rise up and change the tape. The Eagles!! You just feel sooo mellow and relaxed, nothing can bother you. With all the crazy shit happening in the world and the grave hardship so many people face in their daily lives, why not let them enjoy a little escape sometimes? Could it be worse than alcohol? At least guys wouldn’t be beating their wives around when on opium.

Cocaine, meth, whatever, nothing works better or causes less harm to society than education about drugs and dealing with each of them truthfully and intelligently. Cambodia, however, pushed by the international community is going at the problem in a harsh and unforgiving manner. Recently three teenage girls caught with 6 yaba pills between them were each given two years behind bars. Is that fair, does it make sense?

Cambodia is a relaxed and easygoing place, that’s one of the things we expats like most about the place. Entertainment is one of the country’s best bets for economic growth. Why not take a ‘happy-pizza’ attitude towards life and let people be themselves, make their own decisions and choose their own poison. It’s the adult way to do things.

I’m 70 years old. Is somebody going to tell me what’s good for me and what’s bad for me, what I’m supposed to like and what I’m not supposed to like?

Stan Kahn

Raise Your Kids in Cambodia Versus America?

I was hanging out having drinks with friends a while back. It was sort of a gathering to welcome back for a visit a guy who’d lived in Cambodia a long time but had migrated to the States several months earlier. He remarked that he hadn’t had a chance to get together like that for quite a while. Why is that, I asked. Well, there aren’t many bars around - he’s out in the far burbs of Chicago - and besides the people he might meet in them were all conservative crap-heads. His co-workers were at the same dismal level of consciousness, nobody he’d want to hang out with.

He had two primary reasons for going back. One was a good job opportunity, the other was to better the lives of his children; worthy causes for sure. As to the former most of us, based on necessity, have at times lived in places which we disliked or even desperately wanted to leave, but couldn’t because we were trapped; maybe from the need to stay with a good job; possibly family commitments or limited resources kept us tied down. Many of us also have done jobs we’ve hated or been bored silly by because it was our fate. In my case for most of my early life I had to take the first job offered or else be on the street and hungry a few weeks later. At least he’ll be accumulating a stash in furtherance of long term goals and he’ll have the wherewithal to change his life when he wants to.

Still it seems a bit of a sacrifice to be in a place where you feel isolated, where you have no friends to hang out with… but, who am I to judge. Cambodia has its good points, but would certainly never win a prize in the ‘normal’ department, so maybe he needed a change of pace and even likes the burbs and doesn’t care all that much about hanging out with friends over a few beers .

 As for improving his children’s opportunities in life, if the parents are regressive, narrow-minded crap, then so, most likely, will their children be and if he can’t stand the parents why would he want to subject his children to spending their school time, which is a large part of a kid’s life, with their politically retarded offspring? By the way, a recent study confirmed what many of us have known all along; that conservatives are dumber than average, most likely because that ties in with being selfish, intolerant bigots who lack sympathy or empathy for others.

On the other hand, there’s no question it’s easier to get your kids a basic education in America, especially in a better class suburb. Opportunities for learning are far better in the West. In Cambodia anything but the most expensive international school will be weak or inadequate in teaching the ABC’s and 3 R’s. However, education is a lot more than that rote learning. Personally, while not discounting the value of basic knowledge, I feel that learning from life is more important and, tied in with that, the fundamental part of education can be gained through personal initiative and inspiration from parents.

Another friend has a kid nearing school age. He’s intent on moving back to the states because he finds Cambodian culture lacking and believes his kid will suffer intellectually if left in the hands of her grandmother and other Khmer relatives for much of the time. He’d be moving to a hip part of  Los Angeles so at least she’d be growing up in a more open minded, culturally advanced society compared to the suburban Midwest.

But it’s also a place where the air is unfit to breathe from 50 to 90 days a year. It’s an endless city where you can literally drive for two hours at speed - on 10 to 14 lane freeways with everybody driving at 60 or 70 miles an hour less than a car length apart - and always be in view of a suburban wasteland.

On the other hand, LA does have a lot going for it besides being the home of frou-frou Hollywood. It’s probably the most multi-cultural, multi-racial city in America, if not the world. It’s highly entrepreneurial with every type of industry and commerce represented. It’s got a climate that’s very mild and pleasant almost all year and, if you can get past the traffic, it’s got ocean, mountains and desert within reach.

I have been back only a few times since I left in 1964. One image, one scene most impressed me as the essence of the city. LA is actually very dense in spite of a lot of people living in single family houses and there are endless rows of two or three story apartment buildings. The dry climate makes stucco the preferred construction material and it’s all painted in pastels because it naturally fits the sense of sunny southern California. Nearly every apartment, at least those built since the sixties, has big picture windows or sliding glass doors but in my experience they’re always covered in drapes and the residents live in shady darkness inside. So pastel on the outside, darkness on the inside. The apartments are designed to be light and airy but nobody wants to relate to the outside world so prefer to stay private and cloistered inside. That’s only an impression, and even possibly a dated one, my friend may be thinking of a very different living situation.

As for education in California, it’s one of the states hardest hit by the economic downturn and budget crunch and so public education budgets are constantly being cut. Class sizes are ballooning. All the extras that used to be an essential part of school life - music, the arts, sports - have been cut back. Teachers are treated as greedy and undeserving cheats because they earn enough to survive in very expensive California.

American culture in general? A mixed bag for sure. It’s got a lot going for it if you’re part of a counterculture or subculture but otherwise it’s a failing society run by and operated for the 1%. No matter how much the elite are able to mold the country’s laws to their own benefit they always want more. No matter how crooked the banksters have become or how much they’ve brazenly defrauded the people, they show no remorse, rather they demand and receive bailouts to cover their malfeasance. It’s savage capitalism at its best.

On the other hand, I’d love to be able to catch an art flick on a big screen in Portland Oregon, one of the coolest cities anywhere, get out there and demonstrate with the Occupy Wall Street movement, do some mountain and forest hiking in the Pacific Northwest on well marked and maintained trails, debate the state of the world with life-long friends, etc., but what a price to pay. Outside of a few centers of urbanity and sophistication it’s a plasticized, homogenized, suburbanized, motorized landscape of fast food joints catering to the easily brainwashed and big box stores selling food in bulk to a society of lardasses - 60% of Americans are overweight, 30% obese. (If you’re one of the lardasses referred to, forgive me, no personal slight was intended. We all have our failings and addictions, yours just happen to be weighty and obvious.)

American kids are taught early how to eat an unhealthy diet. There was a study done a while back with 3 to 5-year-olds. They were offered a McDonald’s hamburger in a plain wrapper and another in a corporate wrapper. By a wide margin they thought the one in the McDonald’s wrapper tasted better. They did the same regarding fries and baby carrots, the latter of which McDonald’s doesn’t serve. Loyal junk food customers at an early age.

For breakfast they’ll have a sugar-bomb bowl of cereal consisting of genetically modified corn-syrup sweetened, genetically modified corn flakes, covered in milk from cows fed with genetically modified corn and treated with growth hormones. The hormones, which are actually a fake estrogen, are said to cause breasts to grow on very young girls. As for the GMOs, another recent study in a long line of them showed genetically modified food gave terrible stomach problems to rats that ate it. Maybe some of you remember the Monarch Butterfly GMO experiment of several years back. Monarchs make a very long migration from many parts of America to a small area in central Mexico. They eat only milkweed. Researchers fed Monarchs milkweed that was dusted with GMO corn pollen: half died very quickly the others developed serious digestive problems. The control group fed milkweed dusted with natural corn pollen had no problems whatever.

The US Food and Drug Administration has always accepted Monsanto’s word for the safety of its GMOs regardless of the often glaring evidence to the contrary. Lately, within the last couple of weeks, Obama appointed a lobbyist for Monsanto to an important post in FDA so nothing can possibly change on that score. Nearly all processed foods in America contain soy or corn or canola oil and almost all of those crops are now genetically modified, so virtually all processed foods contain GMOs.

Here in Cambodia I studiously avoid buying processed American food. There is usually a European alternative. There are no GMOs in Europe, not because they aren’t allowed, but because they have to be labeled as such and once that happens nobody will buy them; it’d be like including a skull and crossbones on the package. They aren’t labeled in America, though surveys show the vast majority want GMOs to be identified, because the industry owns the government. The people aren’t allowed to know what they are eating.

Chickens and pigs in America are raised in such terrible conditions they wouldn’t survive without massive doses of antibiotics: they spend their whole lives in cages too small for them to turn around in, where the stench of urine and faeces is overpowering. Some 90% of all antibios used in America are given to animals - with the result that you get a dose every time you eat them. Even the rivers, and thus many people’s drinking water, now contain antibiotics. With so much antibiotics floating around a lot of bacteria are becoming resistant and many people are becoming infected with untreatable strains.

You can avoid those poisons by buying organic, but most people, even those who can well afford clean, untainted food will look at the price differential of twice or three times as much for organics and give them a pass. Why bother, huh? They look and taste the same don’t they? Besides opposition to GMOs is actually a part of a conspiracy of radical, socialist, ecofreaks who also believe in myths like evolution and man-made global warming. It’s a sad, disgusting and demoralizing fact that nearly half of Americans are such whackadoodle morons they don’t believe in evolution. Imagine.

At least in Cambodia, cows eat grass which is real cow food, not the corn they are fed in America, which in fact has led to serious outbreaks of E. Coli. And pigs and chickens are raised somewhat normally and there are no GMOs except those imported as part of processed foods from the US.

An ungodly number of American kids are fed prescription drugs to combat Attention Deficit Disorder. The kids can’t concentrate. They’re restless, nervous and can’t sit still. ADD is a new disease created to help boost drug sales. But what would you expect when they drink super-sugary (a 12 ounce, 350 ml Coke contains the equivalent of 9 spoons of sugar) caffeinated soft drinks all day while they also spend hours in front of the TV where there often are ten images a second screaming by their eyes? It’s no wonder they are unable to sit quietly in class, but instead are jumping out of their skin. Would you feed coffee to a 1 or 2-year-old? Giving them Coke is no different.

There are a fantastic array of the latest gadgets available in America for those who have the money to buy them. There are 500 channels to choose from on the TV but only a handful worth watching (can’t go wrong with the Discovery channel). You certainly can’t expect any real news from corporate broadcasters since their focus is on mind-numbing drivel designed to divert attention from the real challenges of our times. It takes an especially inquisitive and open-minded person to overcome that brainwashing: people who take their kids to the West have the opportunity to counter that deceit and disinformation, but it takes some effort. It can be done which makes you feel good about the protests happening across America, not that I believe anything will come of those demonstrations - the forces of greed there are much too powerful.

Cambodian kids will also watch TV a lot (and drink Coke) but it doesn’t come with the same pressure here and besides, expat-Khmer combo kids raised in Cambodia have two worldviews, two cultures to draw from. Another recent study showed that people who are fluent in two languages get Alzheimer’s five years later on average than people who know only one and seven years later if they know three or more.

American researchers are always looking for mechanistic solutions to mental and physical problems. Instead of trying to understand socially and culturally why people slide into dementia they look for cure-all drugs. Just take this pill and you will magically become whole, whereas the point of the study is that people who keep their minds fresh and open and ever learning will have much less likelihood of Alzheimer’s. People who understand more than one culture have a wider view of life and a better chance at staying healthy.

Living in two cultures, learning two languages is therefore worth as much, in my opinion, as access to better basic education, especially if that education happens in the context of a nation wallowing in regressive right-wingnuttery.

Not saying that Cambodian culture doesn’t leave a lot to be desired. There is, for instance, no Cambodian literature. They hardly ever read books and when they do they’re the equivalent of B grade romance novels. Corruption is rife, Cambo ranks 164 out of 183 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index. Cambodians routinely make up stories and tell outright lies, many times for no apparent reason. The elite act with an impunity even greater than they do in the States. And so on… but we expats here have created, are in the process of creating, our own subculture so whatever negatives our half-Cambo kids get from their home culture can be counterbalanced by the western culture they receive from us.

There are always trade-offs in life, but parents could do worse than raise their kids in Cambodia.

Stan Kahn