Chapter Eleven - Drugs and Death

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Drugs and Death

MOST PEOPLE THINK drug laws are about safety.
Health, recovery, and order.

But in reality, drug laws are often about control.
Control of class.
Control of race.
Control of culture.

And in some countries, they're about killing people on purpose.

Start with Singapore.
If you're caught with over 500 grams of cannabis, that’s enough for the death penalty.
No violent crime. No weapon.
Just the plant.
Execution by hanging.

The state doesn't flinch.
It calls this justice.

In Malaysia, similar story.
Cannabis. Heroin. Meth.
Possession thresholds are low.
If you cross them, you’re presumed to be trafficking, and trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence.

You don't get a second chance.
You barely get a trial.

In Indonesia, a group of foreign nationals known as the “Bali Nine” were arrested for heroin smuggling.
Two were executed by firing squad, even though both had publicly rehabilitated.
The government didn’t care.

Drugs are a moral threat, they said.
So they were erased.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte launched a “war on drugs” that became a war on the poor.

Police were encouraged to kill suspected users.
Not dealers.
Users.

Thousands were gunned down in the street.
No warrants.
No courts.
No names.

Just body bags.

In Iran, drug offenses are one of the top causes of execution.
Meth, opium, and heroin are all illegal.
But addiction rates are high due to decades of war, poverty, and trauma.
The state responds with hangings.
Not rehab.

Even teenagers have been executed.
Mercy is not in the legal code.

In China, trafficking drugs can get you executed too.
Even foreigners.

The government has held public trials, rushed executions, and used drug busts as diplomatic pressure.

One Canadian man was sentenced to death right after Canada arrested a Huawei executive.
Coincidence?
Sure.

Even in the United States, where the death penalty isn’t on the table for drugs, the punishments are still wildly out of proportion.

The War on Drugs devastated Black communities.
Mandatory minimums packed prisons for nonviolent crimes.
Crack cocaine was punished 100x harder than powder cocaine, even though they’re chemically identical.

One was used by the rich.
The other by the poor.
Guess which one got the longer sentence?

In Russia, basketball player Brittney Griner was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
Her crime?
Carrying a vape cartridge with cannabis oil.
It wasn’t about the law.
It was about leverage.

In Saudi Arabia, trafficking can carry the death penalty, and harsh sentences apply to possession, especially for foreigners.
Even if you didn't know.

So what’s really going on?

Drug laws aren’t about the drugs.
They’re about power.

Who’s allowed to alter their state of mind, and who’s not.
Who gets punished, and who gets pardoned.
Who gets rehab, and who gets a bullet.

When the law sees addiction as a threat instead a sickness, it doesn’t treat you.
It eliminates you.