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In response to Haus rerquest for a bit of social awareness, like:
Without doubt the ethical implications are as weighted as with any crop production from 'Third World' states...Of course, a pound of coffe and a pound of cocaine legendarily cost a very similar amount to produce, but while a gram (!) of coffee won't even make a single cuppa, a gram of coke regularly vends for £50 'on da street'.
A 500 gram jar of coffe costs about £3, half a kilo of cocaine considerably more...Both the end consumer and producer are being ripped off for the latter, the producer completely ripped off for the former. Both substances are refined drugs. Indeed, coffee, as with cigarettes, was traditionally a highly respected and potent drug used ritually throughout eastern europe and asia. The West, in time honoured tradition, took both a made them 'soft'.
Very few people regard coffee as anything but a 'soft drink' experience and think nothing of drinking double figure cups daily.
Hence it's relegation from luxury commodity to supermarket shelf-stacker.
History not being my strong point, I forget which fella it was exactly but my addled, drug-fried brain (no coffee this morning, see) is suggesting King Charles II as the monarch in England who actually BANNED coffee and shut down those monster raves that were coffee houses after disguising himself and hanging out in a few. He discovered that the patrons were so hyped on the amphetamine effects that, far worse than in public houses, where the proles were merely slurring, a huge level of anti-authoritarian dissent was fervently discussed.
Nowadays, the government wouldn't dream of banning coffee, as it is one of the Drugs against which they are not fighting a War, presumably because most of them are rather partial to its diluted effects in their cups.
The producers are being shortchanged equally on both products (probably by Western governments for both, fnord).
Of course buying illegal drugs has ethical implications - without a doubt, the funds are wending their way to highly unpleasant people who use them for far more unpleasant and destructive ends than the production and distribution of nature's bounty.
But then again, buying cosmetics, or washing powder, or coffee, tea, chocolate (cocoa anyway), in fact just about anything (especially in bloody Tesco's - buying milk from suicidally broke farmers at ONE QUARTER of the shelf price? Not to mention meats etc., and who even has a local butcher as an alternative anymore?), carries a weight of ethical implications which are equally disturbing, but far less obvious, and most people couldn't give a toss anyway.
Illegal drugs are stratospherically marked up because the price of distributing them could be ones personal liberty. There is a 'widely' accepted level of effort involved in their procurement. Admittedly coke has the Calvin klein T-Shirt edge - the label baggage quadruples the cost.
Milk? I don't know - just totally greedy wankers that rely on the laziness of joe punter and hir total apathy toward the plight of the producer in favour of convenience, free parking and a few pence off.
Sorry got to go now, pop in later!
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