Drug money to die for

Overall Brazil is not one of the world’s poorest countries but the big problem is inequality. More than 20 per cent of the people live on less than US$2 a day, the infant mortality rate of the poorest is three times that of the richest, life expectancy is 80 years for the rich, 60 for the poor. The unemployment rate among young people in the favelas is 80 per cent.

Consequently the economy of the favela is based largely on the sale of illegal drugs, which pays for the essentials of everyday living, including weapons and ammunition. In the turf wars between drug gangs and between gangs and police many boys do not survive beyond their 20s.

Those who profit are the local Mr Bigs who don’t take many risks, and greater Mr Bigs higher up the supply chain who take fewer. Other winners are the providers of weapons and ammunition, mostly manufactured in the United States where 60 per cent of the world’s arms originate.

We have daily accounts of armed struggle in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other war zones, but less about the long-term shooting battles between police forces and drug gangs, and the turf wars between the gangs.

However, omitted from all the accounts is the essential ingredient youngsters in Brazil and men in Melbourne die for; the income they hope to make from drug sales. Mostly hidden from public scrutiny, customers may be desperate addicts forced to engage in prostitution or crime to feed the habit, unable to hold down a regular job, in and out of hospital and doctors’ surgeries, often with a short life span. In any event - supplying the funds.

Also supplying the funds are those at the other end of the social scale in the leafy suburbs where respectable middle class folk use drugs as refreshments along with cocktails as a sophisticated pastime, the necessary secrecy presumably enhancing the experience. Perhaps they don’t concern themselves with how the substances reach them, the risks and deaths of those in the supply chain.

But moral or immoral, criminal or not, at the end of the day, at the end of the money chain, it is the customer who supplies the wealth youngsters in Brazil fight and die for.