Headline Of The Week Weak
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"Cocaine users are destroying the rainforest - at 4 square metres a gram"
Global warming! CLICK HERE to read the article accompanying this headline.
[Image via WENN.]
Cocaine users are destroying the rainforest - at 4 square metres a gram
Four square metres of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of cocaine snorted in the UK, a conference of senior police officers as told yesterday.
Francisco Santos Calderón, the vice-president of Colombia, appealed to British users of the class A drug to consider the impact on the environment. He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, the middle-class social user who drove a hybrid car and was concerned about the environment might not take the drug if they knew its impact.
Santos said 300,000 hectares of rainforest were destroyed each year in Colombia to clear land for coca plant cultivation, predominantly controlled by illegal groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc.
Officers were told cocaine and heroin use cost the British economy around £15bn a year in health and crime bills.
Santos outlined to the Association of Chief Police Officers how lives were lost in the illegal cocaine trade in Colombia. He said landmines that were used to protect crops and processing labs killed almost 900 civilians this year.
Farc and other groups funded by narcotics production were also involved in kidnapping. The Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt was held for more than six years before her release earlier this year, and Santos himself was kidnapped and held by a cocaine gang for 18 months in the 1990s.
He told the Belfast conference: "If you snort a gram of cocaine, you are destroying 4m square of rainforest and that rainforest is not just Colombian - it belongs to all of us who live on this planet, so we should all be worried about it. Not only that, the money that you use to buy the cocaine goes into the hands of Farc, of illegal groups that plant mines, that kidnap, that kill, that use terrorism to protect their business."
Santos said many middle-class Britons who used cocaine were unaware of its environmental impact. "For somebody who drives a hybrid, who recycles, who is worried about global warming - to tell him that that night of partying will destroy 4m square of rainforest might lead him to make another decision."
Santos said Europe was experiencing a boom in cocaine use among more affluent people that was comparable with that seen in the USA 25 years ago. Everyone, he said, had a duty to change their behaviour to halt a rise in demand that was destroying his country. "We call it shared responsibility, We can't do it on our own. We need everybody's action; police here, police in Colombia, the authorities in both countries and the consumers too. If there is no consumption, there will be no production.
"There is a sense of frustration, because here drug use is seen as a personal choice and to some extent cocaine is seen as the champagne of drugs which causes no effect and is a victimless crime. It is not victimless."
Bill Hughes, the director general of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, told the conference that the UK was a very attractive market for drug traffickers. "There is still a lot of disposable income; the risk compared to the US if you are caught is felt to be much less," he said.
The £15bn cost to the economy reduced the amount of money available for schools, teachers and police officers. He said traffickers moved their drugs from South America to west Africa, and then to the EU and Britain, often operating through insecure countries with poor law enforcement. Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands were major staging posts on the trafficking routes and much of the synthetic drug market was supplied from the Netherlands. Hughes said the proceeds of crime were undermining or corrupting governments globally, with the trade worth £4bn-£6.6bn in the UK.
whatever!!
Perez u know u don't give a shit about rainforest. and so do i
eww and third!
SELFISH FUCKERS FUCKING UP THE PLANET!
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BLOOD OF INNOCENT CHILDREN IS SPILT DAILEY OVER THIS DRUG!
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FUCK YOU HATERS!
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Stop snorting cocaine. I hope you know they mix so much shit in it, that your getting baking soda and baby shit medicine. Save my trees. They all are alive and have names.
He looks like a friend of mine from the past that was a heroin addict. MY FRIEND JUST DIED OF AN OVERDOSE FRIDAY. RIP VIRGINIA. DRUGS SUCK ASS! :0(
What the hell is cocaine? We only smoke em peace pipe. Weeds.
Re: bellatattoos –
So sorry. My brother was hooked on heroin. He now is in prison and that is the only reason he is alive. I'm sorry about your friend. Thousands are dying and no one is doing anything. Perez, help!!!
then lay off the crack, perez
Ohh….my head…rock on…
Marijuana for everyone, cocaine for no one.
People are dropping dead like flies over cocaine, heoin and oxi cotin. It's the govt. fault and the doctor's. When Oxi cotin first came out, it was for people that was dying and were in extreme pain. Now, the doctor's are dealing it to everyone. This shit needs to stop. Perez, you need to put up numbers on exactly how many die each year.
Ummmm, yeah. Obviously Pete and Amy Winehouse give a flying fuck about the planet……
I hate cocaine. Sucks!
Also, how are Pete and Winehouse still alive? I would have been dead along time ago if it was me (and it never would be the case anyhow, but still). They are like the Terminators of drug use…keep going and going…or is that Duracell?
COCAINE USERS DESTROY EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE AROUND THEM!
With Pete, Amy and little Geldorf alive and in the/your headlines, teens think it's hip to snort….
Re: SWEETPIECE – Hi Sweet! I'm assuming I'm NOT one of the haters who is the recipient of the FUCK YOU?
cokeheads are icky to watch
I love Petey, and I think cocaine just might be as valuable as trees
Re: Hot Monkey Love Obama Style Hates Perez – ANY drug user is disgusting!
Re: Hillieweb – You're kidding, right? If not, you're a fucken moron!
*
He has really nice teeth.
figured, coke heads are ASSHOLES.
very interesting
Re: Hot Monkey Love Obama Style Hates Perez – No, you are a lover and you know it!
I am expecting some good Obama love soon!
ROFL!!
Wtff!
Woooow
you mean headline of the tweak >.
Re: LettyB Hearts Perez – I HEART PEREZ TOO!
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I HATE COCAINE!!!
I've had more friends than I care to mention die from heroin and cocaine.
Even after some got clean, their bodies were so abused they succumbed to cancer.
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SO TRAGIC! WASTED TALENT! BEAUTIFUL WONDERFUL PEOPLE GONE.
please dont post anymore closeups of this guy. it makes me get sick
Re: TheHectorness – Frogger was definitely a tweaker!
yummmm.. snow. what would we do without snow? fuck the rainforest… we are all going to die from global warming and global warming is not from cocaine users alone. The fact that all of us are sitting here on the internet, using energy and electricity, reading crap like perez hilton shows that each and every one of us are contributing to global warming. We are fucked either way. So I say keep living our lives the way you want and snort a gram a day so that hopefully we will die from a heart attack before the ramifications of global warming hit the United States.
love peter! whatta bloke
Yes, we need to fight drug addiction. It ruins lives.
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But more global warming scare tactics? Man-made global warming is a hoax. It is a myth spread by those who want bigger government, more control over our lives, and a less powerful America and Western Europe. It is then propagated by indoctrinated young people who want something important to believe in and fight for. Global warming fear-mongers go around saying the science is undisputed, when this is an obvious lie. Many brilliant scientists dispute it and have the facts to back up their theories. Keep in mind that environmentalists used to say "global cooling" was the problem and probably will have to start saying that again as worldwide temperatures seem to be falling instead of rising.
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If we are to remain a free country, people will have to start educating themselves and not just buying into the propaganda fed to them by those who don't have our best interests at heart. Global warming scare tactics are being used to control us, not to protect us.
Re: CaraC – 37 YOU ARE AND IGNORANT FOOL! ONLY THE TOP SCIENTISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD HAVE CONFIRMED GLOBAL WARMING!
YOU THINK YOU KNOW MORE THAN THEM?
YOU ARE A FRIGHTENED PATHETIC FOOL AND PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE WHY THIS PLANET IS IN THE STATE IT IS! UNINFORMED IDIOTS!
GO READ!!!!!
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BETTER YET, GO JUMP INTO THE OCEAN AND FEED SOME FISH!
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EVEN YOUR MORON PRESIDENT BUSH HAS ADMITTED THE FACT.
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I am definitly sending this to my Cocaine addict sister , of course this article wont make her want to quit but its just more ugly facts about this glamorized drug that destrys people and families.I hope my sister doesnt laugh when i show this to her but shes so far gone i know she will. But maybe the article will stay embedded in her brain and when shes ready to get better this article will be one of the reasons she decided to quit! thanks perez for bringing this article to light, education about these drugs could only help us and i would have never known about this article if it werent for you THANKS PEREZ!
Perez Hates Me ^^
damn…ive destroyed a lot of rainforest. i had no idea it was THAT much of an impact.
I am so over cocaine …. ket and mandy is way better
Bad for your body and for the planet. Do people realize if the rainforest dies so do we?
I'd rather have a snort of coke than ten rain forests. I mean, what good does a fucking tree do you? At least if you're high, you can forget how shitty this planet is
Fuck the rainforest. I couldn't care less. I am too hollywood for all you motherfuckers! Ha!
Re: RebelYell324 – 45 Thought I saw you on Santa Monica posing with a motorcycle. How much?
well just remember that the cocaine trade is Columbias biggest and puts many poor columbians to work
Re: Naughty_Baby_Harley – the rainforest affects our climate as a whole and contains plantlife for diseases that do not yet exist… get informed moron
RE: Pocahontas…
Thanks for your support. Addiction does suck…I have a family member who is on and off dope and crack too…OD'ED more than twice…cops never did a darn thing but I THINK THE SYSTEM IS WHACK…COPS SUCK (from MY EXPERIENCE)!!!
Ok, I'll stop j/k I don't do coke anymore.
It's too bad that coke didn't kill 4 Limeys every time anyone snorted coke!!! The world would be a much nicer place! www.britishreparations.org
cocaine is lame.
Gimme a break. Blaming drug users for ruining the environment is ridiculous. I'm sure rainforest is being chopped down to grow all kinds of crops, legal and illegal.
Re: SWEETPIECE SAYS SAVE THE TREES! – Easy on Frogger sister…and LettyB hearts Perez is a fucken fake! Love you but please stop the BS!
Re: Hot Monkey Love Obama Style Hates Perez –
I'M NOT FAKE, I'M ALL HERE, BABY!
Re: Hot Monkey Love Obama Style Hates Perez – 54 How do you know all this? You liked Frogger? Are you Frogger?
You should drop the hate thing. It is old and non productive.
Cocaine is low-class and trashy. And as far as destroygin the rainforest goes, the people who are helping destroy it will be the first ones to whine if our habitats start to crumble; afterall trees=oxygen.
I believe it. The gov't sprays chemicals to kill the crops, and it wind up killing food crops as well.
Note to Users: 98% of you are not snorting what you think is cocaine. Only very wealthy/high-paying customers are getting the real thing. Dealers cut it with just about anything that resembles coke, so do you wallet a favor and stop it.
True, cocaine production is not the only thing contributing to global warming, but it is an easily preventable source of earthly destruction. Every little bit helps, and by ignoring these easy steps for preventing further warming, we are ensuring a lower quality of life for the generations to come. We need to stop being selfish and self-indulgent. Attitudes like "it's going to happen anyways" are dangerous, ignorant and lack any concern for the welfare of others. Btw, what drug is Mandy?
He should join Blake and Amy and just die already
Its really a tragic news….Thousands are dying and no one is doing anything. for this….I hate cocain….
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