Drugs in Neo-Colonialist Practice

Neo-colonialism refers to the political, military and economic control of minority groups in a colonised society. America, Australia and New Zealand are just some examples of colonised societies.

All of these nations have maintain control over the people that they colonised through the parliamentary domination by descendants of colonisers, through instigation of military operations not of native origin and through holding a majority wealth throughout colonised and post colonised history.

This understanding neo-colonialism can be observed through the justice system, the welfare system and the job market in general. In 2006 the average income of Māori was 73.2% of that of non-Māori.

One way, however, that continues less discussed than any of these indicators of neo-colonial control across all colonised nations, particularly the three I have listed, is the application of drug enforcement.

The two biggest media drug focuses, and criminal justice focuses in New Zealand, are weed and meth. You could argue this is because the presence of these two substances is more prominent, except for the fact that prominence in this context is ultimately defined by media attention and thus the cycle continues.

The same goes for the United States, with Bernie Sanders just today posted to his Facebook account: “8 million marijuana arrests and almost 9 in 10 were for possession. And let's be clear that there is a racial component to this situation. Although about the same proportion of blacks and whites use marijuana, a black person is almost 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person.”

How many arrests for ecstasy, LSD, MDNA and coke took place at Coachella Festival in California this year, where- I might add- you need at least $700NZ just to get in, out of 125,000 people? 128. 128 middle to upper class, mostly white, kids from around the world got told off for possession of drugs that are statistically infinitely more likely to kill you, considering that there is no documented history of a marijuana overdose. The Huffington Post investigated this and published the article “When It Comes to Illegal Drug Use, White America Does The Crime, Black America Gets The Time” three years ago after noticing a similar trend.

Using police and media focus to target marginalised groups with regards to drug control creates a multi-pronged neo-colonial attack. It controls moral by fabricating a more significant drug problem in those groups. It controls economy by making more arrests and therefore taking away more job opportunities and income through fines for those groups. As well as controlling the flow of groups through positions of power. The kids who go through private school and get into high powered jobs in New Zealand have done a lot more cocaine than weed but you’re not likely to hear about it in the news; otherwise who would make up our parliament?