cocaine

TalkingDrugs conducts an exclusive interview with Tom Feiling, a writer, journalist and documentary filmmaker who is the author of The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World, published by Penguin in 2009. Tom spent a year living and working in Colombia before making Resistencia: Hip-Hop in Colombia.

What is the difference between buying wine and cocaine?

When you buy wine, it's a fairly simple process.
1) Farmer grows grapes.
2) Wine producer bottles grape juice.
3) The wine is stored and awaits shipment.
4) Wine is then loaded onto cargo freighters, on its way to a wine consumer.
5) Consumers heartily drink their wine in good company.

Cocaine follows a decidedly different path.
1) Cocoa farmers grow their plants.
2) Cocaine producers buy the plants and turn them into cocaine.

Two students were gunned down by Mexican soldiers in a prestigious private university in Monterrey, Mexico on Friday. Jorge Antonio Mercado Alonso and Javier Arredondo Verdugo, two students enrolled at the Technical Studies Institute (TEC) were last seen studying late on Thursday on the university campus, only a few hours later they were shot dead as suspected gunmen working for a drug trafficking cartel .

 The increasing consumption of caffeinated energy drinks and alcospeed has been raising concern among health professionals, authorities and even senior figures of the Episcopal Church of Scotland have been publicly criticising the consumption of the popular Buckfast wine, labelling it as anti-Christian. The reason is no other than the effects that the tonic wine seem to cause due to its high concentration of caffeine, equivalent to six cans of coke.