The consequences of illegal drugs isn’t merely the potential of overdose. Its consumption is the root cause of the death of innocent humans and human trafficking. Every time you buy drugs, you are contributing to those crimes.

Many drugs campaigns have been focusing on raising the consumer’s awareness on the risk of drug consumption for its own health. Even though we shouldn’t overlook the risks of overdoses, heart attacks, lung diseases, cancers, strokes and mental illness; those risks don’t tell the whole story.

The use of drugs has effects far beyond one’s health.

Participating in the illegal drug market in any way encourages and promotes, however invisible to you, gang violence and human trafficking.

So what if we focused on the actual consequences your consumption has on the rest of the world?

Everytime you buy drugs, you participate in murders.

Cocaine, Cannabis resin or Methamphetamine are not cultivated in local laboratories as Breaking Bad may have pictured it. The reality of drug production is far different than an American TV Show.

If some drugs are locally produced, the majority is imported from countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Morocco and Afghanistan according to the latest UN World Drug Report. Criminal groups make their money abroad and exporting drugs to Western countries is the most lucrative activity for Mexican drug-trafficking organizations which supposedly make between $19 billion and $29 billion annually from US sales only.

As one can imagine, these billions come with violence. According to analysts from the 2015 Congressional Research Service, Mexico’s war on drugs has claimed more than 80,000 lives between 2006 and 2015. Billions of dollars are made and blood is spilled equally.

But this war is not funded by Mexican people, it’s funded by the drug consumption of Americans and Europeans. The Mexican people are paying the costly price of our selfish consumption. Because of us, many people are living in the fear of being harassed and killed by drug dealers right on the other side of the US border.

Everytime you buy drugs, you participate in human trafficking.

Drug cartels have expanded into other illegal activities such as human trafficking. They benefit from the absence of power in Mexico to kidnap girls, often minors, and transform them into labor or sexual slaves. That’s what happened to Daniela and thousands of other girls.

Daniela was kidnapped at the Honduras border, she was driven to the desert in Northern Mexico and her nightmare lasted seven years. For seven years, she was forced to have at least six sexual relations a day with different customers, sometimes American tourists. She recalled the one time five women were bound to pillars, raped and tortured as she told her story to Vice.

American tourists paying for those sexual services are not the only ones at fault. Drug consumption is directly related to human trafficking in Mexico, it’s done by the same cartels using the same underground network. They corrupt authorities, infiltrate institutions and fight law enforcement. Because of drug trafficking, they have gained the power and resources to take over the activities of human trafficking with complete impunity.

By giving them money, American and European drug consumers are strengthening organized crimes, increasing violence and weakening the rule of law in Mexico. Western consumers gave them the means to make this situation possible in the first place.

Think about this next time you buy.

So next time you go to your local drug dealer, think about the consequences your purchase is going to have on the rest of the world. Understand that you take part in a larger market, which is the market of drugs, cartels, slavery and violence and ask yourself one simple question, is getting high really worth it ?

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