I really wanted to read an in-depth investigative report on the Wa drug cartel. I opened Patrick Winn’s Narcotopia, hoping to find information and insight. Instead, from the first pages, I discovered that the Wa druglords are good because they are indigenous to the area where they live. I’m not remotely indigenous to the area where I live but I don’t believe that either situation is inherently morally charged. What is inherently morally charged is whether you sell drugs. I don’t, and I tend to take that as far more important to my character as to whether I’m “indigenous.”

It gets worse. Winn insists that the US is guilty of Wa’s drug trafficking. Why? Well, because the US is guilty of everything. A bear farts in Magadan, and it’s America’s fault. According to Winn, if Americans would have only given Wa “a little bit of food”, they wouldn’t have cooked and sold meth in the first place. It’s apparently America’s duty to prevent people from becoming drug overlords by feeding them. Of course, the idea that anybody would give up the immense fortunes and power brought in by running a cartel in exchange for a bowl of rice is extremely strange but we’ve heard this reasoning before. Whenever there’s a riot here in the US, we are told that the rioters are looting Louis Vuitton stores because they are perishing of hunger.

It gets better. Winn accuses the CIA of attempting to conduct “regime change” in the territories controlled by the cartel. I keep wondering how do people not get bored of this tired old narrative about CIA regime changes? There’s never any proof but that’s not even the point. We are supposed to accept that “regime change” is a bad thing. But why? Nobody ever explains. Regime change = bad, America = bad, indigenous = good.