The Lure of Easy Money
San Jose, CA - Friday, June 8, 2001 by: Kevin McIntyre
clean and sober	Since the dawn of man mankind has been seeking ways to alter their consciousness, whether it was from the Friars brewing their own beer, the mini rush of nicotine or the eating of fermented fruits, "clean and sober" has only been an ideal. Even in the bird and animal word, we've seen the grosbeaks in the fall sit on the limb of the Elderberry tree and pass along to each other the berries that had frozen the night before. Even the cat looked in disbelief as they'd eat until they fell off the branches.
world is getting smaller                         over a million dollars	In our society today no one thinks twice when someone has a drink when they get home from work or a cold one after mowing the lawn. Those Little Green Cigarettes are supposed to be a no - no but if you really ask, one could be hard pressed to find someone who flat out didn't know someone who smokes them. The step up into the hard and destructive drugs was once something that didn't happen in Saskatchewan, scenes of open drug use in the parks of Stockholm simply couldn't happen here but the melting snow now brings us exposed needles and media warnings for the children. The world is getting smaller. In the early eighties I read an article written in Plane & Pilot magazine about drug running. Their main sources were the D.E.A. (United States Drug Enforcement Agency) and a convict doing serious time for drug running: he was busted flying a load of cocaine into Florida from the Bahamas which were a transition point that was given a blind eye by local governments. While the exact numbers are no longer with me, the point is, take a Cessna 182 and look at the legal payload. What the book says is legal a lot of very high time pilots have told me is just a number in your log book, and a drug runner isn't going to worry about log books, if it'll get out of Ground Effects, it'll fly. Take the amount of coke you can stuff into a plane, multiply that by the value per kilo and one single run can turn over a million dollars in profits.
lure of easy money	The pilot who was interviewed said the state of Florida was building new highways across the Everglades, they weren't making as much progress as they could because at night they'd fly in, dump their load and make a quick turn around as the ground people loaded the trucks and disappeared back into the countryside. In the mornings the freshly graded roadbed was churned up by tire tracks from the nights activity. The early eighties was a bad time for the owners of light twin aircraft: fuel prices and insurance costs made them more valuable as parts than as complete aircraft. While many weren't flown for insurance reason they were insured as parked aircraft. The person interviewed for the article said he would go to a municipal field and hang out with the "lounge lizards", soon he knew who owned what and make them an offer that usually was not turned down. "You leave your bird full of fuel with the keys under the seat tonight and if it's there in the morning there'll be a bag in the back with $50,000 cash in it. If it isn't back in the flight line in the morning, contact your insurance company and file a claim for theft". The convict said the vast majority of the time the keys were under the seat. As Glenn Frey sang, It's the lure of easy money... .
meth lab	Last week not far from here, and in a region as wide as the distance from Wakaw to Saskatoon there are four million people, a neighborhood was evacuated when the police busted a meth lab. From what I've seen on shows on the Discovery Channel the chemicals used in that as about as bad as you can find. The clean up crews go in with full moon suits and respirators hoping the place doesn't blow up in their faces. The profits on running a lab are supposed to be phenomenal and the busting of them are so routine that it doesn't make the lead on the evening news. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you!
matter of choice	A year ago I sat across the table from someone who literally argued until he was red in the face there was no such thing as addiction, it was simply a matter of choice. I smiled, nodded and motioned to his cigarettes and told him to choose not to smoke for the rest of the day. The look I got in reply could only be described as "startled".
	Just say "No"!
	http://www.stopdrugs.org/methcrisis.html http://www.kci.org/meth_info/neighborhood_lab.htm
	Kevin