Thousands of arrests of drug users and drug dealers have been reported in Sri Lanka in less than two months.

According to reporting by the Associated Press, Sri Lankan authorities have initiated a crackdown operation on the drug trade in a country known widely for its role as an international narcotics trafficking hub. This crackdown, known as “Operation Yukthiya” which means justice, has been responsible for over 40,000 arrests since December of 2023. This is according to acting police chief Deshabandu Tennakoon, who also told the Associated Press that 65% of the drug trade in the entire country of Sri Lanka has been dismantled with the goal of complete elimination by month’s end.

These arrests were carried out as the result of nighttime raids using drug-sniffing dogs. These raids have targeted suspected addicts and people with previous records of drug-related arrests in addition to suspected traffickers. In the first weeks of the crackdown, the BBC reported that over 1,000 suspected drug addicts had been forcibly sent to rehabilitation centers run by the Sri Lankan military.

“These arrests [have] been made very arbitrarily. There is no reasonable suspicion, the kind of people arrested have a lower marginalized economic status,” said Thiyagi Ruwanpathirana, a researcher for Amnesty International Sri Lanka to Reuters. “The way in which the operations are carried out – there [are] cavity searches, strip searches in public, some of which are televised – it is really giving a lot of concern for human rights organizations.”

Operation Yukthiya has been heavily criticized by the United Nations for potential human rights violations in what they described as a “heavy-handed” operation which has resulted in about 5,000 detentions out of the tens of thousands of arrests made. The Associated Press also indicated there had been reports of torture carried out by Sri Lankan authorities.

“While drug use presents a serious challenge to society, a heavy-handed law enforcement approach is not the solution. Abuse of drugs and the factors that lead to it are first and foremost public health and social issues,” the United Nations said.

Sri Lankan authorities have vowed to continue Operation Yukthiya based on reports that more schoolchildren are using drugs and drug-related crimes are increasing in Sri Lanka, most of which involve heroin, cannabis, and cannabis hashish, according to the BBC. Public Security Minister Tiran Alles has said the United Nations should identify specific instances of human rights violations and that Sri Lankan police have been ordered to follow the law.

“We will not stop this operation. We will go ahead and we will do it the same way because we know that we are doing something good for the children of this country, for the women of this county and that is why the general public is whole-heartedly with us in these operations,” Alles said.

During the first week of Operation Yukthiya, BBC reported over 15,000 arrests were made and over 470 kilograms of various types of drugs were seized. Vehicles and other possessions of suspected criminals were also seized in the operation. The searches were, mercifully, put on hold for the Christmas holiday but continued in full-force shortly thereafter.

Sri Lanka made over 97,000 drug-related arrests in 2020 according to Reuters who cited the Sri Lanka National Dangerous Drugs Control Board. 53% of these arrests were for heroin and 42% for cannabis, many of which were simple possession offenses. 

“Sri Lanka’s strategic geographical position and proximity to countries which produce opium and heroin on a large scale make it convenient for traffickers to smuggle drugs into Sri Lanka,” said a 1998 report on the Sri Lankan approach to drug enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice. “ In 1984, an amendment to the Poisons, Opium, and Dangerous Drugs Act introduced the death penalty for the violation of certain sections of the act. Anyone found guilty of possessing over 2 grams of heroin is liable to be sentenced to death. Heroin traffic is aggravated by the heavy involvement of Sri Lankan Tamils (a terrorist group) in the narcotics trade to Western European countries.”

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The Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar is now the world’s largest producer of opium, according to a recent report from the United Nations. Myanmar’s new dominance in the international opium market follows the decline of production of the drug in Afghanistan, which had previously been the largest producer of the crop worldwide.

Afghanistan’s drop in production follows a ban on opium farming issued by the ruling Taliban in 2022, although that year’s harvest was exempt from the ban. Since then, the South-Central Asian nation has seen a 95% decline in opium cultivation. The Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 as the United States military largely evacuated the country following two decades of American occupation and war. 

Before the ban, Afghanistan was the world’s largest producer of opium. According to a 2022 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan’s opium cultivation increased by 32% over the previous year to 233,000 hectares (about 575,755 acres). The southwestern parts of the country accounted for 73% of the total area under cultivation and saw the largest crop increases. In Helmand province, one-fifth of the arable land was dedicated to growing opium poppies.

The report also states that the 2022 harvest was the most profitable in years, with prices soaring, even as a political and economic crisis engulfed the country. The income made by farmers from opium sales more than tripled from $425 million in 2021 to $1.4 billion in 2022. The primary markets for Afghan opium are Iran, Pakistan, and Central Asia. 

Decline of Opium Production in Afghanistan Leads to Surge in Myanmar

Earlier this month, a new report from UNODC showed that the drop in production in Afghanistan has led to a surge in poppy farming in Myanmar. The increase in poppy cultivation in Myanmar is also fueled by the social, political and economic distress following a 2021 military coup that drove many to poppy farming, according to the report.

“The economic, security and governance disruption that followed the military takeover of February 2021 continue to drive farmers in remote areas towards opium to make a living,” UNODC Regional Representative Jeremy Douglas said in a statement earlier this month.

Because of the decline in the opium supply brought about by the Taliban prohibition in Afghanistan, farmers in Myanmar can now earn about 75% more by farming opium than they could previously. The average price of a kilogram of opium flower has reached $355 per kilogram, according to the report.

The amount of land in Myanmar has increased from an estimated 40,100 hectares (about 99,000 acres) to 47,000 hectares (about 116,000 acres). The most growth in opium cultivation occurred in border regions in northern Shan State, followed by Chin and Kachin states. The UNODC report also noted that more sophisticated farming practices adopted by Myanmar’s opium growers have led to an increase in efficiency, with the average yield of the crop climbing 16% to 22.99 kilograms per hectare.

Myanmar, previously known as Burma, is an independent country in Southeast Asia. It shares borders with China, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Laos. Covering an area of 261,228 square miles, Myanmar is one of the largest countries in Southeast Asia. As of 2014, its population stood at about 51 million inhabitants, with estimates reaching 54 million people by 2017.

From 1962 until 2011, the country was ruled by the armed forces, enduring almost 50 years of oppressive military regimes. In 1989, the ruling military changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar.

In 2011, Myanmar transitioned away from full military rule, sparking hopes of democratic reforms. However, the military retained significant control over the government and, following the military’s proxy party’s defeat in the 2020 elections, a coup in 2021 returned power to military leaders. 

Douglas of UNODC said that an increase in armed conflict between ruling military forces and armed ethnic minority groups would likely further accelerate the growth of opium cultivation in Myanmar. The country’s ruling military junta did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report.

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Afghani poppy farmers are estimated to have lost over $1 billion in value or 95% of their opium supply since the Taliban outlawed opium production in April 2022, according to a new report from the United Nations. 

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a press release Sunday noting that the drastic drop in opium production could have devastating and far-reaching consequences for the rural communities of Afghanistan and on the international supply of opium derivatives such as heroin that come from opium produced in the area.

Since the time of the ban, the U.N. estimated that Afghani land dedicated to opium poppy production has dwindled from 233,000 hectares in 2022 to 10,800 hectares in 2023 (for reference a hectare is 100 acres). The total supply of opium produced in the area, as aforementioned, dwindled 95% from 6,200 tons to just 333 representing a 92% drop in income for the poppy farmers of Afghanistan. 

“This presents a real opportunity to build towards long-term results against the illicit opium market and the damage it causes both locally and globally,” said Ghada Waly, Executive Director of UNODC. “At the same time, there are important consequences and risks that need to be addressed for an outcome that is ultimately positive and sustainable, especially for the people of Afghanistan.

U.N. leadership warned that such a drastic reduction in the worldwide supply of opium could push traffickers more and more toward synthetic opium replacements, the most frequently used of which is fentanyl which has already seen a dramatic increase in use since the United States began cracking down on opiate-based pharmaceuticals. A BBC report in June of this year estimated that Afghani grown opium accounted for more than 80% of the world’s opium supply. Heroin derived from Afghani-made opium also accounted for 95% of the heroin supply in Europe.

The press release also indicated that methamphetamine production has increased in Afghanistan, presumably to replace the income lost from the opium trade. Another UNODC report from September indicated that Afghanistan was one of the world’s fastest growing producers of methamphetamine due to the legal availability of medications used to synthesize meth, as well as the ephedra plant, which just so happens to grow wild in the highlands of Afghanistan.

“Data on seizures indicate that traders are selling off their opium inventories from past record harvests to weather the shortfall in 2023, while heroin processing has decreased,” the press release said. “Trafficking in other drugs, namely methamphetamine, has surged in the region. Though there are high levels of opiate use within Afghanistan, evidence-based treatment options remain limited.”

The loss of income from poppy growing represents a dire threat to a region that is already considered to be very poor. Much of Afghanistan depends on agricultural-related sources of income to survive and years of drought combined with the Taliban taking power in 2021 have added additional strain to an already-unstable region. A Reuters report estimated that 30% of the total GDP of Afghanistan comes from agriculture.

“Nearly eighty percent of the population depends on agriculture, and Afghanistan already faces acute water scarcity challenges,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. “Sustainable alternative development efforts must be oriented towards drought-resistant agricultural activities and the effective protection and use of resources.”

Until the Taliban enacted the opium ban, the GDP of the opiate trade far exceeded the total GDP of the country. According to the U.N. many Afghani farmers have opted to grow wheat instead of opium poppies since the ban, increasing the national output by 160,000 hectares. Though this may relieve some food insecurity, the U.N. estimates this will not be anywhere near enough to make up for the lost value from the opium trade.

“Today, Afghanistan’s people need urgent humanitarian assistance to meet their most immediate needs, to absorb the shock of lost income and to save lives,” Executive Director Waly said. “And over the coming months, Afghanistan is in dire need of strong investment in sustainable livelihoods, to provide Afghan farmers with opportunities away from opium.”

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By Victor Bockris

1) At London’s Gatwick Airport, I went straight to the cafeteria, stationed myself at a deserted corner table, put an opium pellet on my tongue and washed it down with two cups of tepid tea, apparently a catalyst.

On a jammed Laker flight to New York, I managed to read three novels undisturbed by the monster pushing my seat forward, the two monsters in front pushing their seats backward and the Frenchman beside me growing his beard, because airplanes make me feel secure. Soon they’ll have bedrooms again, and since the greatest American fantasy is sky sex, one can almost guarantee the runaway success of airplane bedrooms. They’ll be quite expensive, but that’ll make you want to make more money so you can do it.

Opium facilitates that magic-carpet effect; it completely relaxes your body, and hence your mind, without blurring it. You could function quite efficiently as a lawyer, doctor or bank clerk on opium. At Kennedy, I relaxed during the grueling hour it took to struggle through passport control, and baggage claim, and Customs. The opium cut out any concern. I languidly smoked a cigarette, leaning up against a post, confident that my torn, battered bag, peppered with pellets from a Colt .45 air pistol, would arrive intact. While gazing at the friendly crowd, all undoubtedly as relieved as I was to be back in the USA, I reflected on my escape from London.

The British have always been as cold and insular as their landscape. The only reason they can rock is because they are so pissed off with their sodden little plot in the Atlantic. How small, gray, inauspicious and powerless it is. The blond English youth rattles the bars of his cage before being given the national tranquilizer. Everyone was reading newspapers about sex murders and child pornography. London may be the first deathtrap to go.

The population is splitting the city’s resources at the seams. My memory presents turgid crowds trudging down Oxford Street inhaling stale little cigarettes. After visiting England three times in the last six months, this reporter’s firm conclusion is that the English bite it. Throughout Europe there still exists a distaste for the American way of life, and the English, who distinguish themselves by nothing so much as their colds, have based their reactions to America on an ignorance developed through centuries of insularity. A typical example is their preconceptions about New York, most of which are erroneous.

The first and most important is that it’s very expensive. New York is not a necessarily expensive place to live, but it can be a very expensive place to visit if you have to stay at a hotel and eat in restaurants. The visitor is urged to pry an invitation out of a friend. Otherwise stay at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street.

The second is that it’s terribly dangerous. New York is not particularly dangerous if you know where you are and pay attention to your surroundings. There are more than enough people walking around stoned and drunk to keep the muggers working overtime.

The point about where you stay in New York is that the people of the area tend to have quite an effect on your life. Most of the action in Manhattan happens at night (the best new paper in town is called Night and is just pictures of people dancing by the famous photographer of girls’ legs Anton Perich), and this is why you have to think about where you’re going to hang out. For example, if you live up at 103rd and Broadway, you have to contend with the sex and drug markets up there at 3 A.M.; and living on the Lower East Side is like living in India. On the other hand, if you stay in the West Village or on the Upper East Side, it’s quite safe to move around as long as you aren’t too crazy. All the people I know who’ve been attacked were either too drunk or stoned or careless to be out on the streets alone. But why go anywhere alone anyway, unless you’re going to kill someone?

2) Here is a brief account of the natures of the people dwelling in the major residential sections:

The Upper West Side is noisy and dirty. Fat hairy people fall over in corners, sucking on paper bags, talking to themselves, coughing, spitting and dying. A friend recently moved to the Upper West Side. I said, “No, Linda, don’t go. You are in no condition to go up there.” But she went. Now she calls me up: “How could you ever let me come and live up here! Mandy’s already been assaulted five times! We’re moving. And it’s all your fault, because I had to move up here to get away from you in the first place.”

However, it can’t be all that bad, because a lot of famous people live up there, particularly in the Dakota, where John Lennon has a 17-room apartment.

The Upper East Side is where all the wealthiest people have their pieds-à-terre, from Jackie O. through Halston to Truman and Andy and Mick, and it’s easy to see why, because they have a lot of very nice accoutrements. The streets are clean, the area is heavily patrolled, the shops and buildings are exquisite. It feels like being up on a hill.

There are lots of places to go in the area, and all the best hotels are nearby. This is definitely the place, but since it’s so expensive a majority of the population is over 50, creating a slightly daffy atmosphere.

Greenwich Village. There is an East and a West Village. The West Village, where your reporter has one of numerous apartments at his disposal, must have the highest ratio of homosexuals in the world. This is basically gaydom. The battle over censorship has been won and so forth. It’s a very pleasant, completely peaceful area. I have never witnessed, heard of, or felt, any threat of violence. There are many attractive restaurants and stores. Everyone walks around hand in hand.

The East Village is inhabited by punks of all ages. They have always maintained that the East Village, also known as the Lower East Side, is the hip place to be, but a series of drug deaths, rapes and robberies in the late ’50s and early ’70s drove many tenants away. Now, however, with the emergence of punk on the rock scene, a lot of activity has been generated on the Lower East Side. Many people live down there, including Joey (“It sucks!”) Ramone, William Burroughs (who says he finds the people talking to themselves and dying in the street a useful contrast to his somewhat idyllic place in Colorado), Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell, who wrote “Blank Generation” in a kitchen overlooking the BoWery.

Soho/Boho/Nolio. The so-called “Soho” area has become famous over the last five years as a kind of extension of the Greenwich Village all-artists-have-to-Iive-in-the-same-place-so-there-can-be-a-scene mentality. Soho is basically a series of warehouses turned into loft spaces in which people live and work. Central Soho is a pleasant and expensive place. It broadens out in myriad directions, being so far downtown that it can’t be interrupted until Wall Street, and some lower Soho locations are quite dangerous. The streets are empty, poorly lit and hardly patrolled. Some maniacs live down there, and they come out at night.

Generally speaking, if you see someone lying on the street bleeding or not bleeding, vomiting or not vomiting, if you see someone staggering down the street on their last legs with eyes closed, if you see someone holding a heated debate with themselves while head banging, don’t do anything. These are leftovers from Ramones hits. They won’t hurt you if you don’t approach them.

3) The best places to go are parties. The fastest blood is connected by a never-ending flow of business parties, and everyone is always on the lookout for new people. Get invited to as many as you can. This could be difficult, but not impossible, if you don’t know any people. It probably isn’t hard to crash that big loft party downtown tonight. At most big parties the host only knows 25 percent of the guests, so you can always say, “1 came with Joan … DeMcnille. Barbara Braden?” A little cocaine will take care of any problem if the host should attempt to eject you. But really one of the best things about New York is everybody always wants to meet somebody new.

Suddenly, you’re staying with me overnight, as a houseguest, in my apartment in the West Village. There are two bedrooms. I let you have one of them to do whatever you want in because they’re far away from each other and there’s a separate bathroom.

You are extremely lucky. Tonight I have an invitation to go to Richard Avedon’s party at the Metropolitan Museum. The invitation, like all good invitations, admits two. It says black tie, so you have to get dressed up. You don’t have anything to wear?

Quick, run down to Manic Panic, that store on St. Marks Place that sells all those punk clothes. Punks always look like jewels, so if you get something there, you’ll be okay. You could go to Trash and Vaudeville or Revenge; they all have lots of stuff for not so much money. That’s on the Lower East Side, and since it’s a picturesque and sunny day, you can walk.

4) Me: So you went and got a great outfit for $25, and what else happened?

You: I forget.

Me: You ran into William Burroughs on the street, didn’t you?

You: That’s right.

Me: And he was with a guy who you know from Kansas who’s his secretary now, that big Negro.

You: He is not a Negro, he’s a Swede.

Me: I thought he was from Kansas.

You: That’s where all the Swedes went.

Me: Why aren’t the stars in the sky tonight?

You: Because they’re all on the ground.

Me: Well, we got in at… what time was it?

You: I forget. I didnt look. Were you drunk again?

Me: No, not really.

You: Then why were you running down the street being chased by that girl in the black dress with the…

Me: No, I was just running away from her, because she started to say mean things about someone I like and I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t stand it. Did you enjoy the party? Who did you see there?

You: Oh, Linda McCartney. Um… Buck Henry.

Me: Buck Henry! Who was he with?

You: He’s been hanging around with Al Goldstein over at Death magazine.

Me: How come?

You: Search me.

Me: I don’t want to. So who else did you see?

You: Er… Carole Bouquet.

Me: Who’s she?

You: She was in that Buñuel film, That Obscure Object of Desire.

Me: How do you pronounce it?

You: I don’t know. She was also in that movie with Richard Hell about being a punk rock star, and then he’s her guru or something and they move to the Upper East Side.

Me: I thought he married Suki Love.

You: That was Ulli Lommel, the German guy who made the film. He married Suki Love, and they’re making a film right now called Cocaine Cowboys, starring Jack Palance and Tom Sullivan. It was a great party, I really liked it.

Me: What was great about it? Say something. Just talk about it, tell everybody.

You: Well, I liked it because it was the sort of beginning of the New York season, and a lot of people—I think 5,000 people—came, or something, and you had to wait 25 minutes just to get in, which was sort of great, because everyone was in evening clothes and rich and stuff like that, but they still had to stand outside, just like any jerk. Like us.

Me: Yeah, like us. We didn’t mind.

You: It was fun because all those people were so upset.

Me: Did Linda McCartney have to wait outside?

You: No, because she went to the dinner with Richard Avedon before the party.

Me: Was Andy there?

You: No, he went to see A Wedding instead.

Me: He went to see A Wedding! Who was he with?

You: Just a couple of beautiful girls, and they lost their limousine. But anyway, I also liked the party because you could stroll around the halls of the museum drinking and keep bumping into somebody. I noticed that A and B are back together.

Me: Again. I know. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. And what was… he has a mustache now and she’s got a scar.

You: Well, scars are nice sometimes. It depends where they are. But anyway, did anyone have any drugs?

Me: Only C. C always has drugs.

You: So did you take some?

Me: Yes, and then D grabbed me and dragged me behind the door where they keep the brooms, and I thought, “God, this is so great, this is so great, sex in a broom closet at the Metropolitan Museum during a party for Richard Avedon!”

5) The United Nations is located on First Avenue between 42nd and 46th streets. I went there in a taxi. The U.N. is very nice because when you get there suddenly you are in a big international atmosphere, and there’s even a lawn. It is good to smoke a joint on the way over in the back of the cab with a breeze blowing in off the river as you go up First Avenue passing a heliport at 34th Street. You’re beginning to see the streets in the daytime, with all their charming mystery, weirdness and variety.

The U.N. is free. For nothing you can go and feel important listening seriously to the speeches by the mad representatives of various countries. It is all nonsense, but it is very tasteful. They were discussing South Africa when I dropped in and taking hours to tell the detailed bio of Steve Biko. One thing I noticed was that although the men looked nothing more than ordinary, most of the women were very attractive. It’s great to go there, because all the speeches are in foreign languages and you have to have an earplug so you can get a translation. If I was the translator, I know I would break in and say, “This sucks… ”

For $2 you can take a one-hour tour of the U.N. I don’t know about this bit. I was going to do it, but suddenly a woman screamed out, “The next tour will be in French only!” and I had to split. I couldn’t wait for a bunch of despicable frogs to walk around while I cooled my heels. I had places to go, things to do, people to see. This is New York! You can’t suddenly have a bunch of frogs rushing in, taking your time in Manhattan. Just tell them you haven’t got that much time. They’ll respect you and treat you better. It’s like when you take a phone call, a lot of the time they answer it with a record, the premise being that you will sit idly by listening until they’re ready to talk to you. Hang up and tell them in no uncertain terms that whenever you hear machines you always hang up.

There’s also a really good dining room called the Delegates’ Dining Room where you can go and pretend you’re delegates, or trick your new girl friend, or something.

I didn’t know what to do next, so I went and had lunch at this restaurant called Mortimer’s on 75th and Lexington with Catherine Guinness, who works in magazines here, and she told me that more of the really elegant fashion mags were coming to Manhattan from Europe with a lot of money, because they really believe that people want to be more elegant, as Diane Von Furstenberg and Halston have proved. And then I went to the Stock Exchange, about which I apparently wrote: “One of the best things is the New York Stock Exchange, 20 Broad Street, way downtown. It’s pretty hard to figure out what’s going on here, but everyone is running around making or losing money, basically. The relative informality of the whole operation is a little unsettling. It looks like a vast betting shop, and 25 1/2 million Americans own stock. The most striking thing about my visit was how bad the women in the area looked. I think all that counting gets to them.

6) There’s no point in going to all the great in places in New York before you meet some people, some New Yorkers being New Yorkers around their local watering holes. You could go to CBGB if you like rock ’n’ roll. There’s always a lot of people there, and you can talk to them, pretty much. I mean, they’re nice people and you can be very straightforward and say, “I come from X and I just got here and where should I go?” If you choose the wrong person and he’s catatonic, don’t get put off, just ask the next person. If you go to CBGB, be sure to take a cab and to get into a cab as soon as you leave, because it is on the Bowery and sometimes the people down there get quite irate late at night and rush up to hit you or piss on you, an unnerving experience and not funny when it happens when there’s no one else around, no cops and so forth. But basically CBGB is a lot of fun, and lots of kids are standing around outside banging their heads against the wall.

If you think you can get in, go to Studio 54. There is a lot of ambivalent feeling about Studio 54, but as anthropologist Peter Beard says, “You’ve got to think of it as an animals’ watering hole—it’s the number-one water hole in the universe. There’s the anthropology corner, where you find the greeting behavior, displacement behavior; the bisexual bathroom hallway; the subterranean hardcore; and the theater balcony.” For other meeting places, look in the newspapers. About all the Village Voice and the Soho Weekly News are good for is their listings. Papers worth buying for information are Interview, Punk and Night.

Going out at night in New York, use cabs. If you can afford to do it, rent a limousine for one night’s entertainment, because it’s worth seeing Manhattan from that perspective. Also the limousine drivers can be very friendly. They’ll smoke a joint and take you up to Harlem in the middle of winter to look at the hundreds of junkies shuffling on the corners, and past the Apollo theater, or crawl around Hudson Street gay-barhopping, or cruise the streets for pickups. Just like in the movies.

After a while, New York becomes a movie set. Did we already use that quote? But it’s so good we can use it again. Why aren’t the stars in the sky? Because they’re on the streets. I mean, it’s amazing how many talented and wonderful people are wandering around, and you see them all the time. I bumped into Lou Reed only yesterday. He was looking for a new apartment. “Victor, meet the Moose,” he said. I turned around and there was this guy seven feet tall and broad with it.

Everybody thinks that New Yorkers think New York is the center of the world, and they’re always saying how New York thinks it’s such a big cheese. But that’s really not true. New Yorkers know that America is a great expansive country, fascinating, completely different all over, and they want to see Santa Fe and Minneapolis, Tampa, Fort Worth. No one in New York ever says anything bad about America or tries to put down Arizona. But, boy, you just wait till you get out to Colorado or San Francisco, and even the hotel clerk and the bellboy are congratulating you. “You made it out. You got away from Death City!” “That town of gangsters!” “Boy are you lucky!” And they shake your hand and insist you stay a while. Personally, I can never wait to get back to Manhattan.

You don’t get a good look at Manhattan when you fly in on a jet, because the airport is in Queens. Meanwhile, the secret of Manhattan is to see it from the air, because Manhattan is a city that grows upward. So, the first thing to do in Manhattan is get higher than the city.

Flying is an elegant sport, and you could benefit from doing it more, anyway. The first thing to do in Manhattan is jump in a cab and tell the driver, “The heliport at 34th Street and East River Drive.” Anytime between 9:30 A.M. and 4:30 P.M. a four-seater helicopter will take you up. It is a good eye-opener. You see big blue swimming poois and big green tennis courts on top of high-rise apartment buildings. You note the very different looks of the different sections of Manhattan: an incredible array of architectural forms in the variety of buildings on the Upper East Side; the bombed-out look of the Lower East Side. You fly directly past the tops of skyscrapers. As the chopper cuts across the East River to touch down on the island’s edge, the buildings rapidly move up at you and develop into their frames just like in famous pictures. You see the whole island through a kaleidoscope as the planes of the buildings tilt. It’s a quite different view, and the seven minute ride is more than a bargain for $9 (minimum of two people).

There is also a boat (the Circle Line at 43rd Street and 12th Avenue) that goes around the whole island while a loudspeaker tells what you’re passing. It takes two and one-half hours and costs $6. I slept through the first half of the trip, but there were two good parts: when you go around the top of the island, it’s pretty fucked up; and, when you sail past the Upper West Side, the line of apartment buildings along the edge of the island looks like the forbidding wall of a giant medieval fortress. Manhattan is a fortress. As you walk along the streets you will feel as if you are “inside” the city. It even has a moat.

As soon as you get off the boat, head east toward 34th Street until you come to the Empire State Building, which is at Fifth Avenue. Take an elevator to the 86th floor ($1.70) and go out on the observation deck, where visibility runs up to 25 miles on a clear day. The observation deck faces north, south, west and east. Take a good look in all four directions and you will get a pretty firm hold on the layout, which will be useful when you think you’re lost.

7) Another lens to look at New York through is provided by the lobbies, bars, restaurants and—if you can make it—rooms of our most elegant hotels. Start at the Carlyle, tea between four and four-thirty in the afternoon. This is where the Kennedys stay. Warren Beatty has a home on the top floor so he can be three blocks away from Diane Keaton. You can’t stay there together unless you’re married.

The Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland, situated next to each other between 59th and 61st Streets, are the two major hotels for the major celebrities. Their majestic towers rise like sentinels of elegance over Central park, and as you look up at them from the avenue, you know that on any given day Mick Jagger, Francis Ford Coppola, David Bowie or Max Von Sydow may be gazing down upon you.

Go to the Sherry-Netherland for an evening cocktail and make use of their telephone-at-the-table service to call somebody up and impress them by having them call you back. Try and sit in the lobby of the Pierre for as long as you can some mid-week afternoon, just to see who’s floating through. The rich look different because they keep different hours and can afford invisible makeup. If you look like you’re waiting for someone seriously (carrying a tape recorder, for example), no one will bother you.

Across the street from the Pierre you will see the Plaza, which you may remember, as you stand gazing at it, used to be the home of Eloise, a very sophisticated girl who lived there on her own and liked it very much. Unfortunately, Eloise has long flown the coop, and the Plaza has recently been computerized. And word has come out that even the music of the violinist in the Palm Court Lounge has been bowdlerized. Go instead to the St. Regis, hidden in the shadows of 55th Street just off Fifth Avenue. This is where Salvador Dali lives in the winter. And I met Sissy Spacek there once. She was standing in a green velvet lounge wearing a green velvet dress…

Manhattan is 12 1/2 miles long and 2 1/2 miles wide at its widest point, covering an area of 23 square miles. It has what a clerk at the census bureau described as “an incredible population density of 66,923 people per square mile.” A square mile—consider stuffing 66,923 people in it. 1,416,700 people live in Manhattan, but the population is gradually decreasing. The per capita income is $6,307. An interesting figure. The island is connected by 19 bridges, four tunnels and 11 subway lines to the mainland.

Read the full issue here.

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As the wholesale price-per-pound of legal cannabis plummets in some states bordering Mexico, cartels in the country are shifting to more lucrative drugs: fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced this week that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18-45, thanks in part to criminal involvement in multiple countries.

Texas is the only state bordering Mexico without adult-use cannabis, and it shows in the prices. Mexico’s cartels once relied on organic farms of poppies and cannabis to produce drugs, but the times have changed. Illicit cannabis eradication in Mexico was slashed in half in recent years—aligning with the timeline of pot legalization up north.

Mexico’s Secretary of Defense, General Luis Cresencio Sandoval said that for cartels, cannabis and other organic drugs like opium-rich poppies are out, and fentanyl is in. 

The Associated Press reports that according to Sandoval, seizures of fentanyl soared 525 percent during the first three years of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s reign, who took office December 1, 2018, compared to the previous three years. 

During that time period, law enforcement agents seized 1,232 pounds (559 kilograms) of fentanyl in 2016-2018 and 7,710 pounds (3,497 kilograms) in 2019-2021.  

The reason for the switch is that the bottom line improves when cartel operations shift from organic opiate to synthetic opioids, which are cheaper to produce. “There was a change in consumption, there was a change in drug markets due to the ease of producing synthetic drugs,” Sandoval said. Cartels no longer have to pay for manpower to grow poppies and slowly scrape the opium that oozes from the poppy bulbs. The same could be said about the growing/trimming/curing process for cannabis.

But the synthetic drugs don’t originate from Mexico. Mexican cartels can order fentanyl online from Asia at wholesale value, then cut it up into doses ready for the street. Labs also produce drugs like meth, which is also more profitable than organic cannabis or opium. “The laboratories that have been discovered or seized in this administration have had larger capacities, which has allowed us to seize a larger quantity of methamphetamine products,” Sandoval said.

Meth seizures soared from 120,100 pounds (54,521 kilograms) in 2016-2018 to nearly 275,000 pounds (124,735 kilograms) in the last three years—a 128 percent increase. On November 18, a record-breaking amount of meth and fentanyl were discovered being delivered from a trucker at the Otay Mesa port of entry in San Diego, according to a report by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of California. Border agents found 17,584 pounds of methamphetamine and 388.93 pounds of fentanyl in the truck.

Mexico’s data matches recent documents updated on October 14, and compiled by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which operates within the Library of Congress, working directly for members of Congress. “Despite early supply chain disruptions, U.S.-bound illicit drug supplies appear to have returned to pre-pandemic levels; illicit fentanyl flows in particular appear to be thriving,” CRS reported. Just a year earlier, the CRS admitted that legal cannabis in particular is hurting cartels in another document. “Authorities are projecting a continued decline in U.S. demand for Mexican marijuana because drugs ‘other than marijuana’ will likely predominate,” CRS wrote. “This is also the case due to legalized cannabis or medical cannabis in several U.S. states and Canada, reducing its value as part of Mexican trafficking organizations’ portfolio.”

Meanwhile, Mexico’s Senate is on track to endorsing recreational cannabis.

Still, some cartel operations plan on selling cannabis, legal or not. The Daily Beast reports that the Sinaloa cartel are already working on infiltrating the legal pot market in Mexico, according to “cartel operatives.” It’s unclear how the cartel plans to move forward, such as muscling its way into licensing.

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