Cocaine Blowback

This is from Harpers Magazine (harpers.org). link to original

Blowback

Posted on Tuesday, January 2, 2007. From October 2 remarks to the press by New York City Council Member James Sanders Jr., in response to the release of Cocaine, an energy drink containing 280 milligrams of caffeine. Redux Beverages, the drink's producer, was founded by Jamey and Hannah Kirby. Originally from Harper's Magazine, December 2006.

Mr. Kirby, have you lost all shame? Is there nothing that you won't stoop to? What will you market next? Pedophile Peanut Butter? Gang Rape Grape Juice? How about Genocidal Jelly? If you are ignorant of the horrors of cocaine addiction, then come with me and I'll take you to mothers mourning sons and daughters killed in the drug trade.

We will visit prisons peopled with broken men and women who have thrown their lives away, slaves to cocaine. We will walk together down deserted, rubble-filled streets, where fear of the cocaine cowboys is so strong you can almost taste it. Join me as I hold a prematurely born, underweight baby as she writhes and shakes, trying to get the monkey of drug addiction off of her tiny back. Perhaps then, sir, you will understand what I understand about cocaine, and you won't think it's so cool.

But you may be the type who loves only money and thinks all of humanity are but stones to be trod upon. Under those conditions we will—and must—fight you, sir. We will fight you with education. We will fight you in the streets and in the churches, in the courts and in City Hall, in the schools and in the clubs. But understand this fight: This one is for the naive, those whose lives are so empty that they seek to fill them with the false ambience you offer.