The over-exploitation of resources typically brings to mind industries such as logging or mining which seek to assuage the massive consumption of first world countries. However, a new form of exploitation of the natural world is flourishing in the Cardamom Mountains of Western Cambodia. Vietnamese crime syndicates decimated the entire population of Mreah Prew trees in their native country and have recently turned to the relatively untouched forests of Western Cambodia in search of this rare tree. The Mreah Prew tree is unique to Cambodia and its neighboring Southeast Asian countries and is renowned as the exclusive source of Safore oil, the key ingredient in the popular club drug Extacy. On the global black market, a single liter of the prized oil is worth at least 2,000 dollars. It takes 1 liter of Safore oil to make over 7,000 Extacy tabs, which easily translates to over 200,000 dollars once the Safore oil is in the right hands.
Until recently, the mountainous Cardamom forest was relatively virgin and had been fortunate enough to avoid the deprecating effects of exploitation for the most part. Following the topple of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in the late 1970's, surviving members fled to the Cardamoms seeking refuge from a country that wanted justice for the horrific years of genocide it had endured at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Leaving hundreds of miles scattered with mines as they retreated into the mountains, the militants oddly helped to conserve a large area of rainforest for a couple decades. Now, this once pristine forest, home to at least 12 species found on the endangered list, is being opened up to all kinds of exploitation including illegal logging, poaching, and the extremely detrimental Safore Oil factories. They are no small operation and require heavy machinery in the process of chopping, chipping, and distilling the prized Mreah Prew Phnom trees, which are typically at least several hundred years old. Each factory can produce up to 1 ton of Safore oil a day and, with global demand for Extacy at all time high, these illegal operations quickly exhaust all the resources and promptly move on to set up another factory.
I know that we're all conscious individuals and are well-aware of the fact that our lifestyles of drastic over-consumption are quickly depleting the earth's resources and destroying the environment, but I thought this particular topic provided a unique development in this system. I feel like people are very quick to judge this kind of drug-related degradation of the environment, dubbing it a very selfish atrocity because it serves to provide drugs to party go-ers. While this is entirely true, is this type of exploitation really any more selfish than the legal exploitation that maintains an unsustainable lifestyle of consumerism and extreme comfort in the industrialized world? No. It's all the same. The legality of something doesn't correlate to it being ethical or justified. Exploitation in the name of recreation is the same whether its caused by an appetite for drugs or the desire to get places quickly in gas-powered cars or the disgusting amount of red meat eaten in the United States. Exploitation is Exploitation.
8 comments:
At the beginning of your post, you discuss in what seems to be a negative way how the forests of Western Cambodia have recently been decimated in order to accommodate the production of the Ecstacy drug. You consider this a form of exploitation. But then you try to persuade your audience how this form of exploitation is no worse than legal forms of exploitation. This is a valid argument but I am confused as to whether or not you are for or against the production of Ecstacy in Western Cambodia.
I have always been interested in how herbs and natural plants and organisms affect our brains. How things from the earth can be the most detrimental to us, more so than some synthetic creations made by scientists in laboratories. Why is this? This is because of our biological makeup and the fact that our brains react to certain chemicals and stimulants differently. I have a real interest in this and would like to research the subject and learn even more about it so that maybe my next blog can be based on the information I obtain.
Patrick, I appreciate your putting this issue in the larger context of the exploitative appetites of the privileged. I was recently reading a series of articles on drug trafficking between Mexico and the US which focused not on the degradation of the natural environment, but the degradation of the human environment. The North American demand for illegal drugs has devastated border towns with violence. It seems a perfect emblem of the destructiveness of pleasure-seeking appetites in wealthy countries, whether we're looking for the latest in refrigerators or illicit highs. Consequences that happen outside our own limited view are way too easy to ignore.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for a thought-provoking post. I wasn't aware that Extacy couldn't be produced synthetically.
Tiffany, I think Patrick's point is that exploitation for the sake of short-term gain- profits for the company or country that extracts the resource- is never justified, regardless of the relative morality of the final product. In other words, some people might be tempted to judge the degradation of the Cardamom forests as especially "bad" because the forest is being exlploited for the sake of a recreational drug. But is it any worse than the exploitation of Africans laboring in Congolese diamond mines, extracting a resource that will end up primarily in wealthy countries?
Hey Patrick, your topic was an interesting read. I had no idea that things like this are happening in the world. I like how you made the argument that legal and illegal exploitation is the same. I have to admit though, I'm still pondering this and have not yet molded my own opinion.
Interesting choice of topics, Patrick--like Jill though, I'm not quite sure of my own opinion on the issue. This could be because, unlike many of the popular issues that we hear about all the time, drug trafficking as a type of exploitation similar to other forms of legal exploitation is rarely discussed--even though it's conceptually very similar. Thanks for bringing up an important side to the "taboo" topic of illegal exploitation.
Thanks for the positive feedback, I figured this would be an interesting new aspect of a problem we've all gotten fairly familiar with, glad you enjoyed it. Sometimes I struggle to find the right way to conceptualize something, but Juliet did so very accurately. The chief motivation behind this post was simply shedding light on an aspect of exploitation that is rarely discussed, but in a broader sense the post expresses my opinion that relative legalities do not provide a basis to differentiate between moral and immoral exploitation of resources. Thanks for helping me to get my point across Juliet.
Patrick,
I liked the topic of your post. I agree with your idea that the exploitation of natural resources for recreational drugs is no more selfish that the exploitation for other material things. Whatever the cause is, harm to the environment is harm to the environment and only one thing can stop it, generation WE (us).
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