David López Canales: "We have gone from "No to drugs" to silence"

Barcelona"You'd go to a party and people would barely hide when they did a line of cocaine," says David López Canales (Madrid, 1980). "This is why this journalist decided to try to answer a question: why is so much cocaine consumed in Spain and not talked about? The result is the essay ¿A little line?, from Anagrama publishing house.

Let's start like the book. Miranda de Ebro, 2007.

— One of the funniest and most surprising news stories of recent Spain. A United Nations study ranked it as the cocaine capital of the world, behind only New York. It was a spectacle, with reporters from every television station asking residents if they used drugs. It turned out to be a lie; they had misused information, and, in fact, the UN apologized in the municipality. But the report was published in a much smaller format.

Fifteen years later, another piece of news, which in this case went unnoticed.

— Yes, a study that placed Tarragona as the second European city with the highest cocaine consumption. It was hardly reported in any media. And I think these two scenes speak to what has happened with the drug: from social scandal to normalization. But, above all, the most interesting question that arose in my mind was: why aren't the public authorities analyzing this?

Don't they analyze it?

— There's a complete void. Spain is the country with the highest number of people who claim to have tried cocaine; it's one of the largest consumers, but it's not part of the public debate. It was in the 1990s, with the heroin epidemic. In fact, at that time, when the CIS (National Commission for Statistics) asked about concerns, it tended to be unemployment, heroin, and drugs. But these gradually disappeared from the debate and the political agenda. And today, there's nothing. We've gone from "No to drugs" to silence.

You mention heroin. One of the key points is that these drugs have represented very different things.

— The junkies and the yuppies. Heroin was for the junkie in a tracksuit and without teeth. And cocaine has been linked to economic power, to artists, to entirely different circles. It's true that it doesn't leave the same physical impact, even for those who take it, although cocaine addiction is also horrific. And this affects us today. Because there is a different social perception, and it hasn't created the same social alarm.

And another important factor: the cake is not expensive.

— Forty years ago, you had to buy a gram of cocaine for 10,000 pesetas. That was probably your entire monthly salary. Today, it costs the same: 60 euros.

He says that in the world of consciousness… there is no consciousness with drugs.

— We don't wear fur because of animal abuse. We think about local products, but when it comes to drugs, there's no social awareness that it's worth it.

He says this when talking about the actress Helen Mirren.

— She explained that when she discovered cocaine in the 1970s in London, she really liked it. And she would screw up a few lines when she went to parties. Until she discovered that Klaus Barbie, the Nazi commander of the Gestapo in Lyon during the occupation of France, who later fled to Bolivia under a false identity, was involved in the cocaine business. And she saw what was behind those funny lines she screwed up.

What's behind it?

— Less than 10 percent of the population lives in Latin America, yet four out of every 10 homicides are committed there. Half a million people die each year from homicide worldwide. It's difficult to know how many are due to cocaine, but it's estimated that a quarter are attributable to organized crime. And the deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Behind drugs lie failed societies, corrupt states, and even environmental impact.

Nobody thinks about how many deaths the line of cocaine you're snorting costs.

— But states should also act. We are responsible because we are the consumer countries, and this doesn't enter into the public conversation either.

A WHO conference stands out, in which the debate did appear.

— And a major report on cocaine worldwide was commissioned. It studied the different forms of cocaine use and their impacts. They drew realistic conclusions about the difference between taking it one way or another, but this report was canceled because it went against the prohibitionist stance of the United States. A new paradigm could have been created, and I think it's a very symbolic moment and example.

He tries to think about what would happen if it were legalized in Colombia.

— Because it's the world's leading producer, and because Petro has spoken about it. Colombia has been fighting drug abuse for 40 years, and it's growing. Bolivia's production in the rest of the world was 40 tons in the 1970s. By the end of the decade, it had risen to 125. Today, we're at 3,000. The war on drugs isn't working.

He said it The Economist a few years ago.

— It was 2022, and The Economist He argued that this war on drugs has been going on for over 40 years. People still use it, and if it were legalized, the cartel problems would be avoided and state revenues would increase. But the reactions were: Have they gone crazy? This seems most surprising to me, the lack of a realistic vision on the matter. And it has to do with a puritanical and Christian moral perspective that is in the DNA of the United States, which is spearheading this strategy of punitivism.

And what to do?

— Educate people on realistic drug use. "Drugs kill" campaigns don't work, because some people try them and don't die as the ad claims. We need to educate people on prevention in a realistic way, talking about the impact and addictions they cause. And we need to address the root causes. Why do people use them?

Why do you think they do it?

— I think there are social causes, and that part of this consumption is an escape or a distraction from an exhausted society. Why is Spain also a leader in anti-anxiety medications? I don't think they're such different realities; I think it's part of the same phenomenon: malaise.

Why did you decide to write the book?

— As an excuse to try to understand why we've come to this, how drugs have become normalized, given that politicians aren't responding.