New Orleans Anarchy Linked to its Drug and Alcohol Consumption?
By Mary Mostert (09/03/05)
While it is sad and embarrassing to most Americans to read reports of the anarchy that has occurred in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, what is really surprising to me is that people are surprised it happened. New Orleans, the “Big Easy,” has an economy and a culture that for 300 years as glorified and ADVERTISED its Sins as a reason for tourists to come visit. One New Orleans ad begins.
“This is New Orleans. Queen City of the South. An exotic temptress. Steamy, sultry and sensual. For three centuries sunken lazily in the bend of a mighty river near the edge of a continent. Suitors come from near and far - drawn by her beauty, intrigued by her sounds and smells, beguiled by her grace, enchanted by her spirit,”
“This is New Orleans. Feel free to fall in love. Sin at will. There's always time for guilt tomorrow, or the next day. Eat. Drink. Be merry. Eat more. Drink more. Let it all hang out. Dance wildly. Lose control. Yelp and yowl. Howl at the moon, if you're so compelled. Or just take it easy. Get a good night's sleep. Sip café au lait at dawn and watch the rich, muddy waters of the Mississippi turn golden-red with the rising sun.”
As far back as 1884, Mark Twain noted that “New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
“Sin is a way of life in the city that invented the cocktail,” the ad went on to report, “and, later, the drive-through daiquiris shop, the city where 200 years ago a game of dice and chance was introduced and came to be known as 'craps.'
“In a city that licensed and taxed its prostitutes well into the 20th century, libidinous appetites are still amply whet; Bourbon Street teems with establishments that hawk the pleasures of the flesh to passersby with such offers as 'Live Sex Shows' and 'Wash The Girl of Your Choice.' But between lust and gluttony - New Orleans' two most popular sins - gluttony is always tops.”
And, all that was available before legalized gambling was introduced in the mid-1990s. So many casinos were introduced that some of them had gone out of business before Katrina took out the rest of them.
While all that sin and self-indulgence may be tempting for the tourist trade, there are some very practical reasons why is really doesn’t create a good city to live in. The amount of alcohol, illegal drugs, prostitution, gluttony and crime in New Orleans has been part of the lure of New Orleans for generations.
Then - it suddenly vanished literally overnight this week as the entire city was literally washed away when the levees broke. It was not just food and water that disappeared over night. It also was the alcohol, the legal and the illegal drugs, the tobacco, the prostitution, the gambling that also disappeared. We are watching a city in which tens of thousands of alcohol, drug and tobacco users have suddenly, and unwillingly, stopped using their addictive drug of choice.
As near as I can determine from what I have read, just about NO ONE in the business of disaster management was prepared for what should have been an obvious problem when thousands of people living in the “Sin City” environment of New Orleans were thrown together in refugee shelters. Besides the normal difficulties of the disaster, some of those refugees obviously were suffering the agonies of cold turkey withdrawal pains because President Bush lacked the foresight to stockpile and promptly distribute the mind-altering substances to which they are accustomed.
In 2003, there were 162 drug rehabilitation and addiction treatment centers in Louisiana, treating thousands for alcohol and/or drug abuse problems. Just reading some of the news reports that quote irrational and angry citizens who are blaming President Bush or the disaster relief personnel for their problems, sound to me like drug and alcohol users I have met over the years that were drunk, drugged or crazed for want their preferred mind-altering substance.
Unfortunately, the way our news media works, the comments of the drunk, the drugged, the crazed and the irresponsible are most apt to be the subject of any story’s headline. For example, the off-script remarks made by rapper Kanye West last night on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Concert series at New York’s Lincoln Center to raise money to help victims of the disaster probably convinced a lot of Americans the victims were not worth helping. After calling President Bush a racist who didn’t care about blacks (New Orleans’s population is 67% black), he said: “So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible.
Obviously, that collection of words, which is not even a sentence, is a blanket indictment of any and all of us who do not happen to be black or poor. And, naturally, it was front page news in Al Jazeera which headlined the story for the Arab world: “Rapper accuses Bush of racism.” The article reported:
“‘George Bush doesn't care about black people,’ West said from New York during the show aired live on Friday on the East Coast on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC and Pax, just before cameras cut away to comedian Chris Tucker.
“West, who is black, suggested moments earlier that delays in providing relief to survivors of the hurricane that hit the US Gulf Coast on Monday and flooded New Orleans were deliberate.
“He said America was set up ‘to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible.’”
While admitting that he had not himself, as yet, contributed anything for the relief of Katrina victims, West also said: “And, you know, it's been five days [waiting for federal help] because most of the people are black.” Of course, most of those New Orleans policemen who turned in their badges rather than cope with harassment, threats and attacks from mostly black citizens were also black.
I suggest to the media that the real story here is why trained, local black policemen are quitting their jobs rather than trying to help people of their own race who are shooting at them while complaining the police are not doing enough to help them. President Bush, after all, is still on HIS job, doing what he can to assist.
And the rest of us need to prepare physically and mentally to help one another in times of emergency, as well as help ourselves, instead of merely just complaining.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Mary Mostert
