You may wonder what is the common denominator of those words in the headline. I think it's pretty obvious but if you do not, keep reading.
Here is the story as I felt it:
I spent the whole evening on 18.02.2012, watching the "Going Home" Ceremony of Whitney Houston live on CNN. It was hard watching. More than three hours friends and relatives of Mrs Houston shared their memories about her with the whole world. It was touching. Everyone talked about her being a wonderful performer, a loving person and an unspeakable talent. However, the topic about her personal struggles with drug addiction was not omitted entirely.
After the ceremony I couldn't fall asleep. I was browsing through the Internet when I ran across a two-part documentary by a top Bulgarian journalist, Miroluba Benatova, about Bulgarian drug smugglers kept in Brazilian prisons. Some of the interviewees were Bulgarians who said they were convicted of smuggling because the police found raw cocaine in their suitcases at the airport. However, other Bulgarian prisoners said they were arrested because the police thought they led suspicious conversations on the phone, allegedly they were talking about smuggling drugs. All of the prisoners were sentenced to five to ten years in prison.
After watching all this I couldn't help but link those two broadcasts I watched that night. Then I remembered Oprah Winfrey's interview with Whitney in 2009 when Mrs Houston admitted she had problems with drugs. A problem the whole world already knew about. Houston explained she was smoking marijuana and she laced it with raw cocaine. She also confessed she has been doing that for years.
Here comes the paradox, followed by at least a dozen rhetorical questions. Why governments, NGOs, lobbyists, interest groups and pretty much everyone all over the world vigorously stated they were fighting against drugs when nobody has ever asked Whitney how she got her raw cocaine? Who sold it to her? Why did it happen that everybody knew that a vast majority of celebrities was addicted to illegal substances and still nobody has ever tried to prosecute and put in prison their dealers? Why did they put in jail drug mules in Brazil caught with a few kilos of cocaine in their bags but they did not also throw in jail Whitney's dealer whom she gave her fortune of tens of million dollars to?
The questions kept coming. Was there political reluctance to fight drugs or were there business interests involved? Last but not least, would people worldwide have been mourning on 18.02.2012 because of the death of Mrs Houston if her longtime dealers were convinced, prosecuted and put in jail just as the Bulgarian mules were in Brazil? Nobody would ever know the answer to the last question but it's definitely worth thinking about it!
