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Taking culture into account

Jill

A Flordia drug sting has resulted in the arrest of almost 50 Indian immigrant drugstore clerks, under charges of selling materials used to make methanphetamine — legal materials, available over-the-counter. Police claim that the clerks knew what they were selling would be used for drugs, since informants said that they were using the materials (like aluminum foil) for a “cook,” which is apparently common drug-making slang. Many of the Indian clerks say that they didn’t understand what their customer was saying — and to be honest, I’m not sure even I would have understood what was going on.

Either way, it seems a little ridiculous to me that store clerks could be arrested for doing their jobs.

15 thoughts on Taking culture into account

  1. This is ridiculous, truly ridiculous. Apparently it is against the law in Georgia to be just clueless and/or not listening to your customer.

    I mean really, when I worked in retail I would often get in a “good, good, hope this is exactly what you need” kind of response. I can only imagine if I was working in a convenience store and having enough trouble as it was understanding the culture and language. Last time I checked it wasn’t illegal to sell aluminum foil, sudafed or antifreeze. Hope we don’t start arresting folks on the way to a camping trip who easily could pick up ALL THREE of those things AT THE SAME time. ARG. I am growly now.

  2. Talk about cultural insensitivity – or just plain insensitivity towards people who are trying to master a foreign language. The individuals responsible for this sting are probably the same type of people that scream “Speak English!” when they hear various groups conversing in their native tongue. Glad to hear that these are the types leading the war on drugs.

  3. Now that is out of control. And they are using the Patriot Act in all of this as well. When will they start coming for us?

  5. Why is illegal for one person to seel legal items to another, even if they did suspect that other person was going to do something illegal with it?

    Why not prosecute gun sellers? It’s a lot more likely that a gun would be used illegally than tin fucking foil.

  6. in Oregon they’re considering making any medication with pseudophenedrine (Sudafed) require a prescription (of course you insurance won’t pay for it like a prescription drug and the price will likely go up). I guess in Georgia they may have to show up with raw cooking materials, a pan and a recipe to prove they need aluminum foil in the not too distant future.

    Why is it that the longer we have the “small government” republicans in office, the bigger and more intrusive the gevrnment gets?

  7. You can make a lot of drug paraphalia with tin foil. Moving along…

    In Indiana the biggest drug problem is meth — and it’s becoming an enormous strain on our local governments, especially child welfare. Local politicians are doing all they can to control the household items used to make meth, specifically cold medicine, by putting it behind the pharmacy counter. You would have to ask your pharmacist for a bottle, sign a release, and they’d keep you on file so you couldn’t buy more than X amount in Y amount of time.

    Having seen what meth can do to families, I’m not so against this. The drug war is a crock, but I hate seeing children suffer for their parents’ diseases. There’s a trade in here somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.

  11. I’m not sure there’s a way to wipe out the problem, but there are certainly ways to combat it in more comprehensive ways. First, taking a good look at the root causes of drug use would be helpful — poverty alleviation and employment programs would probably do a lot more good than arresting store clerks. And while I’m all for tracking down the people who are controlling and creating the drug trade, incarceration isn’t enough. If we’re going to try and stop drug users from becoming repeat offenders, rehabilitation programs make a whole lot more sense than simply locking them up and throwing away the key. Fair drug laws and sentencing guidelines — i.e., not the current kind that target minority populations — could also do some good.

    While controlling the amount of Sudafed that can be sold to a single individual is a common-sense regulation, there are more important (and more effective) steps to be taken along with it.

  14. Good gracious this is ridiculous.

    Crystal meth/speed/ice/tina/whatever the kids are calling it nowadays has been the drug of choice for Small Town America for a long time now — pointing to what Jill was saying in the comments, when there are no jobs and you have a family to feed and nowhere else to go, the idea that you can make a drug in your garage and make lots of money doing it starts to look quite appealing. $150 of ingredients = $10,000 of crystal meth. Also, when there’s not much to do in town, we are fully aware that teens are going to experiment with what’s available to them.

    Users develop an instant tolerance to the drug (I once read it takes only THREE times of use to become addicted), which of course then takes them through the downward spiral of meth addiction. Selling off valuable possessions, getting a second mortgage on the house, even stealing are actions characteristic of meth addicts because they need it that bad. And sad as this sounds, the people I have come across that are addicted to the drug will never be well again.

  15. Okay I just realized the blanket statement I made regarding several behaviors of meth addicts — reading it again makes it sound like people who do all three of those things are all meth addicts. Just to clarify — The people I know who are meth addicts (gah, this is so sad) have done all of the above.

    Bah.

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