When I wrote about cynical taxation, some days back, one responder told me that I was thinking wishfully. Here I go again, charging at another windmill. I shall never learn.

I am going to write about C17H21NO4. Readers know it as cocaine. Unfortunately, many readers are familiar with it, but few, I hope (wishful thinking again?) are its slaves. Those who are ‘familiar’ with it and increase their familiarity will certainly become its slaves –sooner than they think. They will also become poorer, much poorer, and finally they will end up destitute and mad.

It is devastating.

The strange thing is, it is called a ‘recreational’ drug, giving the impression that it is harmless. It does not ‘recreate’ –it destroys, and dismantles all you are and all you’ve got. Whoever came up with that euphemism was very wicked indeed.

Nobody can afford the cocaine habit –not even millionaires. But the craving grows, is incurable, and takes over your life. You simply have to have to have it, and when you can’t keep up, financially, with keeping yourself in doses, you will steal. You may even kill to get money for cocaine, because nothing matters except the fix. Recreational indeed.

There is a lot of bizarre behaviour in Maltese contemporary society. I strongly believe cocaine use accounts for a substantial amount. Some of the things I see while driving rattle me. Haphazard overtaking in roads which are practically single lane, signalling the wrong direction (though signalling at all is an improvement), texting while driving –it’s making me start to get scared. I just don’t know who I am driving with.

Cases of road rage are becoming more and more frequent, too. Some fatal accidents do not seem to be the result of mischance but of an irresponsible recklessness which only being under some sort of influence can induce. Of course, alcohol seems to be the prime cause, but drugs cannot be excluded.

Cocaine importation and distribution has become a sizeable industry, and the clients, who are numerous, far more numerous than any political correctness would wish us to believe, come from all classes of society; it is logical to assume that a number of users practise professions, or hold key positions in public life. The whole fabric of society is threatened by this wide spread of drug abuse.

There are sidelines to it, too. If you know the right people, you can get quite a lot of stuff at relatively cheap prices. They are second-hand articles, and they have been given up by their owners for paltry sums of money which are then used to procure shots and fixes.

If mankind were my enemy, cocaine would be my weapon of choice to ensure mass destruction

Expensive wristwatches, items of jewellery, electronic equipment, you name it. Some of it, though, did not belong to the person who exchanged it for cash. Some of it is stolen, even from family members. It is bought by the fence at ridiculously low prices, to be flogged at a neat profit. Another sideline which thrives under these conditions is loan-sharking, with all its inherent evils.

The drug-user sees all his possessions fly away like leaves in the wind, and that breeds despair. Financial security evaporates, and precariousness becomes the daily condition. Anxiety and fear start to fill the addict’s mind, dominated as it is by the insatiable craving for another shot. Families are destroyed, impoverished, pauperised. Recreational indeed.

I have spoken of the financial nightmares which cocaine inflicts, but there are other horrors as well. C17H21NO4 can produce insanity, and usually does; C17H21NO4 can paralyse a person or kill him with a heart attack; it can lead him to suicide. The habit, if not the drug itself, can destroy his liver, or infect him with HIV:

“With excessive or prolonged use, the drug can cause itching, fast heart rate, hallucinations, and paranoid delusions. Overdoses cause hyperthermia and a marked elevation of blood pressure, which can be life-threatening, arrhythmias, and death.

“Anxiety, paranoia, and restlessness can also occur, especially during the comedown. With excessive dosage, tremors, convulsions and increased body temperature are observed. Severe cardiac adverse events, particularly sudden cardiac death, become a serious risk at high doses due to cocaine’s blocking effect on cardiac sodium channels.” (Wikipaedia)

I hope no one finds refuge in the belief that what is reproduced above results only from “excessive or prolonged use”. Once you touch C17H21NO4 you will find that controlling it will become harder and harder. You don’t control cocaine: it controls you. If mankind were my enemy, C17H21NO4 would be my weapon of choice to ensure mass destruction, and when I mention enemies of humanity, because of my upbringing, I am bound to think of the devil.

The harm caused by cocaine (and other drugs, of course, but ‘coke’ is the most popular one locally) is nothing short of diabolic, as are the ways used to hook people on to it, and the subterfuge which goes into its production and distribution.

The amazing immunity with which the big fish are endowed seems almost magical, in a world where the small man gets walloped for minor offences. Slyness is the hallmark of the white powder trade. Is the devil taking care of his own?

This slyness is also seen in the way it has been popularised. How many people know that Simon and Garfunkel’s hauntingly beautiful song Bridge over Troubled Waters is about tripping on Coke? The ‘Silver Lady’ mentioned in the lyrics is the slang name for Coke at the time it was written.

Any bets for what the ‘bridge’ stands for? It is also said that the wildly-successful Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds stands for LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in code. That was another monster.

One thing is for sure: drugs and money certainly rule the world, and the kingdom of Christ is very far from being established here on Earth. If what one was told was true, if the devil is a hunter of souls, then C17H21NO4 is his most ingenious trap.

If the most manifest effect of cocaine is that it leaves you soulless, am I to be blamed if I believe that there is something really spiritually sinister behind drugs? It has the same fatal allure of the forbidden fruit, ensuring our permanence in a lost dystopic paradise. I feel there is more than the hand of man behind it all.

Charles Caruana Carabez sits on the National Commission for Further and Higher Education.