Post-Katrina drug war aftermath

Interviews with more than 100 drug dealers and users in New Orleans and Katrina turned up stories like: white crystal meth cookers instructing black crack dealers on how to cook up the drug on their kitchen stoves; an explosion in heroin use and availability that has resulted in the drug being consumed in all manner of strange and fascinating ways from heroin-laced gumbo sold for $10 a cup, to tightly-rolled marijuana blunts packed with the drug; dealers from storm-wracked neighborhoods moving into surrounding areas and clashing with established dealers (this may go far in explaining the current murder epidemic in New Orleans); and, perhaps most disturbingly, thousands of "emancipated youths" (teenagers returning to New Orleans to live on their own, with absolutely no parental supervision) entering into the drug game in order to support themselves financially.

And:

Since the storm, dealers have grown so bold that they sell directly to just about anyone on the streets, a big break in tradition in the drug business - particularly crack - in which selling to unfamiliar customers is verboten as they often turn out to be informants or undercover cops. "The dealer does not think there is any likelihood of arrest or conviction," explained DPRI's Stanley Hoogerwerf, "so he has eliminated the intermediary, who is now added to the ranks of unemployed in New Orleans".

Actually, the Guardian makes the same point in terms of commentary that immediately sprang to my mind: didn't we see the macro version of this piece in Rolling Stone's mind-boggling "How America Lost The Drug War" article? Why yes, yes in fact we did. There's nothing so outrageous in New Orleans that you can't find something equally outrageous in Columbia or Mexico or in a downed CIA airplane, after all.