When you really start poring over the media’s reports on the issue of drugs, you come up with a lot of vapid stories about how country X has increased its drugs seizures.

The latest asinine attempt to curry political favour was today by Turkey (though China gets a dishonourable mention too).

According to Turkey’s media whore press advisor, anti-drug operations in the country were up 23% on last year with a five-fold increase in hashish confiscations (3.75 tons), a roughly 20% increase in heroin confiscations and a 23425% increase in vapid press releases.

I mean seriously, does anybody actually fall for this rubbish?

The whole point of these media outings are to curry political favour with constituents, allies and interntaional organisations who hold purse strings of some sort. The stories never mention the overall local production of drugs so that the reader has something to compare the confiscations against and realise exactly how pathetic these small claims of victory are.

The actual production of drugs almost always dwarfs the amount confiscated.

If these releases were of actual serious assaults against drugs or drug traffic, the full picture would be given to the reader.

As it stands these media releases reveal far more about the politics of drugs than they do about drugs or efforts against drugs themselves.