The Weekly Sneak: On the Utility of Picking Your Battles.

To all the lovely, concerned people who have ever told me they worry about my prospects for a long and fruitful life because I like to say daring things about my Head of State: you are looking in the wrong direction as far as journalistic dangers go. Jay Kay is unusually emotionally mature for an African President. Believe me, he's not crying into his clove tea about some two-bit columnist's opinion of his excellent Italian footwear and soggy leadership skills. 

Developing an interest in drug barons, however? That is the kind of plain crazy that I don't have in me, not really. I know a boundary when I see one. 

Ever since Jay Kay declared an intensification of the war on drugs, things have been moving at a dizzying pace. Not a week goes by without a drug-related story cropping up, it's like the issue has been given the go-ahead to erupt. I guess it has been waiting around for a long time for it's day in the sun. 

Who can tell how this is going to turn out? I forsee a lot of bullshit, to be honest, and perhaps some terrible times ahead of us. This is some Prohibition Era drama. If we ignore for the moment the fact that it has only taken the Fourth Administration, oh, about eight years or so to develop an interest in this matter, the efforts so far only look semi-promising. I say semi- because there's still a lot of secrecy shrouding our drug trafficking problem, for all the obvious reasons. 

Ever wonder why no journalist has ever written an in-depth expose of the Tanzanian drug industry? Especially in these days, when there are awards a plenty to be won by the tough and willing? Yeah. So I, like everyone else, am going to skirt around the issue while trying to say deep and significant things about it:

"The burning question in our case has always been the same. How do drugs that we don’t produce locally in export quantities manage to get in the country and then leave without any implication of drug barons, time after time after time?"