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Samuel, greying daily under the pressure of the tropical sunlight, has a smile that remains infectious despite his troubled years. And though he might appear cautious to strangers upon first meeting him, most people that know him well argue he should be, for he has paid his dues.
Though Samuel with his grey dreadlocks still twisted may look like an old man, he had only just passed his thirty-fourth birthday days before we met a week back. He is a good man too by local standards, for everyone in the village that he calls home openly will admit he would never hurt a fly, much less another villager.

Those around him that know him best refer to Samuel as "smoke stack". His friends recount to me the real damage they see that was inflicted upon their neighbour following his years of incarceration within the Belizean maximum security prison in the Belize District known as Hattieville. One told me bluntly, "you have to wonder what justice was rendered by locking up 'Smoke Stack'". In Samuel's own words, what emerges is a chilling tale that convinced me on the spot that I hope I never see the system from the inside.

As Samuel explains in explicit terms, "I spent twenty-one months for a half a pound of weed I got caught with on my bicycle one day while riding back down from the Maya mountains towards my home in Dangriga. I had done the trip for years, the law knew what I was up to, s&%t, I even gave smoke to cops. I'd cut them out handfuls at the checkpoints back in those days. But inside Hattieville, s&%t, I got educated real fast, cause while I was on the inside, I saw a motherf&%$er get beaten close to death for nothing more than being in the wrong f&%king spot at the wrong f&%king time, adios motherf&%$er…"

Samuel readily admits that he still smokes 'ganja', the street word for the clinical name of 'cannabis sativa L.' or the more commonly known slang term for 'marijuana'. He also still rides the same roundtrip to and from the slopes of the Maya mountains from his home in Dangriga that caused him all the trouble and the term of imprisonment in the first place. All in the name then as now in order to get the "sticky s%&t", as Samuel refers to the high grade marijuana, that he peddles on the streets of his hometown. "Smoke stack" admits openly, he plans to do just that until the day he dies.

And then there is 'L.M.' who claims he did several years in Hattieville for burglary and rape because in his angry words, "the b&t%h lied". 'LM' says he got out on being good in prison and then immediately as he will tell anyone that cares to listen, "I got popped again for selling weed and did another two years cause I couldn't pay the liar (lawyer). "As L.M. attempts to convince this reporter as well as those that were within hearing distance the day we talked together in a small bar near the ocean just off the main street in Dangriga, "Man, I was just trying to feed me wife and three kids. You can buy the s%&t on every corner in every town in Belize and when you happen to get caught, f&%king life comes to an end."

L.M. says the burglary and rape charges both stemmed from a domestic dispute with the common law wife that he still lives with day in and day out and has for over the last eleven and a half years, less the time in Hattieville. And regardless of his time spent in Hattieville, L.M.'s mood swings into defiance when it comes to his views concerning the police and dealing dope. Indeed, selling drugs on the street corners throughout the towns of Belize to make that fast 'buck' as L.M. will tell you "was a no-brainer. And if I had the dollars to pay the cops off, well I would have walked on the drugs charge."

For as L.M., who is not yet 35 years young and a father of three children, told me, he first got the controlled substance "fronted to him" by his uncle who works as part of an eight-man growing team. L.M. claims the teams regularly dodge those charged with the process of interdiction throughout Belize, from the fields in the Orange Walk District to the remote highlands of the Toledo District.

According to L.M., the growing teams go deep into the jungle bush for roughly one hundred and twenty days or so depending upon the weather and the rains. L.M. says that it takes that time for the crop to reach its maturity. He continues by saying, "the growing teams monitor from within and from outside their team the movements of the 'Dragon Unit'. They return to their families and fellow villagers with the cash crop". The 'Dragon Unit' is the elite division of the BDF (Belize Defence Force) that takes on the monumental task of fighting the growers and smugglers throughout Belize.

Once the four members of the growing team return with the harvest, L.M. says that almost immediately after they are repatriated with their village life, they are replaced by four other villagers that head for the bush to re-plant, grow, protect and harvest. It's all done in an effort that ultimately is required to meet the unrelenting demand both on the domestic front as well as the international market. The cycle goes on and on despite the billions of dollars worldwide for the manpower and training thrown at the growers and smugglers by the combined efforts of the Belize police and defence force, the United States DEA (Drug enforcement Agency), INTERPOL and law enforcement agencies from Paris to Asuncion to Capetown.

In essence, demand dictates just as the business of fighting drugs does, a budget that far exceeds the fiscal budgets of such countries as Belize, Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia in this hemisphere. The poorer developing nations in the world that face poverty and civil unrest such as Afghanistan have a hard time curtailing the drug industry. Afghanistan is responsible for 90% of the world's heroin production and despite the invasion of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban in the US's ongoing war upon the shadows of terror, there has been a sharp increase in 'poppy' cultivation, the base product required for producing the illicit drug that now is the drug of choice in affluent communities in America and Europe. So too in the South American countries of Colombia and Bolivia that have in recent years seen a drastic influx of dollars focused upon the war on coca cultivation as well as exportation of cocaine, both have realized marked increases in production.

Even in the Ache Province in Indonesia that this past winter suffered nearly total devastation in the December 2004 Tsunami, a part of the world long realized for its marijuana production as well as its rebel oppositions to the Indonesian government, the business of drugs goes on. In that archipelago nation an Australian citizen was recently sentenced to 20 years for trafficking 4.5 kilograms of marijuana in a place where it is grown by local farmers. In the Schapelle Corby case in Indonesia she was sentenced while evidence clearly points to the reality that she was set-up in an intricate smuggling operation that involved airport baggage handlers from Brisbane to Sydney to Denpasar. Around the globe the business of drugs and fighting the smugglers and producers goes on, generation after generation.

In the end, whether we like to admit it or not, well it results in young lives that are thrown into overcrowded jail cells from Kenya to Cambodia to Uzbekistan to Belize. Despite all the good intentions of those that are charged to watch over them, as is the case in any country developed or undeveloped on the surface of the globe, the paroled prisoner exits a more informed and better connected enterpriser than he or she ever dreamed imaginable. And when their life has been destroyed, the choices to survive often push them deeper into the underworld of crime.

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