Conversación en inglés 2.2: La guerra contra las drogas

Después de esto, hablamos de Mexico, y el aumento de los cárteles de drogas (tras la caída de los cárteles de Medellín y Cali en Colombia), con montones de datos estadísticos sobre los problemas sociales actuales en Mexico.

Acabamos con una charla sobre lo que seguramente va a pasar en el futuro, junto con varias posibles maneras de acabar con el problema de las drogas.

Por último, este podcast contiene una clase de 5 minutos sobre vocabulario coloquial en inglés sobre drogas. En absoluto hemos decidido incluirlo porque estemos a favor del consumo de drogas, sino porque sabemos que este vocabulario aparece de forma habitual en libros, películas y música y por lo tanto es extremadamente útil para que cualquier alumno de inglés interesado en la cultura popular sea capaz de por lo menos reconocer el «vocabulario sobre drogas».

Fragmento de la transcripción de la conversación

MARK: Hi, and welcome back! We’re in Parc Turó again, and my name’s Mark…
TOM: And my name’s Tom. Today we’re gonna[1] talk all about the war on drugs. Now, the illegal drug trade is a global black market[2], worth[3] in 2003, 321 billion US dollars a year, which is one percent of the total global commerce. Can you explain to us, Mark, where the term ‘war on drugs[4]’ first came from?
MARK: Well, it originated in the U.S., when President Nixon used the phrase in a 1971 speech…
TOM: And what did he say?
MARK: “The war on drugs is a campaign[5] of prohibition and foreign[6] military aid[7] being undertaken[8] by the U.S. government, with the assistance of participating countries intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade[9]…”
TOM: OK, so first of all we’re gonna look a little bit about…a little bit at the history and evolution of the war on drugs, and we have to begin this with a little note that in the early 19th century, the British government was the first major international drugs trader[10], and our government sold lots of opium to China, and in 1914, the first U.S. law came out[11] restricting[12] drugs, so it wasn’t until the…20th Century that the first…uh…prohibition laws came out and the illegal drugs, drugs trade has arisen[13] as a result of that prohibition, and what happened after then, Mark, what steps[14] did…uh…the U.S. take?

Sobre la Conversación en inglés…

We decided to do this podcast as not only have we visited (and love) two of the countries we focus on in the audio – Colombia, and Mexico – but we have many friends from both these countries.

Sadly in the last 30 years, both Colombia and more recently Mexico have suffered huge social problems due to the quantity of drugs produced in, and trafficked through both countries, which in turn has been driven by the huge demand for illegal drugs in the USA and Europe.

In this English conversation, we begin by talking about the history and evolution of the “War on Drugs”, before focussing on Colombia – and discussing “Plan Colombia”, the USA’s huge package of economic aid aimed at crushing FARC as well as Cocaine production in Colombia.

Following this, we talk about Mexico, and the rise of the drug cartels (following the demise of the Medellin and Cali cartels in Colombia), along with lots of statistics about the current social problems in Mexico.

We finish off with a chat about what’s likely to happen in the future, along with various ways of tackling the drugs problem.

Finally, this podcast contains a 5 minute English vocabulary class on Colloquial English drugs vocabulary. We decided to include this not because we support drug taking in any way, but because we accept that this vocabulary regularly appears in books, films and music and therefore it’s extremely useful for any English student interested in popular culture to be able to at least recognise the “vocabulary of drugs”.

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