Let’s stop clapping for drug busts and start reckoning with who’s really high.

Every time a headline screams about a gargantuan drug seizure—like the recent Thai authorities boasting over two tons of crystal meth off the streets—the world is supposed to breathe a sigh of sterile middle-class relief. But let’s be honest: this isn’t a story about good triumphing over evil. This is a sick victory lap in a war where the most rotted winners never see handcuffs.

The ritual is laughable: uniformed cops posing before phalanxes of vacuum-sealed bricks, press releases dripping with self-congratulation, and somewhere, a government minister waggles a finger at ‘the cartels’—as if that platinum wristwatch wasn’t paid for by the same poisoned cash. All this, while journalists parrot the numbers, as if $90 million in meth burned is $90 million in safety earned. If you’re nauseous, you should be.

Here’s the ugly truth: The global drug war isn’t really about public health. It never was. It’s about creating spectacle—about letting governments, cops, and international agencies cosplay as heroes to distract from the real customers: the world’s white-collar consumers, money launderers, and the banks that wink at blood money because it keeps the machine running. For every ton of meth seized in Thailand, five slip quietly through false-bottomed shipping crates and diplomatic pouches, destined for the same Manhattan penthouses and Silicon Valley parties where morally flexible elites slam lines soundtracked by TED Talk playlists.

Do you actually believe the seizures are a victory? Or are they a performance—a grotesque commercial for ‘order’ that justifies bigger budgets, shinier weapons, and a permanent state of fear, while millions rot in jails for shoving a tenth of a gram into their veins? The system needs meth to keep flowing. Meth makes rich men richer, poor men imprisoned, and power all the more unaccountable. Pretend the crackdown works if you must; the rest of us will watch the market adapt within weeks.

So if you read about that $90 million bust and feel reassured, ask yourself: Who are you kidding? You are the intended audience—a bourgeois spectator comforted by theater, unconcerned with the root rot underneath your own feet. The real scandal isn’t two tons on the dock; it’s that the global north’s insatiable demand and the global south’s orchestrated supply chain are kept alive by dog-and-pony shows like this one.

Next time, don’t clap for the cops. Demand to see the bank ledgers and airline manifests, the extradition treaties that never touch the real bosses, and the audits of every politician’s foreign properties. Two tons of meth is the tip of an iceberg built of hypocrisy—one you probably float on, whether you’ll admit it or not.

This article was inspired by the headline: 'Thai authorities seize more than 2 tons of crystal methamphetamine worth over $90 million - AP News'.