See illustration credit below.
The following is an excerpt from p. 64-65 of Chapter 1, “Precious Crystals: What Salt Teaches Us About Drugs” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
[This excerpt is the 4th in a 4-part series exploring the parallels between history’s salt merchants and today’s drug dealers, both legal and illegal. Read Parts 1, 2, and 3 here.]
4. The most successful smugglers of salt and other drugs have been treated as folk heroes and given colorful names
The next group of parallels relates to the people who have gained infamy through smuggling salt or other drugs. Across the world, smugglers and merchants of illegal salt were seen as “popular heroes,” and often had “colorful pseudonyms.”[i] Kurlansky writes of one from France, Françios Gantier, who was known as Pot au Lait, or Milk Pitcher.
The drug traffickers and dealers of recent generations have also been described as “popular heroes.”[ii] They also often have colorful pseudonyms. Consider Joaquin Guzmán Loera, more commonly known as El Chapo or “Shorty,” “Freeway” Rick Ross, the notorious cocaine dealer from California, or Augustus Owsley Stanley III, known in psychedelic circles as “Bear.”[iii] These are just some of the most popular drug dealers with unique nicknames and an almost mythical status among drug users. There are countless more.
5. Producers and distributors of illegal salt and drugs have faced perpetual, violent conflict with the state, incarceration, state-sanctioned murder, etc.
The final group of similarities relate to smugglers’ historical and ongoing relationship with the state. History’s salt smugglers and today’s drug dealers have faced violent opposition from their respective governments. They have been met with surveillance, arrest, incarceration, and murder at the hands of the state.
Historically, various groups of illegal salt smugglers around the world engaged in perpetual battle with law enforcement. In France, for example, under the gabelle, there was “something close to a state of permanent warfare” between the illegal salt traffickers and the salt police, the gabelous, according to Kurlansky.[iv] In India, under the British-imposed salt tax system, police repeatedly raided and arrested people selling salt illegally, and killed activists who advocated on their behalf.[v]
China also saw violence between salt smugglers and law enforcement. Using language eerily similar to Kurlansky’s, one journalist wrote that in parts of China, “a state of continual warfare” existed among the “hated ‘revenue officers’ and illicit salt-makers.”[vi] Replace the salt with illegal drugs and any of these scenarios could describe the US over the last century.
And just as modern drug policy has resulted in millions of incarcerated bodies and untold deaths, history’s various salt laws also produced high rates of incarceration and death. Under the French gabelle punishments were drastic. Those caught merely possessing contraband salt were subject to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor. People caught with both salt and weapons were executed.[vii]
Before the gabelle was over, thousands of French citizens, including children, had been executed or incarcerated by the French crown for salt law violations. Similarly, thousands of military personnel had been involved in the fight against salt smuggling.[viii] Salt historian Multhauf estimates that, during the gabelle, “one third of the galley slaves in France” were imprisoned for violating salt laws.[ix]
In recent times it is not thousands, but many millions, who have been incarcerated or killed for violating drug policy. Of all the people currently in federal prisons, roughly half of them are locked up for drug charges.[x] The US uses drug policy and incarceration to create a class of involuntary, sub-wage laborers, just as the French aristocracy enjoyed the fruits of labor of countless salt prisoners.
Similarly, law enforcement and military personnel have been deployed to terrorize and murder people who produce, distribute, or use illegal drugs. Prosecution of drug law violations has become the War on Drugs involving decades of senseless violence between police, drug traffickers, and innocent bystanders.[xi]
There are even more parallels between salt and drug smugglers, but the above points should be more than enough to demonstrate their overall similarity. Salt and many drugs have been extracted from natural resources in ways and places beyond the reach of state control; their production and trafficking have often (but not always) been delegated to economically or socially marginalized groups; they have been sold openly in the streets by organized syndicates, sometimes falsely labeled or prepared to appear legal; the most successful smugglers of salt and other drugs have been treated as folk heroes and given colorful names; and the producers, distributors, and users of illegal salt and drugs have faced perpetual, violent conflict with the state, including arrest, incarceration, and murder.
What we find is that the lives of history’s salt smugglers and today’s drug dealers have more in common than not. They are in fact so similar that if we were to figuratively swap their products, their lives and business practices would otherwise be almost indistinguishable.
Moving on, we will next consider some rather abstract connections between salt and drugs. Salt’s very existence has implications for today’s drug trade which are even less obvious to the untrained eye. It is to these areas that we now turn our attention.
[Stay tuned for an excerpt which discusses the famous chemist Humphry Davy’s role in the salt derivatives industry, and click here to read about the historical connections between salt, petroleum, war, and drugs.]
Endnotes
[i] Kurlansky, 231, 233 and 371.
[ii] Hernandez, 173.
[iii] Hernandez, 371; Webb, 358; Jarnow, 88, 263-264.
[iv] Kurlansky, 232.
[v] Kurlansky, 351.
[vi] “Salt Smugglers Organize…”
[vii] Vitale, The End of…., 129 and throughout Chapter 7; Hernandez, throughout book; Multhauf, 14; Kurlansky, 233.
[viii] Kurlansky, 233.
[ix] Multhauf, 14.
[x] United States Department of Justice, “Prisoners in 2019.”
[xi] Hernandez, 43; Webb, 359.
Sources
Hernandez, Anabel. Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers. Verso, New York, NY. 2014.
Jarnow, Jesse. Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Da Capo Press, Boston, MA. 2016.
Kurlansky, Mark. Salt A World History. Penguin Books, 2002. New York, NY.
Multhauf, Robert P., Neptune’s Gift: A History of Common Salt. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. 1995 [originally published in 1978].
“Salt Smugglers Organize in China.” The Evening Star, Sep 5, 1935. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1935-09-05/ed-1/seq-13/
United States Department of Justice. “Prisoners in 2019.” Bureau of Justice Statistics, Oct 2020. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p19_sum.pdf
Vitale, Alex. The End of Policing. Verso, New York, NY. 2018.
Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, New York, NY. 1999.
Illustration credit
Illustration of French gabelle-era salt bust from Ernest Lavisse's Histoire de France at http://rodama1789.blogspot.com/2022/05/salt-smugglers-cont-policing-gabelle.html
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