Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka had Coke Nails.
To explain a coke nail, it’s when someone finds the quantity of a certain illicit substance too much to consume with a dollar bill and opts for smaller amounts obtained via a long pinky nail.
With Willy Wonka being one of my favorite movies as a kid and adult, I found this fact a little weird to learn.
Looked this up and a lot of celebrities actually have been spotted for decades having them.
Carrie Fisher can be spotted with them in several Star Wars scenes.
The beloved painter Bob Ross had them.
Matthew Perry had more than one instance it can be shown on Friends.
On top of that, facts about cocaine.
41 million Americans have done it at least once, hitting just under 20% of the adult population.
94 billion dollars is spent on cocaine each year.
1.9 million Americans use it once a month.
This heavy use puts in the question of if or if not we should redo policy on cocaine laws.
Marijuana was a drug which was taboo to support legalizing in 2010, but over a decade later is recreationally legal in 18 years, 35-40% of the country will have legal access it to next year and it’s a 13.5 billion dollar market expected to grow to 70 billion by 2028.
With 321,000 full time jobs created so far, marijuana legalization has been a huge success in the US.
This success has called for an increased interest in legalizing other drugs like mushrooms & psychedelics.
It’s also started an emerging debate on if cocaine should be legalized/decriminalized in the United States.
Before starting this, every reason to not do cocaine.
What it’s made from.
It’s Coca leaves chopped up dusted in cement with acid poured on them that marinates in gasoline. After that, battery acid is used to separate the cocaine from the leaves.
And just to be clear, these are the things cocaine abuse will cause.
Blood clots
Heart attacks
Liver damage
Coke jaw “think root canals”
Sinus infections
It’s reported with the health department that 25% of people to die between 18-45, had some connection to cocaine use.
So please, for the love of God, never use this product. It’s a literal mix of battery acid and cement to get a persons liver completely fried.
But writing all this and being a person whose never done any drugs and doesn’t drink alcohol/caffeine, I actually still think a real conversation should exist on legalizing cocaine.
The fact after the truth this stuff is bad for people is they still do it.
It’s cute Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka has a coke nail, but if he was arrested for it, it’d be a $500 an hour lawyer getting him off and some tabloids get a quick sale.
For people without money, cocaine is 54% of all people in jail for drug charges in this country. Which 47% of people in federal prisons have their most serious offense being drug related.
This brings up the question of what’s better.
Literal poison being legalized.
Or
Sending hundreds of thousands of people to jail for having a weakness for a commonly used vice.
Some people say decriminalize, but that I’d argue would make it worse.
Still illegal to produce, transfer and sell, so people will still go to jail. It’d also just make it so consumers who have smaller amounts of it on hand don’t get in trouble, minus maybe a small fine. Which is something that really just helps out the Grandpa Joe’s and doesn’t address the people actually going to jail.
So what can legalization actually do?
If it was legalized and there was a form of a prescription process in it, there’s a chance it could work.
People to get access to it need health exams regularly, so they can be aware of their body and potential issues. Issues like DUI’s or being caught using it in public lead to losing access.
The other benefit is the actually quality of the cocaine could go up, because an actual lab can develop safer methods and people wouldn’t have to snort gasoline, battery acid and cement anymore.
Plus, the cost would get much lower, where a gram of cocaine currently runs around $120 is the US, which if lowered right something like $60, it’d nationally reduce black market demand and destroy cartels and gangs.
So would legalization be a good thing?
No…
But alcohol, tobacco & marijuana being legal aren’t inherently good things either.
The law sometimes isn’t about creating good, but it’s about creating less bad.
And yes, this was written sort of for the fun of bringing up this Willy Wonka fact, but some good info here.