Why do we buy this?

The news is flooded with reports about the Tabloid Phone Privacy scandal.  It seems someone in the tabloid media finally crossed some line that might send someone to jail.  Aren't we all shocked - aren't they unbelievably insensitive.  But wait ... who pays their salary?  We all do.  Or, at least those of us who buy the tabloid papers.  What if we all just stopped buying their papers?  What if we encouraged our friends and family to boycott tabloids?  Can we make a difference?

I know, you are saying "I'm not the one who buys that stuff!"  Ok, but do we listen to it on the radio?  Watch it on TV?  On the Internet?   Perhaps not.  Perhaps you try to avoid it - I try too.   But someone is buying the stuff.  Why?

So, fine, maybe we aren't contributing to tabloid / paparazzi insanity.

Then, let's talk about Chocolate.  Do you buy chocolate?  Have you heard yet that most of the world's cocoa comes from Cote d'Ivoire and that some is produced with child slave labor?  So, do we think about this when we buy our chocolate?   It's pretty easy right now to buy Fair Trade chocolate: buy Mars (Dove) and not Hershey.  Buy Divine Chocolate or Cadbury and not Nestle.  Is this too hard?  Why?

(And the same can be said about Coffee.)


Ok, you are not ready to stress about Chocolate right now - Chocolate is your stress reliever - you'll think about it later.

Fine, then now it's time to think about Juarez, Mexico.  ...   ...   ...  do you already know what I'm going to say?

Someone out there in America is buying drugs from the drug cartels in Mexico, and Juarez and other cities and towns in Mexico have become the kind of war-zones that we callously watch in movies, but would not step foot in ourselves.  From a Congressional Research Service report "Mexico, a major drug producing and transit country, is the main foreign supplier of marijuana and a major supplier of methamphetamine to the United States. Although Mexico accounts for only a small share of worldwide heroin production, it supplies a large share of heroin consumed in the United States. An estimated 90% of cocaine entering the United States transits Mexico. " "Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States. "
So, it's us.  It is the United States that is the market that is responsible for all the violence and death and destruction and terror and fear.  How does that make you feel?  It makes me feel sick and I don't know what to do about it.  I don't participate in the illicit drug market.  You probably don't either.  But someone does.  Enough someones that it drives  $15 billion to $50 billion per year sales.  Why?

Why?
Because we don't care about consequences.  We don't care about others.
We care about ourselves and our pleasures.

Well, I don't believe that about you!


I believe that you do care.  I believe that you will do even more to avoid tabloid reporting and you will talk to your friends and family about it; I believe that you will think about which brand of chocolate or coffee to buy for yourself and for others; I believe that you will pray for the people of Juarez and Mexico and think about how we can take some kind of stand to stop enabling the terror.

I believe that you will take as much responsibility for the consumer footprint you are leaving in this world as you do about your carbon footprint and your garbage footprint.

I also believe that i'm preaching to the choir.  So, you tell me now.  What should I not be buying?  I want to chose to care.