Avaliações de usuários

Police idol worship. Even Nazis had their followers. This is like the TV series "Cops" where a bunch of cameramen-groupies follow cops around snooping on people and arresting them on the flimiest of excuses to ruin their lives. The first arrest is for running a stop sign in rural LoserTown, USA. Of course, they're all making overtime, and not sweating their lives trying to take down a major gang leader who can shoot back. In the first arrest, almost a dozen cops converge on a poor addict-mother and threaten to take her children away if she doesn't show them where the $20 smudge of heroin is hidden. She shows them, and they arrest her anyway. Easy-peasy. This is how a police state works.

As the Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman said, "prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse -- for both the addict and the rest of us." He thought it "absolutely disgraceful" for the state (supposedly our "democratic" government) to be in the position of "converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail" (and, I might add, destroying their future prospects for work with a permanent prison record which limits future job prospects, which puts a 2-3% damper on our country's GDP, and creates the biggest prison population in the world.

"Repealing drug prohibition is part of a broader problem of cutting down the scope and power of government and restoring power to the people," Friedman said. It would also lower the cost of health care, denying doctors the "monopoly power to prescribe" which has historically been the purview of its citizenry.

Our western frontiers were conquered by ancestors who self-medicated. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin grew poppy in their gardens. Heroin was over-the-counter until the 1920s, barbituates into the 1950s, codeine until the 1960s. The Afghan opium farmer has more freedom than the average American boomer, dying in agony from bone cancer because he can't reach his doctor to refill his pain medication, or because he can't afford the skyrocketing costs of health care.

The War on Drugs is destroying third world countries with corruption and destroying American freedom with bureaucracy. It must end. That's the inadvertent message of this series.

I've seen a lot of documentaries on drugs and addiction, and this series belongs at the top with the best of them.

Mathew Heineman (who also directed Cartel Land and City of Ghosts) delivers more evidence of his incredible talent for capturing difficult stories in dangerous places-while delivering perspectives from people caught right in the middle of it all.

At times this documentary series reminded me of the movie Traffic, with its dramatic ability to bring to life vastly different points of view inside the drug trade. (But this being non-fiction.) Growers, traffickers, law enforcement, drug users and many others are given time in this fascinating look into the many, many sides of the ongoing opioid epidemic.

Unlike a lot of recent documentaries that feel forced into a "series" format, The Trade brilliantly uses the time and space that its five-episode format provides. Also, drama doesn't feel forced or constructed, the characters are unique and memorable, and the editing is top notch.

"The Trade" (Season 2; released in 2020; 4 episodes of about 50 min. each) brings a brand new story arc that has nothing to do as such with Season 1. As Season 2, Episode 1 opens, we are at the "US/Mexico Border, Tijuana", as we see someone climb the wall on his way over into the US. We then go to "McAllen, Texas". "After I paid $7,500 and arrived on US soil, I thought I had it made", comments one migrant. But that turns out to be incorrect, as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is doing all it can to stop the flow of migrants. We then go to "San Pedro Sula, Honduras" where gangs terrorize entire cities, making Honduras the murder capital of the world. "If I stay here, I will die", a widower comments, after her husband was brutally murdered execution-style on the street. At this point we are 15 min. into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: Season 2 is once again produced and directed by Oscar-nominated Matthew Heineman ("Cartel Land"), in my view one of the best documentarians of this era, and that is saying something. Whereas Season 1 looked at the heroin and pioiod trade, Season 2 looks at the human trade, as in: why are so many people fleeing Honduras and Guatemala, and how do they get from there to here, and then what happens to them when they get here. There is some very harrowing footage of "the caravan" of 4,000 people making their way from Honduras through Guatemala, Mexico and then to the US. Heineman introduces us to Magda, a recent widower who along with her small daughter and the brother of her recently murdered husband decide to flee. Finally tow separate comments: as to the documentary series itself, it puts forward an honest and brutal look of human trafficking and asylum-seekers, and as such I find it compelling to watch. As to the Trump administration's stance on asylum-seekers, it is shameful and of course illegal to deny genuine asylum-seekers entry to this country. We are the richest and greatest country in the world. Are we now so insecure (where once we were eager to help others) that we will not share a tiny fraction of our country's rich resources with people (including many women and young children) fleeing, literally, for their lives? Watch the footage in this documentary series if you think they are just 'faking' it...

Season 2 aired in Showtime this March, and is now streaming on demand. Although it is perhaps not quite as strong as Season 1 of "The Trade", I still find it very much worth seeking out. If you have any interest in understanding why migrants flee places like Honduras and Guatemala, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

I have seen a few doco's like this over the years, but this one is as raw as they get. I think drugs will always be part of the world we live in, but how to combat it so less people will die and less people make a living of it has so far been a losing battle. I don't see how humanity will come with a fix for this problem, unless Christ returns or these hard drugs are made legal and are manufactured and supplied in a controlled manner so people can be treated for their addiction/illness. The hard tactics as in jail time and policing it has only cost trillions of dollars and has not stopped people dying, the criminals all the way from those that manufacture, sell and distribute are the winners, including lots of corrupts officials that profit from the drug trade.

Now I am sure there will be lots of people that will say, how can you made drugs legal? Well the trillions of dollars that have been spent on this problem has not slowed this problem down, and will never ever solve this problem. Make it legal, treat it as an illness, manufacture these drugs cleanly, set up clinics where people can get their fix and get counseling, that way adictics won't have to resort to criminal activities, it will take the criminal element out of it.

But as much as I think it could be the way to slow this problem, even fix it in time, there are way to many high up people that profit from this and will oppose anything that could jeopardize their cut of the trade.

Anyway the doco is raw and has some real insight to this drug world. I even go as far to say that young people should sit down with their parents so they can see what happens when you go down the road of drug use.

10 out of 10.

This show is real life! I was a heroin addict for 10 years and besides some here or there disputes it's as accurate as it gets becuase it is real and trust me this documentary is watered down at the most. The horror of this drug is way worse than anything they can capture. If you are a recovering addict whom is not secure in there process do not watch because when u witness that process of drawing blood all over again it will makes the strongest man want to go cop a bag. So be careful!

This documentary shows all of the angles of the drug trade via a high quality production. Very impressive.

These cops bust some poor user over s 20 sack don't ever get big dealers drug war is a was of time. They act like heroes while they destroy lives of for people who need substance abuse classes not jail time. They need medical help not some over bearing. Cop calling them a junkie over a 20 sack f them. Those cops aren't heros they are collection agents for privately funded jails. I quit being a medic because of the crooked crap cops do to people jail on a dime bag out her in rehab. Its a wonder people hate cops lately even a lot of vets and medics like my self they use too much force not enough training and follow the letter of the law not its spirit F Them.

The shor portraits the heroin abuse in an ok way. However, the fight against it seems politically motivated. The unsuccessful war against drugs has been ongoing for 40 years still its presented as heroic when poor abusers and their families are teared apart. Smuggling is high as ever. The series shows the problems but the lack of portraying alternative solutions is frustrating.

You are NEVER going to change humans and their vices. I could barely get thru a quarter of this first episode. Season 1. Listening to the narration by the white do-gooder. The drug war demonstrated here is such a waste of effort and money. The crime and violence associated is ridiculous. I don't do drugs, but there should be a controlled way of producing and accessing it. Make it all locally, not imported. There is surely an element of control and greed behind the governments everywhere.