Le business des stupéfiants

I am a huge fan of Amaryllis Fox which is why I watched. I found every episode to be very informative, entertaining, sad, scary, and interesting. My only issue is that I wanted MORE of every episode! **To those who keep bashing Amaryllis for looking so different during the show, she was PREGNANT! She was extremely swollen all over which is why she looks like she had face/lip injections. Plus what a stupid thing to comment about anyway!

Nothing new or groundbreaking is presented in the series. However, in a world where nearly all education on drugs is politicized in some way in favor of advocating the "war on drugs", the presentation of the material seeks and, in my opinion, successfully serves to re-baseline public knowledge of the black market of various drugs in a simple, digestible and entertaining way - suitable and obtainable for the massive Netflix audience to consume. This series knows what it is, knows what it is trying to convey, knows the audience, and executes its objectives well.

The Business of Drugs has some good info if you are new to the subject matter and and an engaging host to guide us through it. If you have watched things like this before however it doesn't really break any new ground other than the subtle political drops.

The first "hold on a sec" moment was, calling FARC "far right", when in reality FARC was a Marxist-Leninist rebel group.

From the Wiki, Ideology: Marxism-Leninism, Guevarism, Bolivarianism, Revolutionary socialism, Left-wing nationalism, Foco theory

Political position: Far-left

There is also the insinuation that legalizing cocaine might curb the black market. Obviously that would not be true (production costs, transportation, taxation, etc.) and the black market would still thrive. Also, Legalization would only introduce the product to more consumers as we are seeing with cannabis.

Strangely the legalization theory is undermined later in the documentary when bringing up the thriving black market with legal marijuana. Stranger still is the assertion of how marijuana is being used to keep black men in legal troubles so they can't vote and thus ensuring there will not be another Obama in the White House (sic). I'm not making this up, they said this, in a documentary that is supposed to be giving us facts. There is also mention that the high start up cost of legal marijuana is racist and sexist. Yeah, they said that too.

Add in another slight on conservatives and another remark blaming capitalism for the fentanyl crisis that in their opinion can be solved with more government and more regulations. A quick skim through the credits and I see the name Bloomberg, yep, that one.

It's a shame Netflix has these types of documentaries that seem to be soft political messages hiding inside of compelling subjects and some decent information. I think I just might stick to movies if this is going to be the case

The best 'drugs' documentary I've ever seen. It was a very successful job. The presenter is good, the stories are good, the topics mentioned are good, the analysis is good ... I felt the quality while watching.

Shallow reporting and very little understanding or interest shown in how drugs impact all countries not just USA.