Crack hyperbole about tragedy in Brazil in Wall Street Journal

"Hundreds of zombie-like [crack] addicts who by night wander a downtown no man's land known as Cracolandia." That's the second sentence of the breathless, hyperbolic Wall Street Journal page one story, "Brazil's Emerging Market: Crack." Not until the end of the 19th paragraph, out of 22, do we learn why the crack addicts wander: "The simple reason is they have nowhere to go: Most treatment centers are full."

Practically leading with "zombies," a reader may suspect the story is likely to be the common stew of cliches and fright mongering. You won't be disappointed --

* The fiendishly clever drug traffickers "seek the path of least resistance" because the risk of prosecution in Brazil is less than in the U.S. No mention that 100s of thousands of American and other drug traffickers have ignored long U.S. penalties for 25 years.

* Bad countries (with governments not to the liking of the U.S. or the publisher, in this case, Rupert Murdoch) are complicit. In this story the villains are Bolivia and Peru "where populist leaders have less interest in combating [cocaine production]." But conveniently, no mention of the fact that for some time Bolivia, Brazil and the U.S. have been negotiating an anti-cocaine cooperation agreement -- which was signed yesterday, the BBC reports.

*Fiendish ploys of dealers "to market their wares" -- "confiscated crack rocks in packaging emblazoned with the face of Rondaldinho, one of Brazil's most prominent [soccer] stars," the better to lure innocent soccer loving youth to the deadly drug. Oh, how shamelessly evil. (Is it worth mentioning that tobacco and alcohol are routinely marketed in conjunction with celebrities and sports?)

*Frightening images: "Mobs of skeletal figures ambled in darkened streets. Some draped filthy blankets over their heads in the drizzly chill. They swarmed when a dealer arrived. Flames flared from crack pipes in the darkness."

This style of journalism is at least a century old. In the early 20th century, the Hearst newspapers also ran nearly identical front page stories about dope using exactly the same themes, according to historian Susan L. Speaker (For example, see her article,"The Struggle of Mankind Against its Deadliest Foe": Themes of Countersubversion in Anti-Narcotic Campaigns, 1920-1940. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY, 2001, VOL 34; PART 3, pages 591-610.)

This is a sad departure from the usual sober reporting of the Wall Street Journal.

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