Even before diplomatic relations were established, traders were importing the drug. Drug addiction was a foreign concept before contact with humans. Now, drug addiction and alcoholism was commonplace in the Empire and a part of the culture. The Arthropodan Emperor declared drug and alcohol addiction even more dangerous to the fragile social fabric of Arthropoda than the human pestilence and their satellite TV. Nowhere was the American contamination of the Arthropodan culture more pronounced than on the shared colony of New Colorado. Even the planet’s name had been corrupted by the human pestilence. After several wars, the Arthropodan Empire and the United States Galactic Federation divided New Colorado at the equator, but the contamination spread north anyway. During peacetime, commerce flourished between the spider North and the human South. Citizens of the Empire consumed large amounts of blue powder and endangered their health by eating fast food from Taco Bell, KFC, and McDonald’s.
