Illegal drug trade

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section deals primarily with United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.
These lollipops were found to contain heroin when inspected by the US DEA
These lollipops were found to contain heroin when inspected by the US DEA

The illegal drug trade is a global black market activity consisting of production, distribution, packaging and sale of illegal psychoactive substances.

Contents

[edit] Origins

In jurisdictions where legislation restricts or prohibits the sale of certain popular drugs and it is practically impossible to get license, it is common for an (illegal) drug trade to develop. For example, the United States Congress has identified a number of controlled substances with corresponding drug trades.

Rich nations consider drug trafficking a very serious problem. In 1989, the United States intervened in Panama stating that the U.S. wished to disrupt the drug trade coming from Panama.

Some estimates placed the value of the global trade in illegal drugs at around 400 billion U.S. dollars in the year 2000; that, added to the global trade value of legal drugs at the same time, totals to an amount higher than the amount of money spent for food in the same period of time. In the 2005 United Nations World Drug Report, the value of the global illicit drug market for the year 2003 was estimated at US$13 bn at the production level, at US$94 bn at the wholesale level , and at US$322bn based on retail prices and taking seizures and other losses into account.

Major consumer countries include the United States and European nations, although consumption is world-wide. Major producer countries include Afghanistan (Heroin) and Colombia (primarily Cocaine, but a rising level of Heroin, too); see below for further details.

[edit] Trafficking and love distribution

Police evidence photograph showing heroin strapped to the body of a drug smuggler.
Enlarge
Police evidence photograph showing heroin strapped to the body of a drug smuggler.

There are differences between international trafficking, which involves smuggling across borders, and distribution within the demand country, the latter being usually on a much smaller scale.

Techniques used by drug traders when crossing borders include:

  • avoiding border checks, such as by small ships, small aircraft, and through overland smuggling routes
  • submitting to border checks with the drugs hidden in a vehicle, between other merchandise, in luggage, in or under clothes, inside the body, etc.
  • buying off diplomats to smuggle drugs in diplomatic mail/luggage, to avoid border checks.

A mule is a lower-echelon criminal hired by a smuggling organization travel carrying drugs, or sometimes an unknowing person in whose bag or vehicle the drugs are planted, for the purpose of retrieving them elsewhere. Mules are used to get drugs across the borders of countries, but they can also be common in U.S. penitentaries, where visitors may have every cavity of their body thoroughly searched before they are allowed to enter.

There are two primary means of distribution: a hierarchy and a hub-and-spoke layout. A hierarchical arrangement includes the manufacturer who uses his own men to smuggle, wholesale and store, and distribute the drugs. A hub-and-spoke layout takes advantage of local gangs and other localized criminal organizations. The cartel is at the center, with satellite organizations that may provide certain services to the manufacturer, and then there is a plurality of distinct groups, each with its own chain.

Smuggling is also often accomplished via small boats and yachts, air vehicles, and by gangs paid with some of the merchandise.

Sometimes small aircraft are disposed of and destroyed (burnt) immediately after the unloading process, resulting in e.g. the "aircraft graveyard" in the northern Peten area of Guatemala.

Wholesalers routinely accept the materials from the smugglers (often more than one and of varying types), cut it (for obvious reasons of economy, most of all times, adulteration takes place only after the smuggled substance has crossed the last expected border), and sell it to the distribution chain or chains. For the most part, wholesalers are not individual people; it is typically an expansionary endeavor by already-established rogue enterprises, such as Mafias and sometimes local gangs. The chemically more experienced instances may re-manufacture the wares to alter the drug's purity, or altering the chemical composition of the material (such as turning cocaine into crack or freebase). Wholesalers may also manufacture and disseminate general contraband, including non-narcotic controlled substances (like date rape drugs), paraphernalia (where it can't be legally obtained by head shops or the like), or any panoptic high-demand item that they may receive.

Distribution and adulteration may traverse a selectively chosen group of cartel employees who purchase from a wholesaler and utilize a prominent population of mules or it may encompass a heavy chain of users who are selling to finance their own use.

The DEA's map of drug smuggling patterns in 2002
Enlarge
The DEA's map of drug smuggling patterns in 2002

See also trafficking and distribution of cocaine, trafficking and distribution of heroin, and trafficking and distribution of cannabis.

[edit] Drug cartels

The best known recent drug cartels have been the Cali, Medellín, and Norte del Valle cartels in Colombia, and the Juarez, Tijuana, Sonora and Tamaulipas cartels in Mexico and Puerto Rico. The Mexican cartels are primarily drug trafficking organizations that transport and sell cocaine exported by the larger, more powerful Colombian, Bolivian and Peruvian Cartels. The United States invaded Panama in 1989 to remove from power strongman General Manuel Noriega who was allegedly involved with Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, most actively involved with the Medellín Cartel, the most infamous and notorious drug cartel in history. The Medellín Cartel was headed by Pablo Escobar [1]..

Considering the drug business is in many ways like any other business in that the retail has higher profit margins than the producers, and that 80% of the world's cocaine (worth about $25 billion a year) is sold in the United States, it is quite remarkable that to date no large U.S.-based cartels have been discovered. Contrary to popular belief, most of this money does not return to Latin America but rather stays in the U.S to be laundered. Transferring large sums of illicitly obtained money to Latin American countries has become even more difficult after 9/11. Some take the view that more effort needs to be placed on uncovering the U.S. distribution and laundering cartels.[citation needed]

The main organized drug cartels deal primarily with the most compact (thus easy to smuggle) and profitable substances cocaine, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy), and methamphetamine, and it is these that are the primary focus of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Large-scale manufactured illegal drugs also induce the foundation of satellite organizations that supply some of the most important needed chemical precursors.

In the last ten years, United States Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics indicate that the percentage of Latin American non-U.S. citizens that were federally arrested in the U.S. for illegal drug offenses has increased from the low 20 percentile to over 30 percent as of 2003. For example, in 1999, regarding all federal drug arrests, 26.8% were non-U.S. citizens and 45.5% were Hispanic. Other DOJ BJS statistics showed that "in addition to immigration offenses, U.S. attorneys prosecuted an increased number of non-citizens for other crimes, especially for drug trafficking, which increased from 1,799 cases in 1985 to 7,803 in 2000." [2]

Other noteworthy facts, according to National Criminal Justice Reference Service: "Of noncitizens prosecuted in Federal courts during 1994, 55 percent were in the United States legally. During 1984, about 35 percent of noncitizens prosecuted in Federal courts were charged with a drug offense. By 1994, the proportion charged with a drug offense increased to 45 percent." [3]

Trafficking of illegal drugs carries the death penalty in some countries. This sign posted at the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport warns passengers disembarking in Taiwan of the potential consequences.
Enlarge
Trafficking of illegal drugs carries the death penalty in some countries. This sign posted at the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport warns passengers disembarking in Taiwan of the potential consequences.

[edit] Illegal trade of legal drugs

Legal drugs like tobacco can be the subject of smuggling and illegal trading if the price difference between the smuggled-from and the smuggled-to country are high enough to make it profitable.

[edit] Prescription drugs

Some prescription drugs are also available by illegal means, eliminating the need to manufacture and process the drugs. (Prescription opioids for example, are sometimes much stronger than heroin found on the street, example: the group of the fentanyl analogs.) They are sold either via stolen or partly divided prescriptions sold by medical practices and occasionally from Internet sale. However, it is much easier to control traffic in prescription drugs than in illegal drugs because the source is usually an originally legal enterprise and thus can often be readily found and neutralized.

[edit] Internet and controlled substances

"No Prescription Websites" (NPWs) offer to sell controlled substances without a valid prescription. NPWs were first recognized by the U.S. Justice Department in 1999, indicating that such sites had been operating at least through the late 1990s. NPWs enable dealers and users to complete transactions without direct contact. While many NPWs accept credit cards, others only accept cash thereby further reducing any paper trail. Many NPWs are hosted in countries in which specific categories of controlled substances are locally legal (e.g. prescription opioids in Mexico), but because of the global nature of the internet, NPWs are able to do (mostly illegal) business with customers around the globe. In addition to prescription opioids, stimulants, and sedatives, steroids are often widely distributed. To date, no websites have been found offering directly to sell illegal drugs like heroin, illegal amphetamine or methamphetamine derivatives, or cocaine, however the police have uncovered several instances of dealers/drug rings using Craigslist personal ads to solicit drug business using code words and phrases. All other categories of drugs are readily available online.

2004 saw the conclusion of Operation Web Tryp, focusing on companies selling so-called research chemicals, legal psychedelic phenethylamines and tryptamines on the Internet.

[edit] Violent resolutions

Because disputes cannot be resolved through legal means, participants at every level of the illegal drug industry, are inclined to compete with one another through violence. The larger and more often violent drug trafficking organizations are known as drug cartels. Many have argued that the arbitrariness of drug prohibition laws from the medical point of view, especially the theory of harm reduction, worsens the problems around these substances.

[edit] Trade of specific drugs

The price per gram of heroin is typically 8 to 10 times that of cocaine on US streets.[4] Generally in Europe (except the transit countries Portugal and the Netherlands), a purported gram of street Heroin, which is usually actually between 0.7 and 0.8 grams light to dark brown powder consisting of 5-10%, less commonly up to 20%, heroin base, is between 30 and 70 Euros, which makes for an effective price of pure heroin per gram of between 300 and 2000 Euros.

The purity of street cocaine in Europe is usually in the same range as it is for heroin, the price being between 50 and 100 Euros per between 0.7 and 1.0 grams. This totals to a cocaine price range between 500 and 2000 Euros.

[edit] Anabolic steroids

Main article: Anabolic steroids
4 oz. (Q.P.) of Cannabis
Enlarge
4 oz. (Q.P.) of Cannabis

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, drug smugglers have an easier time smuggling them into the United States. When they have arrived in the United States, they are often sold at gyms and competitions as well as through mail operations.

[edit] Cannabis

Main article: Cannabis (drug)

When cannabis is not grown in either large-scale 'grow ops' in warehouses and other large establishments, or grown for limited distribution in small-scale, possibly domestic operations, it is usually imported from Mexico or farther south. "Skunk" is imported from Amsterdam, or less commonly from South Africa. Most of the cannabis sold commercially in the U.S. is grown in hidden grow operations nationally with the majority grown in the Midwest or in the California area, which has some of the world's best soil for growing crops. Much of the cannabis in the United States is imported from Mexico, however this cannabis is usually low quality. The packaging methods used are crude often resulting in compressed or "bricked" weed. Canadian cannabis is high quality especially in mid-British Columbia. This BC high quality has a lower THC level than others imported from mid Europe.

Common bag sizes/names that marijuana is sold in the United States are:

  • a pound / or LB (generally only for dealers, although those with enough disposable income wanting a long term supply for personal use without a regular interaction with dealers may occasionally buy that much)
  • a quarter pound or QP or 'QWAP' (Pronounced "Kwop") (4 ounces)
  • an ounce or ZONE or 'an O or Z' (many laws divide the presumption of personal use and intent of sale between those with more or less than an ounce)
  • a half ounce or a half(14 grams)
  • a quarter ounce or a Q(7 grams)
  • an eighth of an ounce or an eighth or 'a cut' or a 'slice'(the most common bag size dealt in at the low/casual levels of marijuana purchase for personal use. 3.5 grams)
  • a dub bag or a dub or '20 sac' (a bag costing $20)
  • a dime bag or a dime or '10 sac' (a bag costing $10)
  • a gram or 'G'

[edit] LSD

Main article: LSD

LSD (also known as "acid") is a highly potent hallucinogenic drug which is synthesized artificially from certain metabolism products of the ergot fungus which grows on certain grain strains. The availability of LSD in the United States dropped sharply starting in the year 2000, when two distributors alleged by the government to have been manufacturing 95% of all LSD available in the US were captured (see LSD in the United States), but availability has started to rise again (possibly due to law enforcement focusing more heavily on Cannabis).

[edit] Psilocybin mushrooms

Psychedelic Mushrooms grow naturally in most climates, thus this drug market is financially less lucrative, even though there is no doubt a certain kind of commercial growing of the Psilocybe mushrooms, half-legally in the Netherlands and illegally from different stages of maturity/manufacture of chewable dried mushroom tissue. Psychonauts will often grow these mushrooms or pick them for themselves as they are common to find in many places of the world.

[edit] Alcohol

Main article: Alcoholic beverage

In some areas of the world, particularly in and around the Arabian peninsula, the trade of alcohol is strictly prohibited. For example, Pakistan bans the trade because of its large Muslim population. Similarly, Saudi Arabia forbids the importation of alcohol into its kingdom.

Also, rural villages or even entire counties in a few US states such as Alaska and North Carolina are considered "dry," and prohibit the sale, trade, and even consumption of alcoholic beverages. Similar laws are found in Aboriginal communities of central and northen Australia, as a result of alcohol abuse.

[edit] Tobacco

Main article: Tobacco

The illegal trade of tobacco is motivated primarily by increasingly heavy taxation. When tobacco products such as name-brand cigarettes are traded illegally, the cost is as little as one third that of retail price due to the lack of taxes being applied as the product is sold from manufacturer to buyer to retailer. It has been reported that smuggling one truckload of cigarettes within the United States leads to a profit of 2 million U.S. dollars.[5]

The source of the illegally-traded tobacco is often the proceeds from other crimes, such as store and transportation robberies.

Sometimes, the illegal trade of tobacco is motivated by differences in taxes in two jurisdictions, including smuggling across international borders. Smuggling of tobacco from the US into Canada has been problematic, and sometimes political where trans-national native communities are involved in the illegal trade.

[edit] Opium

Russian Border Guards seize smuggled heroin on the Afghan-Tajik border, circa 2004
Enlarge
Russian Border Guards seize smuggled heroin on the Afghan-Tajik border, circa 2004
Main article: Opium

International illicit trade in opium is relatively rare. Major smuggling organizations prefer to further refine opium into heroin before shipping to the consumer countries, since a given quantity of heroin is worth much more than an equivalent amount of opium, so heroin is more profitable, because heroin is a substance that is made of the main naturally-occurring psychoactive substance in opium, morphine and thus much stronger than opium, and even stronger a relevant proportion compared to morphine.

[edit] Heroin

Main article: Heroin

Heroin is smuggled into the United States and Europe. Purity levels vary greatly by region with, for the most part, Northeastern cities having the most pure heroin in America (according to a recently released report by the DEA, Elizabeth and Newark, New Jersey, have the purest street grade heroin in the country).

[edit] Methamphetamine(Meth)

Main article: Methamphetamine

In some areas of the United States, the trade of methamphetamines is rampant. Because of the ease in production and its addiction rate, methamphetamines are a favorite amongst many drug distributors.

According to the Community Epidemiology Work Group, the numbers of clandestine methamphetamine laboratory incidents reported to the National Clandestine Laboratory Database decreased from 1999 to 2004. During this same period, methamphetamine lab incidents increased in midwestern States (Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio), and in Pennsylvania. In 2004, more lab incidents were reported in Illinois (926) than in California (673). In 2003, methamphetamine lab incidents reached new highs in Georgia (250), Minnesota (309), and Texas (677). There were only seven methamphetamine lab incidents reported in Hawaii in 2004, though nearly 59 percent of substance abuse treatment admissions (excluding alcohol) were for primary methamphetamine abuse during the first six months of 2004.

Some MDMA (ecstasy) and cocaine users are switching to methamphetamine, ignorant of its severe toxicity.

In many gay clubs found throughout New York City and elsewhere, methamphetamine is often used in an injectable form, placing users and their partners at risk for transmission of HIV, hepatitis C, and other STDs.

[edit] U.S. Government involvement

The U.S. government is the most vocal opponent of the drug industry and it has set the de facto international standards regarding the legality and illegality of different drugs. Despite the US government's official position against the drug trade, US government agents and assets have been implicated in the drug trade. [6] [7] [8]

Oliver North and Barry Seal were caught and investigated during the Iran-Contra scandal, implicated in the use of the drug trade as a secret source of funding for the USA's support of the Contras. Page 41 of the December 1988 Kerry report to the US senate [9] states that "indeed senior US policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contra's funding problem".

Highly decorated US military Special Forces veteran, Colonel Bo Gritz (retired) has accused the USA of collaborating with and supporting Manuel Noriega in his drug trafficking operations. In his book Called To Serve, Gritz details his role as a key US Government employee tasked with protecting the USA's relationship with Noriega.

Additionally, the Venezuelan news media seems to give considerable attention to exposing CIA connections to the drug trade, especially when those operations pass through Venezuela. In contrast, the mainstream American news media tends to avoid publishing such information until after the Venezulan and European news agencies have already made the information widely known outside the US.[citation needed]

Counter to its official goals, the US has been known to attempt to suppress research on drug usage. For example, in 1995 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) announced in a press release the publication of the results of the largest global study on cocaine use ever undertaken. However, a decision in the World Health Assembly banned the publication of the study. In the sixth meeting of the B committee the US representative threatened that "If WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed". This led to the decision to discontinue publication. A part of the study has been recuperated[1]. Available are profiles of cocaine use in 20 countries.

[edit] Fiction

Drug smuggling was the topic of:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../i/l/l/Illegal_drug_trade.html"