Latin drug trade
Latin drug tradeToo many nations have made the mistake of underestimating the nature of the threat posed by illegal drug cultivation, production, trafficking, and consumption. Governments that have tolerated the cultivation of coca or opium poppies have seen deforestation and distortion of the agricultural sector. Nations where drugs have yielded are produced or trafficked have seen their financial sectors and political institutions wracked by economic distortion and corruption. Consuming countries have witnessed addiction and its terrible criminal, health, and social consequences. No nation is immune from this transnational threat. Nor can any nation stand up to the problem unilaterally. Bilateral and multilateral responses to this international cancer encouraging results, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. The United Nations, through the activities of its International Drug Control Programme, the actions of its International Narcotics Control Board, and the upcoming General Assembly's Special Session on Drugs, is a key component of the global response to this common threat.
1997 was a good year for international drug-control efforts, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Appreciable gains were made in crop reduction, in interdiction, in weakening trafficking syndicates, strengthening law enforcement, and in targeting drug money laundering. The year's best news came from Peru, for years the world's largest coca growing country. Three-plus years of joint efforts by U.S., Peruvian, and Colombian forces to choke off the "air bridge" that carries Peruvian cocaine base to Colombia for processing paid off handsomely. The operation simultaneously deprived Colombian trafficking organizations of critical basic materials and drove down the price of coca leaf in Peru below the break-even point. Disillusioned Peruvian growers abandoned fields to take advantage of alternative development opportunities. As a result of the exodus, in 1997 Peruvian coca cultivation dropped 27 percent, an extraordinary decline that occurred on top of last year's 18 percent reduction (1. Security Problems in Latin America).
The U.S. estimates that Peru now cultivates 68,800 hectares of coca, just slightly more than half of the estimated 129,100 hectares identified in the peak year of 1992. Bolivia's 1997 coca crop was also the smallest in ten years; a result of its government's determination to confront the drug trade. (1. Security Problems in Latin America). Colombia was a different story, since successful coca control operations also spurred new planting. Colombian traffickers accelerated their campaign to plant new coca outside the traditional growing areas, both to offset heavy losses from government eradication missions and to replace cocaine supplies cut off by the "air bridge" denial.
The global community faces a different set of challenges in trying to limit the cultivation of opium poppy, the source of heroin. This heavily addictive drug is gradually staging a comeback among a new generation of users in the United States and elsewhere. Unlike coca, which currently grows in only three Andean countries, opium poppy grows in nearly every region of the world. Because it is an annual crop with as many as three harvests per year, it is much harder to eliminate, Though we can take pride in our collective accomplishments, we are still a long way from permanently crippling the drug trade. As one of the pillars of international organized crime, it remains a formidable enemy. Well before transnational crime had become recognized as one of the principal threats to international stability, the drug syndicates already had in place an impressive network of supply centers, distribution networks, foreign bases and reliable entree into the governments of source and transit countries. They pioneered many of today's sophisticated money laundering techniques, hiring first-rate accountants, and investing in state-of-the-art technology. And when the former Soviet Union collapsed, the drug syndicates were quick to recruit Eastern European chemists and other technical specialists left unemployed by the change in political systems. Even after suffering considerable losses, the drug trade's wealth (estimated by UNDCP at close to $500 billion a year), power, and organization exceed the resources of many governments (2. Latin America).
Despite our collective efforts to cut drug traffic in 1997, hundreds of tons of cocaine flowed not only to the United States and Western Europe, but to markets in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Colombian cocaine syndicates have established distribution centers on every continent, as international drug trafficking becomes more sophisticated every year. Now Italian, Turkish, Russian, and Nigerian crime syndicates, to name but a few, vie for a share of the business. The relatively straightforward flow-charts of trafficking routes of a decade ago have been replaced by a complex web of nodes and lines linking virtually every country in the world to the main drug production and trafficking centers.
The drug trade is adept at searching out and adapting to new opportunities. It is taking advantage of shifts in enforcement initiatives, along with trafficking and consumption patterns, as the lines blur between cocaine and heroin-consuming countries.
We have also witnessed an evolutionary process in the way drug syndicates are conducting their international operations. In the 1980's, Mexican trafficking organizations provided the Colombian trafficking syndicates with drug transportation services from Mexico to the Southwest region of the United States. The Colombians paid the Mexican trafficking organizations from $1,500 to $2,000 for each kilogram of cocaine smuggled into the United States. During the 1990's, the Colombian and Mexican trafficking organizations established a new arrangement allowing the Mexican organizations to receive a percentage of the cocaine in each shipment as payment for their transportation services. The "payment-in-product" agreement enabled Mexican organizations to become involved in the wholesale distribution of cocaine in the United States. Prior to this, the U.S. wholesale cocaine trade was controlled exclusively by the Colombians. (5. Drugs and Latin America).
The drug trade, while powerful, is far from omnipotent. It is vulnerable on many fronts. It needs raw materials to produce drugs, complex logistic arrangements to move them to their destination, cadres of professionals to run the technical and financial aspects of its operations, and some means of making its profits legitimate. Above all, it needs the protection of a reliable core of corrupt officials in all the countries along its distribution chain. Repeated attacks on every front, even if seemingly insignificant by themselves, cumulatively are responsible for keeping the drug trade in check. Viewed out of context, the many achievements of individual countries may seem insignificant. Many never come to the attention of the press. The routine drug seizures, the jungle drug labs or airstrips destroyed every day, the arrests of corrupt officials, or the improved performance of courageous police and judicial authorities receive at best only fragmentary coverage in world media. Yet, as we have seen, cumulative effort and cooperation pay off. Ultimately it will be the sum of these small steps that will allow us to make lasting gains at the drug trade's expense.
The most powerful weapon in fighting the drug trade is an intangible: political will. A first-class anti-drug force, equipped with state-of-the-art police and military hardware, cannot succeed without the full commitment of the country's political leadership. Where political leaders have had the courage to sacrifice short-term economic and political considerations in favor of the long-term national interest, we have seen the drug trade weaken. Where they have succumbed to the lure of ready cash, the drug syndicates have prospered accordingly.
In exchange for the short-term benefits of large infusions of drug money into the economy (or into their personal or political treasuries), corrupt government officials can limit counternarcotics operations to those sectors least likely to harm trafficking interests. For example, the government of a major drug cultivation country can focus on interdiction rather than eradication (5. Drugs and Latin America). In a major drug refining country government forces may eradicate some crops while allowing drug syndicates to exploit corrupt enforcement and timid judicial systems. In offshore financial centers, officials may launch anti-trafficking campaigns, while promoting bank secrecy and lax incorporation laws that facilitate money laundering. In every instance, the price of these short-term gains is the long-term entrenchment of drug interests.
When we fight the drug trade we are also fighting political corruption. The drug trade feeds upon the social, economic, and moral decay that corruption fuels. Drug syndicates wield a powerful instrument for subverting even relatively strong societies: a money machine. Like modern-day Midases, they transform an intrinsically cheap and available commodity (e.g., coca leaves) into an almost inconceivably remunerative product. In terms of weight and availability, there is currently no commodity more lucrative than drugs. They are relatively cheap to produce and offer enormous profit margins that allow the drug trade to generate criminal revenues on a scale without historic precedent.
Assuming an average retail street price of one hundred dollars a gram, a metric ton of pure cocaine has a retail value of $100 million on the streets of a U.S. city -- two or three times as much, if the drug is cut with adulterants.(4. Latin America and the International Drug Trade). Even if only a portion of these profits returns directly to the drug syndicates, we are still speaking of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. Such inordinate wealth gives the large trafficking organizations an almost unlimited capacity to corrupt. In many ways, they are a less obvious threat to democratic government than many insurgent movements. Guerrilla armies or terrorist organizations openly seek to topple and replace governments through overt violence. The drug syndicates only want to manipulate governments to their advantage and guarantee themselves a secure operating environment. They do so by co-opting key officials. A real fear of democratic leaders should be that one day the drug trade might take de facto control of a country by putting a majority of elected officials, including the president, directly or indirectly on its payroll.
Demand reduction must also be an integral part of the global response. The need for demand reduction is obvious, since escalating drug use and abuse continue to take a devastating toll on the health, welfare, safety, security, and economic stability of all nations. Changing patterns of drug abuse, supply, and distribution compound the problem, at the same time as international drug syndicates and gangs are carrying out ever more ruthless, vigorous, and sophisticated marketing techniques and strategies.
The U.S. response has been a comprehensive, balanced, and coordinated approach in which supply control and demand reduction reinforce each other. This include efforts to prevent the onset of use, intervention at "critical decision points" in the lives of vulnerable populations to prevent both first use and further use, and effective treatment programs for the afflicted and addicted. Other aspects encompass education and media campaigns to increase public awareness of the deleterious consequences of drug use/abuse and community coalition-building. Coalitions are necessary in order to mobilize public and private social institutions, the faith community, and law enforcement entities in targeted campaigns against drugs. Though we cannot neglect any stage in the process, we know that we can inflict the most lasting damage at the crop cultivation and financial operations stages. Now we must strengthen these programs and beef up our collective efforts to obtain comparable gains against the illegal drug conglomerates' financial operations. (3. South Africa and the International Drug Trade)
In democracies, the drug trade flourishes only when it can divide the population and corrupt institutions. It cannot withstand a concerted, sustained attack by a coalition of nations individually committed to its annihilation. It is that precisely this kind of coalition that can make a difference. The United Nations, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and other multilateral organizations must continue to be a part of the global response.