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RSS FeedThe continued epidemic of drug use means we've lost the war on drugs
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Add to FavoritesAn area of organised crime that has wide- ranging economic, political and social impacts are the production, trafficking, and sale of illegal drugs. Organised gangs have a long history of producing, trafficking and selling prohibited substances. For instance, the Chinese triads have been linked with the opium trade for centuries, whilst the prohibition of alcohol in the inter-war the United States inadvertently allowed the Mafia to spread their operations.
In the United States, the Mafia is the organisation that dominates the organised crime scene, which is strongly connected with the illegal drug trade. For the Mafia to be able to distribute illegal drugs it has to obtain supplies of these drugs from the countries in which they are grown. Thus the Mafia will trade with other organised crime gangs in Asia to obtain heroin, as well as buying supplies of cocaine from organised crime syndicates in Latin American countries, such as Colombia and Peru.
The United States government alongside the FBI and the Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) who have been tasked with reducing the illegal drug trade has found it very difficult to do so. When the law enforcement agencies fail to confiscate any significant amounts of drugs then the cost of such drugs on the street is lower and thus could be afforded by more drug addicts and tempt more people to try illegal substances.
On the occasions in which the FBI, the DEA and the Police have seized substantial quantities of illegal drugs it has caused a rise in the cost of those drugs that makes the economic, political and social impacts worse rather than better. Such are the profits which can be made from the illegal drugs trade that organised crime gangs fight each other to maintain or increase their share of the profits.
On the occasions in which the United States government and its law enforcement agencies have succeeded in imprisoning organised crime members and closed down illegal drug selling networks, new suppliers have quickly emerged to take their place. The United States government has also attempted to tackle the illegal drug trade by taking action in the countries in which those illegal drugs are grown and produced.
This strategy has involved gaining the assistance of other governments like those of Columbia and Peru in destroying the drug crops before the organised crime gangs have the opportunity to harvest those drugs. In extreme circumstances the United States government and its law enforcement agencies have taken unilateral action to destroy drug crops. An alternative approach used by the United States government has been to pay foreign farmers compensation to stop growing drug crops that gave them a much higher level of income.
In Colombia, Communist rebels in the FARC (Foro Nacional por Colombia) actively co-operated with drugs cartels to export cocaine to the United States. Efforts to reduce the illegal drug trade have failed to stop increasing numbers of people taking drugs, leading to the social impact of people committing crimes to pay for their drug habit.
Drug addicts are more likely to commit crimes such as mugging and robbery, and may resort to prostitution to pay for drugs. The United States is certainly not alone in finding that the organised crime liked with the drugs trade has the social impact of causing an upsurge in unorganised crime to fund people's addictions.
Britain has had similar experiences to the United States when it comes to the economic, political and social impacts of the illegal drug trade. British governments have tried various means of reducing the use of illegal drugs. For instance, using drugs awareness campaigns to stop people trying to take drugs in the first place, through to rehabilitation programmes and tougher prison sentences for drugs traffickers and dealers. British Police forces have found it very difficult to get to grips with the problems that the illegal drug trade brings with it.
A turning point for the growth of the illegal drugs trade cam in the early 1980s when the demoralising effects of recession coincided with an influx of cheap heroin from Afghanistan. At present the British government estimates that there are 280,000 drug users who commit 50% of all crime.
The use of illegal drugs had been steadily rising since the late 1960s, yet increased drastically from the early 1980s, with proportional increases in other crimes such as theft and prostitution to fund drug habits. Besides the drastic rise in crime figures and the prison population there were social impacts of the illegal drugs trade, such as drugs taking and prostitution being responsible for spreading the HIV/AIDS virus.
To a large extent that latter impact was lessened by the introduction of needle exchanges and safe sex advice to prostitutes. Britain has witnessed more debates about decriminalising or prescribing illegal drugs on the National Health Service to take control of the drugs trade away from organised crime gangs. However, the decriminalisation of illegal drugs would be unlikely to occur as British governments and a majority of the general public would find such a move politically unacceptable. The only step towards decriminalising illegal drugs in Britain was the reclassification of cannabis from being a class A to being a class C drug.
Illegal drugs and the strong almost unbreakable link to organised crime gangs looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, despite the creation of a dedicated organised crime agency to tackle the problem. Unless the British government, the Police and the other enforcement agencies are unable to stop the profitability of the illegal drug trade they are likely to remain fighting a losing battle.
Not only has the illegal drug trade in Britain got links to organised crime gangs it also has strong links with terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland such as the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Volunteer Force. Overall the government estimates that the use of Class A drugs cost 13 billion annually.
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Franklin J A and Morris R J, International jurisdiction and enforcement of Judgments in the era of global networks: Irrelevance of, goals for, and comments on the Current proposals, Chicago-Kent Law Review (vol. 77, 2002)
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Learn more about this author, Barry Vale.
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Agree
The war on drugs was lost the day it began. The main reason for the failure of this "war" was the basis upon which it was and is being fought. Abraham Lincoln was of the opinion, and I am paraphrasing here; that prohibition of any kind ran exactly contrary to the constitution. Most Americans realize that truth at a fundamental level and bristle at the idea of their government, which they pay hard earned money to support, attempting to legislate morality. The epidemic of controlled substance use and abuse will continue and will never be halted in the United States.
Making Americans aware of the dangers connected with the use of any drug, legal or illegal, has never proved to halt it's use in the population. We have known for a very very long time now that cigarettes and cigars are killers and still the companies that make those products do a thriving business. It's clear that alcohol is highly addictive and can cause any number of illnesses and yet there are more micro-breweries and liquor companies than there ever were before and they all seem to being doing a great deal of business with the American people. And the advertising budgets for these alcohol producers are growing by the day. There was, of course, a noble experiment in the twenties and thirties dealing with prohibition of alcohol that should, although it clearly didn't, teach us that prohibition cannot work. It can only provide the climate that fosters the creation of "black markets" and fertile ground for the criminal element to harvest.
Making any drug illegal and placing severe fines and jail times on offenses connected to that particular drug has done nothing to stop the use and abuse of drugs and only served to fill our prisons to overflowing with those convicted of trafficking in the drug. You can't, it appears, scare people into a morality that simply doesn't fit their particular wants or needs. People want to enjoy their drug of choice and will continue to do so regardless of anything that the government tries to do to stop them. Regardless of the millions of dollars and thousands of lives that have been wasted in an attempt to make people conform to a policy that is, as Mr. Lincoln thought, a violation of the constitution the problem rages on and is probably worse than it ever was before.
This "war" has raged on longer than any war fought between nations in all the history of the Earth and it has been lost. We have, on more than one occasion, punished the farmers of other countries by putting their crops to the torch in an attempt to force our will upon them. We have taken from the impoverished third world farmer any chance that he had to feed his family in order to insure that a Wall Street stock broker can't pick up a dime bag of coke at lunch time. We have seized the ships of other nations when we have found drugs aboard them in an attempt to insure that the high school kids can't smoke a joint between periods at school. And yet for all of this we have produced nothing but a very healthy underground of drug dealers that can make themselves rich, remain untaxed and afford the best weapons money can buy in order to protect themselves from our law enforcement officers and each other. And every time that we place another one of them in jail we see that there are ten more ready to replace him.
The only real, viable solution to the problem is to legalize drugs across the board and tax them heavily. Taking the profit margin out of the scenario for the street dealers and allowing some viable governmental control of the trade as a legal industry which can produce tax dollars for our government to use on more worth while projects such as reforming health care and balancing our budget. Keeping the drug trade a legal business allows the government to legally regulate all aspects of production, quality standards and industry practices regarding areas such as advertisement. The laws that cover the use of alcohol can easily be extended to cover the use of any other drug removing the need for any long and drawn out arguing over how to police their sale and use should they ever become legal.
Learn more about this author, Nouri Arif.
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