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These lollipops were found to contain heroin when inspected by the US DEA

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

Introduction

In jurisdictions where legislation restricts or prohibits the sale of certain popular drugs without a certain, practically impossible to get license, it is common for an illegal drugs trade to develop. For example, the United States Congress has identified a number of controlled substances which each have corresponding illegal drug trades.

Some estimates placed the value of the global trade in illegal drugs at around four hundred 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 retail market of the global drug market is reported to be valued at 312 billion U.S. dollars.

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 to a rising level Heroin, too); see below for further details.

Trafficking and distribution

File:Balininelawrenceevidence.jpg

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

We can distinguish international trafficking, which involves smuggling across borders, and distribution within the demand country, the latter being usually on a much smaller scale.

With regard to crossing borders we can distinguish:

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 cloths, inside the body, etc.

A mule is a lower-echelon criminal recruited by a smuggling organization to cross a border carrying drugs, or sometimes an unknowing person in whose bag or vehicle the drugs are planted, for the purpose of retrieving them elsewhere.

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.

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.

Drug cartels

The most well known recent drug cartels are the Cali, Medellín and Norte del Valle cartels in Colombia and the Juarez, Tijuana and Tamaulipas cartels in Mexico.

Allegedly, the United States' Central Intelligence Agency has itself smuggled cocaine and heroin, currently the most profitable illegal drugs, via the CIA-controlled airline Air America. It has also been alleged that the CIA has maintained secret agreements with various regional Mafia organizations and armies, with military or paramilitary (guerilla) aid given in return for US non-interference in profitable drug trafficking.^{[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.

Mexican cartels

Since the late 1980s, illegal drugs trafficking organizations headed and comprised of Mexican nationals became the dominant force of the illicit drug trade in the United States. Mexican trafficking organizations usurped control from Colombian trafficking organizations.

In the early 1980s, cocaine emerged as a drug of choice for many Americans and its use became prevalent through-out the socio-economic spectrum. Initially, Colombians were responsible for growing, processing and distributing cocaine in the U.S., but their strongholds were limited to South Florida and New York along with other metropolitan areas that housed smaller Colombian populations. As demand for larger quantities of cocaine began to take hold in the U.S. in the late 1980s, Colombian traffickers came to rely on Mexican organizations to assist with the transportation and distribution of cocaine through-out the U.S. After a period of time, powerful Mexican cartels realized that they could more effectively handle the smuggling and distribution of ton-quantities of cocaine in the U.S.

Colombians had been limited to predominantly a Caribbean smuggling route into South Florida. Mexicans, on the other hand, had access to an expansive 2,000 mile border with the Southwestern U.S. and then a vast network of Mexican immigrants residing in major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and Chicago, and later through-out a number of large and small communities in all corners of the U.S.

The ample number of Mexican nationals residing in the U.S. without a Valid U.S. Visa occurred as a result of a bombardment of migrant workers in search of higher-paying jobs, but the increased Mexican presence also brought with it a large number of Mexican narcotics traffickers that came to the U.S. with one specific purpose: to sell drugs and earn a significant profit in doing so. Mexican Black tar heroin, which is produced in Mexico and smuggled into the U.S. predominantly by Mexican nationals is the most frequently consumed heroin in the western and Midwestern U.S. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates that 80% of the methamphetamine in the U.S. is either manufactured in Mexico or is manufactured in the U.S. by Mexican national drug traffickers operating under the direction of Mexican drug kingpins. These illicit drug sales in the U.S. have resulted in a boom of revenues for Mexico. In fact, after petroleum revenues, the second biggest revenue source for Mexico comes from illegal alien Mexican nationals sending money into Mexico from the U.S., and a significant part of those monies are illicit drug proceeds.[1]

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]

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.

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.

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 (weaker) 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.

Violent resolutions

Because disputes cannot be resolved through legal means, participants at every level of the illegal drug industry, often at the top levels and, primarily in the USA, but, to a lesser extent also on the second major illegal drug consuming continent, Europe, also at the bottom levels, are inclined to compete with one another through violence. The larger and more often violent drug trafficking organizations are known as drug cartels. For this (and other reasons, namely the inability for governments to control, regulate and tax distribution, and also concerncing the unnecessarily suffering, often addicted, consumers of drugs affected of prohibitionist laws), 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.

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.

Anabolic steroids

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.

Cannabis

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 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 methamphetamine).

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.

Alcohol

In some areas of the world, particularly the 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Fiction

Drug smuggling was the topic of:

Midnight Express (1978)
Traffic (film) (2000)
Blow (film) (2001)
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
Layer Cake (2004)

References

Background Q&A by the Council on Foreign Relations: "The Forgotten Drug War"
United Nations - Drug Programme
Geopium: Geopolitics of Illicit Drugs in Asia (English and French)
Dagga brings riches to new drug barons
Publication on hashish production and trafficking in Morocco (December 2005)
The smuggling culture
Illegal Drugs in America: A Modern History from the U.S. DOJ
Office of National Drug Control Policy - Steroids
The South American Cocaine Trade
Tricks of the Trade: Tracing meth's route into Kitsap County
Tips for Travelers to South Asia
Saudi Arabia Basics
Network Against Prohibition
United Nations World Drug Report
Pulse Check: Drug Markets and Chronic Users in 25 of America's Largest Cities (January 2004)
Illicit drug issues by country, by the CIA
Market Size for various illegal drugs.

External links

Asia Death Penalty blog focuses on the death penalty in Asia, including its widespread use for drug offences
Website engaged in uncovering the covert involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in trade with illegal drugs, both directly and indirectly

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 === Alcohol ===
-{{main|Alcohol}}
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 In some areas of the world, particularly the 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.