ILLEGAL
drug trafficking isn't just an ordinary street crime. It is huge.
Picture this. The Medellin Cartel, at the height of Pablo Escobar's
career, supplied an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled into
the United States, turning over $21.9 billion a year in personal
income. Escobar was the wealthiest criminal in history, with an
estimated known net worth of $30 billion by the early 1990s, making
him one of the richest men in the world at his prime.
The
cartel originally imported most coca from Bolivia and Peru,
processing it into cocaine inside Colombia and then distributing it
through most of the trafficking routes and distribution points in the
US, including Florida, California and New York. The cocaine trade is
assessed a valuation of $10 billion per year in US dollars.
Colombia's share of coca production is estimated at 43 percent of
global production. Between 1993 and 1999 Colombia became the main
producer of coca in the world along with cocaine, and one of the
major exporters of heroin. As of 2013, studies show that Colombia is
the world's largest cocaine producer—although there are reports
that the country is again back as #1.
Coca
leaf is the raw meterial for the manufacture of the drug cocaine—in
the same way that opium poppy is for heroin. And despite prohibition
of such drugs, still these “cash crops” are a great value to
pharmaceutical industry. Production of cocaine began to increase
greatly in response to increased medical use in late 1880s, after the
discovery of cocaine’s value in performing eye surgery in 1884.
Meantime, traditional medical uses of coca are foremost as a
stimulant to overcome fatigue, hunger, and thirst. It is considered
particularly effective against altitude sickness. It also is used as
an anesthetic and analgesic to alleviate the pain of headache,
rheumatism, wounds and sores etc etcetera.
Both
raw material and finished-product drug command huge profit. So much
so that even the CIA stuck its hands on it. In 1996, journalist Gary
Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News,
detailing how Contras, had been involved in distributing crack
cocaine into Los Angeles whilst receiving money from the CIA.
Contras used money from drug trafficking to buy weapons. The Contras
is a label given to the various US-backed and funded right-wing rebel
groups that were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to
the left-wing, socialist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction
government in Nicaragua.
So
illegal drugs are not just illegal drugs. Control of the raw
materials remains a huge political issue as well. The Golden Triangle
is is one of Asia's two main opium-producing areas. It is an area of
around 367,000 sq miles that overlaps the mountains of three
countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Along with
Afghanistan, The Triangle has been one of the most extensive
opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s. Most
of the world's heroin came from the Golden Triangle until the early
21st century when Afghanistan became the world's largest producer.
Myanmar is the world's second largest producer of illicit opium,
after Afghanistan and has been a significant cog in the transnational
drug trade since World War II. It is estimated that in 2005 there
wеrе 167 sq miles of opium cultivation in Myanmar.
Meantime,
Afghanistan's opium poppy production goes into more than 90 percent
of heroin worldwide. Opium production in the country Afghanistan has
been on the rise since US occupation started in 2001. More land is
now used for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca cultivation
in Latin America. In 2007, 92 percent of the non-pharmaceutical-grade
opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan. This amounts
to an export value of about $4 billion, with a quarter being earned
by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials,
insurgents, warlords, and drug traffickers. In addition to opiates,
Afghanistan is also the largest producer of cannabis (mostly as
hashish) in the world.
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