Illegal drug trade
Prohibition proved almost impossible to enforce and resulted in the rise of organized crime, including the modern American Mafia, which identified enormous business opportunities in the manufacturing, smuggling and sale of illicit liquor.
[14] Execution is mostly used as a deterrent, and many have called upon much more effective measures to be taken by countries to tackle drug trafficking;[15] for example, targeting specific criminal organisations that are often also active in the smuggling of other goods (i.e. wildlife) and even people.
[18] In June 2021, Interpol revealed an operation in 92 countries that shut down 113,000 websites and online marketplaces selling counterfeit or illicit medicines and medical products a month earlier, led to the arrests of 227 people worldwide, recovered pharmaceutical products worth $23 million, and led to the seizure of approximately nine million devices and drugs, including large quantities of fake COVID-19 tests and face masks.
[22] According to the International Crisis Group, the most violent regions in Central America, particularly along the Guatemala–Honduras border, are highly correlated with an abundance of drug trafficking activity.
[29] Cocaine produced in Colombia and Bolivia has increasingly been shipped via West Africa (especially in Nigeria, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Cameroon, Mali, Benin, Togo, and Ghana).
[34] After the 1990s, particularly after the end of the Cold War (1991), borders were opened and trading and customs agreements were signed so that the routes expanded to include China, Central Asia, and Russia.
"[36] The drugs produced by the Golden Triangle of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand, on the other hand, pass through the southern routes to feed the Australian, US, and Asian markets.
[37] Venezuela has been a path to the United States and Europe for illegal drugs originating in Colombia, through Central America, Mexico and Caribbean countries such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
[42] On 18 November 2016, following what was known as the Narcosobrinos incident, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's two nephews were found guilty of trying to ship drugs into the United States so they could "obtain a large amount of cash to help their family stay in power".
[51]Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drug money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame.
Though street-level drug sales are widely viewed as lucrative, a study by Sudhir Venkatesh suggested that many low-level employees receive low wages.
In a study he made in the 1990s working closely with members of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation in Chicago, he found that one gang (essentially a franchise) consisted of a leader (a college graduate named J.T.
Already suffering from severe financial problems as a result of corruption and civil war, profits from Captagon are said to be the "lifeline" of the Assad regime, through which it earned more than 90% of its total revenue.
[59] Republican Guard, commanded by Maher al-Assad was one of the main Ba'athist military divisions that was engaged in perpetrating brutal crackdowns and mass violence against protestors across the country.
In 2018, Bashar al-Assad assigned Maher as the commander of the 4th Armoured Division, a military unit that supervised the Assad regime's criminal enterprises like smuggling, drug trafficking, narcotics production and plunder of goods and resources.
Although hundreds of millions of pills were intercepted and seized by police forces, these accounted only for 10% of the total captagon exports of the drug cartels linked to the Assad regime.
[60][61] A joint investigation conducted by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and BBC News Arabic published a documentary in June 2023, revealing further details about the activities of regime officials, Ba'athist military commanders and Assad family members in their involvement in Syria's drug cartel.
The Fourth Armoured Division, being an elite military unit permitted to move freely across Assad regime's checkpoints, oversees the smuggling operations from Syria, including the trafficking of cash, weapons, illegal drugs, etc.
In an investigative report published by The Insider news-outlet in 2024, journalist Yuriy Matsarsky stated:"...Captagon produced in underground labs—and in actual Syrian pharmaceutical facilities—is distributed to the fighters of Bashar Assad's army.
... By some estimates, this business gives Syria more money than its entire legal export, and the regime constantly works to increase its profits, primarily by expanding its market reach.
This program increased US security assistance to $1.4 billion over several years, which helped supply Mexican forces with "high-end equipment from helicopters to surveillance technology".
[78] Instead of negotiating with the central government as was done with the PRI party, drug cartels utilized new ways to distribute their supply and continued operating through force and intimidation.
[82][83] For the Balkan criminals, a growing trend was to relocate to the UAE, which became an attraction to dirty money and kingpins from several European nations and the United Kingdom.
[102] This amounted to an export value of about US$4 billion, with a quarter being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords and drug traffickers.
[104][105] According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the price of heroin is typically valued 8 to 10 times that of cocaine on American streets, making it a high-profit substance for smugglers and dealers.
Allegedly, during the Vietnam War, drug lords such as Ike Atkinson used to smuggle hundreds of kilograms of heroin to the US in coffins of dead American soldiers (see Cadaver Connection).
[citation needed] On 17 October 2018 police in Genoa, Italy discovered 270 kg of heroin hidden in a ship coming from the Iranian southern port of Bandar Abbas.
[111] Methamphetamine is sometimes used intravenously, placing users and their partners at risk for transmission of HIV and hepatitis C.[112] "Meth" can also be inhaled, most commonly vaporized on aluminum foil or in a glass pipe.
[116] Temazepam, a strong hypnotic benzodiazepine, is illicitly manufactured in clandestine laboratories (called jellie labs) to supply the increasingly high demand for the drug internationally.
While US officials blame the flood of fentanyl crossing the border primarily on Mexican crime groups, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador insists that the main source of this synthetic drug is Asia.
