Effects of International Drug Trafficking

International Drug Trafficking

One of the most prominent international issues regarding drugs is the ways in which these substances are illegally moved across borders. It was originally believed that the drug trade could be adequately controlled by enforcement. However, after roughly forty years of the failure to win the "war on drugs," it is becoming undeniably obvious that enforcement is not the effective solution to this situation. The role of globalization in the international community has worked to facilitate the exchange of information and goods, including the illicit drug trade; illegal markets have reached a level of complexity that no one previously thought possible and the value of the illegal drug market is valued at over five hundred billion dollars a year (Jenner, 2011). This hidden market has created innovative methods of subverting any effects of increased international enforcement and in many cases uses violence to ensure local compliance.

The drug laws vary widely around the world. Some countries focus on harm reduction from these substances while others have instituted a more progressive "post-prohibition" approach that uses greater focus on health-oriented approach (Drug Policy Alliance, N.d.). The countries that criminalize drug use are also the ones that drive the drug market underground. The United States is the biggest illegal market for drugs in the world and nearby countries such as Mexico have capitalized on the situation. For example, currently the U.S. has a heroin addiction epidemic which has resulted in a Mexican opium production increase by an estimated 50% in 2014 alone and impoverished farmers in Mexico and entrepreneurial drug cartels work had to fill the demand and have even enlisted children to help harvest opium (Ahmed, 2015).

The policy in the United States has been to attempt to subvert the power of the drug cartels in countries such as Mexico by disrupting their networks and killing or capturing their leaders. The pinnacle of that strategy was the capture of Mexico's most powerful trafficker, Joaquin Guzman Loera, better known as El Chapo, who escaped in spectacular fashion last month from a maximum-security prison (Neuman, 2015). However, these efforts often have little lasting effect as drug rivals often fill in the gaps and maintain the production and trafficking of the illegal drugs. Often when one leader is captured or killed, what results is a bloody struggle in the aspiring leaders to fill this gap which can have disastrous consequences for the communities involved.

There have been few effective solutions to addressing the problem of international drug trafficking. Even countries with progressive drug policies, such as Portugal who decriminalized all drugs in 2001, still make it a crime to traffic drugs. Therefore there still exists and illicit economy even in progressive countries. Although the drug trade is widely believed to be the most profitable illicit economy, dwarfing others such as the illegal trade in wildlife or logging, its impact on society and the intensity of violence and corruption it generates vary in different regions and over time; some have even noted that, despite violence existing in these networks, the level of violence that they generate is still comparatively small (Felbab-Brown, 2012).