Illegal drug trade

In jurisdictions where certain addictive drugs are illegal, they are generally supplied by criminal drug dealers, often in the form of organized crime. Trade in them is driven by the neurophysiology of drug addiction, and the economics of greed and poverty.

The addict's need to support the high cost of illegal addictive drugs is one of the major causes of crime. Some estimates place the value of the global trade in illegal drugs at around $400 billion per year (U.S. dollars as of 2000).

Major consumer countries include the United States and European nations, although consumption is world-wide.

As with legal commerce, the illegal drug trade is multi-layered and often multi-national, with layers of manufacturers, processors, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. Financing[?] is also important, generally involving money laundering to hide the source of the illegal profits. All of these are made more complex by their illegality, but the normal laws of economics still apply, with the efforts of law enforcement regarded by the drug trade as a extra business cost.

Some prescription drugs[?] are also available by illegal means, eliminating the need to manufacture and process the drugs. However, it is much easier to control traffic in prescription drugs than in illegal drugs.

The high levels of greed, and the pre-existing illegality of the trade, make the participants at every level of the illegal drugs industry liable to compete with one another through violence. Some of the largest and most violent drug trafficking organizations are known as drug cartels, two of the most well known recent groups were the Cali Cartel[?] and the Medellin Cartel[?].

Table of contents 1 Manufacturing and processing 2 Distribution and wholesaling 3 Retail drug dealing and users 4 External links

Manufacturing and processing

Illegal drugs can be broken down into two major classes: those extracted from plants, and those synthesized from chemical precursors. For the first class, such as marijuana and cocaine, the growing area is important, and substantial farming is needed for mass production. For the second class, such as MDMA and methamphetamine, access to chemical precursors is most important.

Major drug farming and manufacturing countries include

• Colombia and other Latin American countries,
• the Asian Golden Triangle[?] of border areas of Thailand, Burma and Laos.
• Afghanistan and border areas of Pakistan

Synthetic illegal drugs can either be manufactured in the country of consumption, or abroad.

Distribution and wholesaling

• to be written -- topics include:
• smuggling
• security problems similar to distribution of other high-value materials
• and hence gang-on-gang crime

Retail drug dealing and users

Street drug dealing is the bottom of the chain. Street drug dealing is sometimes associated with other crimes such as pimping. Many users also deal as a part-time activity to fund their own drug use.

Fictional deptictions of the illegal drugs trade:

• the novel Clockers[?] for a depiction of the bottom end of the drug trade
• the film Traffic for a depiction of the illegal drug trade viewed from multiple perspectives

See also:

• street culture[?]
• recreational drug use
• drug paraphenalia
• War on Drugs
• Money laundering

External links

• Centres for Disease Control statistics on U.S. drug use (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/druguse.htm)
• U.S. Government guide to drug street terms (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/streetterms/default.asp)
• U.S. Government guide to spending on illegal drugs (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/drugfact/american_users_spend/)
• U.S. DOJ history of illegal drug trade (http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/deamuseum/museum_illegaldrugs) (rather self-serving and biased, represents DEA as triumphant over drugs)
• UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances from 1988, see http://www.incb.org/e/conv/1988/index.htm