This post was part of research I conducted for the Model United Nations back in 11th Grade, more than a decade ago.

According to a 2016 World Drug Report, about 1 in 20 adults, or a quarter billion people worldwide aged 15 to 60, consumed drugs in 2014, which is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. In 2010, 3.6 million years of life were lost due to premature death caused by drug abuse. Drug addiction might be responsible for 55% years of life lost due to premature death.
Approximately 80 percent of the global pharmaceutical opioid supply is consumed in the United States. The concern not only relates to the drugs themselves, but to the fact that in many countries doctors are less trained about drug addiction, both about its causes or treatment.
The facts above might seem overly exaggerated, which might even be true but most people agree that drug abuse and addiction is now a problem which needs a long lasting solution.

Let’s drill a little deeper. How do people find, consume and eventually get addicted to drugs? The answer is complicated; it needs an understanding of basic economics, politics and history. Before we get to that, here is an interesting tale of dependence on drugs for survival.
The Caribbean coasts are home to vast and luscious pearl oyster beds. These beds were discovered by the Spanish in the 17th century. At the time, indigenous slavery was easy to establish and had not been outlawed. The pearl trade was a particularly lucrative business. Spanish colonists made huge profits from the pearl trade. Even after slavery was outlawed in the 20th century, the local caribbean population continued to dive for pearls. The pearl trade was still as lucrative as it was in the 18th century. But the supply of pearls on the seabed was dwindling, divers would now have to dive deeper to find pearls. Pearl divers would dive to depths of more than 100 ft. to gather pearls. This is where it gets interesting, pressures at a depth of 100 ft. would give the divers unimaginably painful headaches. Marijuana and heroin act as painkillers, the divers would resort to consuming these drugs to alleviate the pain. But these drugs don’t come cheap, the divers need more money for the drugs, they dive deeper to find more pearls, this causes more headaches which leads to more drug use. It is a vicious circle where these poor divers get sucked in. There really is no escape, unless they change their profession by which time they are already completely addicted to the drugs.

The story above is a clear indication that the drug problem is much more complicated than it seems. The drug “supply-chain” is a very complex and multi-layered system spread out through the globe. From production to transportation and the actual trade, the system is intertwined with politics, economics, revolutions and terrorism. Illegal drug trade is responsible for financing a lot of revolutionary and terrorist outfits in Latin America and the Middle East.
Smuggling drugs into a country is no easy feat. Most of the opium is grown in Latin America or the Middle East. Drug smugglers find ingenious ways to ship drugs into the country. In the US for example, drugs come in through the Mexican border and the Caribbean coastline. Smugglers even had connections with celebrities and their staff. The drugs were smuggled into the country in their private planes with the help of their personal staff. Celebrities being celebrities, their planes and baggage were never put through customs and were therefore never checked. This was a potential gold mine for the smugglers. Although, it is quite possible that the celebrities themselves had no idea that their staff were in cahoots with the drug smugglers and their private aircrafts were being used to smuggle drugs.

Opium grown in Colombia and other Latin American countries is transported through Guatemala and Mexico and eventually into the US via the Texas border or through the Gulf of Mexico and into Miami. Drug cartels operating in Mexico have a lot of influence in political circles. The operatives largely comprise of ex-military men. The cartels have found ingenious ways to disguise the drugs within everyday items like clothes, food, etc. Since Mexico already exports a lot of produce to the US and Canada, (courtesy of NAFTA) transporting the drugs in the trucks and merchant ships is a simple matter. The Mexican cartels have operatives in the US working in the textile and food industry. They are essentially the ‘middle-men’ of the drug supply chain, responsible for distributing the drugs throughout the country.

A very important part of this ‘supply chain’ is transferring the money back to the Mexican cartels. The money can’t be transferred to a bank account in the country, lest the tax authorities get wind of the situation. Drugs can’t be bought at your local supermarket, people usually buy drugs from a shady looking guy at some dingy bar or a street corner. Now I am assuming they don’t accept credit cards; people will pay in cash. The local drug vendor at the street corner pays the supplier in cash. How do you move all that cash back to Mexico? The smugglers came up with an ingeniously sneaky way to ship all the cash back. Use all the cash to buy up clothes and food products; and then ‘export’ it all to Mexico. No customs official is going to be suspicious of a truck-load of clothes. Even if the trucks are checked, they will find nothing but clothes. The clothes (or food) is then exported or sold in Mexico to ‘recover’ the cash.

Drugs have a history of causing wars and revolutions. In the mid-19th century, the British waged wars against China to open all Chinese ports to British merchants; and to legalize opium trade. The British grew opium in India which was also the reason for the “Bengal Famine“. Soon enough, the British were joined by the French in these wars. These wars came to be called the “Opium Wars“.
Although Mexican drug cartels, or drug trafficking organizations, have existed for several decades, their influence has increased since the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. Mexican drug cartels now dominate the wholesale illicit drug market and in 2007 controlled 90% of the cocaine entering the United States.
Since 2006, the Mexican government began to send in heavily armed troops to quell drug-related violence. By the end of Felipe Calderón’s administration (December 1, 2006 – November 30, 2012), the official death toll of the Mexican Drug War was at least 60,000. Estimates set the death toll above 120,000 killed by 2013, not including 27,000 missing.
Analysts estimate that wholesale earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6 to$49.4 billion annually.
A lot of revolutions in South & Central America have been financed by the drug trade. The Colombian revolutionary outfit, FARC is actively involved in drug trafficking and buys arms and ammunition using drug money.

Historically speaking, the Central Intellig$#ce Agency(C!A) is infamous for its usage of drugs as leverage in its information network. It is often said that the C!A might even have a hand in promoting drug trade. They stand to benefit by drug trafficking. It is quite well known that most organized crime syndicates have a hand in the drug trade. The C!A can use drugs as leverage to squeeze information about upcoming terror outfits, potential terrorists or terrorist attacks. Buy drugs or produce them yourselves, sell them to crime kingpins, then threaten them for information. Most intelligence agencies might be using underhanded tactics like these to keep abreast of “crime news”. In fact there are allegations sugegsting the C!A used drug money to finance revolutions in Latin America.
Just as an example, consider the US intervention in Afghanistan. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan prompted the US government to arm the rebels. These rebels eventually came to be called the Taliban. The taliban successfully repelled the Soviet attack and took control of Afghanistan. Initially the taliban set out to please the US govt. but soon enough they came to realize the growing drug problem festering in the region. The taliban leaders set out to rout the problem from its roots. They destroyed opium plantations by the hundreds. The C!A’s supply of cheap drugs soon dried up and the US found an excuse to enter Afghanistan.