Steven Dudley – Victoria Dittmar – Sara García, Jaime López-Aranda, Annie Pforzheimer, and Ben Westhoff

Precursor chemicals pose an unprecedented challenge for governments and multilateral organizations seeking to mitigate the development, manufacturing, production, and distribution of illicit synthetic drugs. As opposed to most legacy drugs -- which rely on plants, harvests, favorable weather, significant and varied manual labor, and transport of bulk amounts of illicit substances across heavily-policed terrain -- synthetic drugs can be produced in laboratories all year-round using a wide variety of mostly sparsely or unevenly regulated chemicals, which can be employed at different stages of the process in rudimentary laboratories and transported in large or small amounts, often without the knowledge of the transporters themselves. The sources for these chemicals span the globe. They are currently concentrated in China, where a relatively small number of companies appear to be producing precursor chemicals, in mainly two provinces. These chemicals are marketed and sold on the internet, where an army of online providers offer well-regulated and unregulated chemicals via the Clearnet and the dark web. These marketers are sometimes extensions of these same production companies and sometimes independent. Some are also clans, which appear to own numerous production and marketing companies. The precursors are transported to Mexico via cargo ships or air cargo, traveling direct or via circuitous routes. Cargo is often mislabeled, camouflaging the contents, purpose, or amount of their shipment. In Mexico, brokers and independent buyers facilitate this trade, filing paperwork, creating fictitious companies, or bribing officials.

• More...

  The chemicals then make their way to small producers. Often referred to as “cooks,” these producers synthesize the precursors into illicit synthetic drugs that are then sold to large buyers and transport specialists. Two large criminal networks buy and move synthetic drugs in bulk: the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG). These networks are responsible for bringing this product across the most difficult part of its journey and thus charge a premium for their services. After they sell the drugs wholesale, they are largely absent, leaving the distribution and retail sales to other local criminal networks. The precursor industry -- and the synthetic drug industry writ large -- is so challenging to disrupt precisely because it works across legal and illegal spheres, involves many layers and different criminal networks, and has many means to obtain its final objective: the sale of synthetic drugs to an increasing number of consumers. …

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2023. 147p.

By Pia Johansson Heinsvig, Ask Vest Christiansen, Daniel Ayoubi, Laura Smedegaard Heisel, Christian Lindhols

This study examines doping products seized by the police in three regional police districts in Denmark from December 2019 to December 2020. The products, often referred to as performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs), are described in relation to the country of origin, manufacturing company, and the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) stated on the packaging versus the one identified by subsequent chemical analysis. The study also includes a description of the degree of professionalism by which the products appear according to EU requirements. A total of 764 products were seized during the study period. The products originate from 37 countries, mainly located in Asia (37%), Europe (23%), and North America (13%). One hundred ninety-three different manufacturing companies could be identified from the product packaging. The most frequent compound class was the androgenic anabolic steroids, found in 60% of the products. In 25%–34% of the products, either no or an incorrect API relative to the one stated on the product was found. However, only 7%–10% contain either no API or a compound from a different compound class than the one stated. Most products had a professional appearance fulfilling most EU requirements for packaging information. The study shows that many different companies supply PIEDs to the Danish market and that counterfeit and substandard products are widespread. Many products do, however, appear professional to the user giving an impression of a high-quality product. Although many products are substandard, they most often contain an API from the same compound class as the one labeled.

Drug Testing and Analysis Volume 15, Issue 6Jun 2023, Pages 595-705

By Miriam Cavazos Hernandez and Balasurya Sivakumar

We examine the effect of natural resource shocks on violence by drug cartels at the municipality level in rural Mexico from 2003 to 2017. For this, we use an Instrumental Variable setup by instrumenting our main explanatory variable vegetation density with rainfall. Vegetation density is an indicator for natural resource shocks and reflects the “greenness” in a particular area which is considered as an indicator of land productivity. Our main finding is that negative shocks in vegetation density increase homicides. This negative shock could imply crop failures resulting in bad economic outcomes for people in rural areas thereby pushing people to engage with violent drug cartels. Additionally, in order to confirm the main results we explore possible effects that natural resource shocks have on drug cartel presence, seizure of illegal drugs and other drug-related criminal activities. These results further confirm the negative relationship between natural resource shocks and violence by drug cartels. Our findings highlight the dynamics in the operation of the drug cartels and are relevant for understanding the determinants of conflict in rural Mexico.   

Lund, Sweden: Lund University, 2022. 48p.

By  Lorenzo Rodrigo Aldeco Leo, Jose A. Jurado, Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez

  This document studies the effect of the homicide rate on internal migration in Mexico. Reduced form evidence shows that net migration of skilled workers decreases into local labor markets where homicide rates increased after 2007, suggesting workers prefer destinations with lower homicide rates. This result is due to lower inflows, without effects on outflows, pointing to the existence of moving costs. To quantify the welfare cost of increasing homicides, we use workers' migration decisions and a spatial equilibrium model. Skilled workers' average willingness to pay to decrease the homicide rate by 1% is estimated at 0.58% of wages. The welfare cost is in the order of several points of GDP per year, depending on the assumptions. Workers who do not migrate bear the largest share of the overall welfare cost

Working Paper, 2022: 11 Mexico City: Banco de México 2022. 53p.  

By Mark Shaw

Drug seizures are widely referred to in the media and academic reporting on drug trafficking and organised crime. Everyone knows their limitations. But what if seizures represent the exact opposite of what we generally think them to be? That is, not a reflection of state efficiency, but rather cracks in systems of political protection. If that is the case, they may appear more regularly at some times rather than others. A detailed study of West African cocaine seizures in the context of periods of political instability over a twenty-year period suggest this association is worth exploring.

ENACT (Africa), 2021. 23p.

Edited by Bruce M. Bagley and Jonathan D. Rosen

In 1971, Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Despite foreign policy efforts and attempts to combat supply lines, the United States has been for decades, and remains today, the largest single consumer market for illicit drugs on the planet.

This volume argues that the war on drugs has been ineffective at best and, at worst, has been highly detrimental to many countries. Leading experts in the fields of public health, political science, and national security analyze how U.S. policies have affected the internal dynamics of Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Central America, and the Caribbean islands. Together, they present a comprehensive overview of the major trends in drug trafficking and organized crime in the early twenty-first century.

In addition, the editors and contributors identify emerging issues and propose several policy options to address them. This accessible and expansive volume provides a framework for understanding the limits and liabilities in the U.S.-championed war on drugs throughout the Americas.

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. 464p.

By Marcelo Bergman

This book describes the main patterns and trends of drug trafficking in Latin America and analyzes its political, economic and social effects on several countries over the last twenty years. Its aim is to provide readers an introductory yet elaborate text on the illegal drug problem in the region. It first seeks to define and measure the problem, and then discusses some of the implications that the growth of production, trafficking, and consumption of illegal drugs had in the economies, in the social fabrics, and in the domestic and international policies of Latin American countries.

This book analyzes the illegal drugs problem from a Latin American perspective. Although there is a large literature and research on drug use and trade in the USA, Canada, Europe and the Far East, little is understood on the impact of narcotics in countries that have supplied a large share of the drugs used worldwide. This work explores how routes into Europe and the USA are developed, why the so-called drug cartels exist in the region, what level of profits illegal drugs generate, how such gains are distributed among producers, traffickers, and dealers and how much they make, why violence spread in certain places but not in others, and which alternative policies were taken to address the growing challenges posed by illegal drugs.

• More.....

  With a strong empirical foundation based on the best available data, Illegal Drugs, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Latin America explains how rackets in the region built highly profitable enterprises transshipping and smuggling drugs northbound and why the large circulation of drugs also produced the emergence of vibrant domestic markets, which doubled the number of drug users in the region the last 10 years. It presents the best available information for 18 countries, and the final two chapters analyze in depth two rather different case studies: Mexico and Argentina.

Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. 166p.

By Matthew B. Robinson and Renee G. Scherlen

First published in 2007, Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics critically analyzed claims made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the White House agency of accountability in the nation's drug war since 1989, as found in the six editions of the annual National Drug Control Strategy between 2000 and 2005. In this revised and updated second edition of their critically acclaimed work, Matthew B. Robinson and Renee G. Scherlen examine seven more recent editions (2006–2012) to once again determine if ONDCP accurately and honestly presents information or intentionally distorts evidence to justify continuing the drug war. They uncover the many ways in which ONDCP manipulates statistics and visually presents that information to the public. Their analysis demonstrates a drug war that consistently fails to reduce drug use, drug fatalities, or illnesses associated with drug use; fails to provide treatment for drug-dependent users; and drives up the prices of drugs. They conclude with policy recommendations for reforming ONDCP's use of statistics, as well as how the nation fights the war on drugs.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014. 310p.

By The Global Commission on Drug Policy

The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed. Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.

Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2011. 24p.

By John Coyne and Teagan Westendorf

This report helps develop an understanding of the quantum of profits being made and where in the value chain they occur. Australians spent approximately A$5.8 billion on methamphetamine and A$470 million on heroin in FY 2019.

Approximately A$1,216,806,017 was paid to international wholesalers overseas for the amphetamine and heroin that was smuggled into Australia in that year. The profit that remained in Australia’s economy was about A$5,012,150,000. Those funds are undermining Australia’s public health and distorting our economy daily, and ultimately funding drug cartels and traffickers in Southeast Asia.

One key takeaway from the figures presented in this report is that the Australian drug trade is large and growing. Despite the best efforts of law enforcement agencies, methamphetamine and heroin use has been increasing by up to 17% year on year. Falling prices in Southeast Asia are likely to keep pushing that number up, while drug prices and purity in Australia remain relatively stable.

Barton, ACT, Australia: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2021. 40p

By David A. Shirk

The drug war in Mexico has caused some U.S. analysts to view Mexico as a failed or failing state. While these fears are exaggerated, the problems of widespread crime and violence, government corruption, and inadequate access to justice pose grave challenges for the Mexican state. The Obama administration has therefore affirmed its commitment to assist Mexico through continued bilateral collaboration, funding for judicial and security sector reform, and building “resilient communities.”

David A. Shirk analyzes the drug war in Mexico, explores Mexico’s capacities and limitations, examines the factors that have undermined effective state performance, assesses the prospects for U.S. support to strengthen critical state institutions, and offers recommendations for reducing the potential of state failure. He argues that the United States should help Mexico address its pressing crime and corruption problems by going beyond traditional programs to strengthen the country’s judicial and security sector capacity and help it build stronger political institutions, a more robust economy, and a thriving civil society.

Washington, DC; Council on Foireign Relations Press, 2011, 56p.

Edited by Julia Buxton Mary Chinery-Hesse Khalid Tinasti

The 12th volume of International Development Policy explores the relationship between international drug policy and development goals, both current and within a historical per-spective. Contributions address the drugs and development nexus from a range of critical viewpoints, highlighting gaps and contradictions, as well as exploring strategies and opportunities for enhanced linkages between drug control and development programming. Crim-inalisation and coercive law enforcement-based responses in international and national level drug control are shown to undermine peace, security and development objectives. Readership: Academic scholars and researchers, policymakers and development practitioners interested in international development policy, drug policies and their effects on development, global economic and political trends, and local development issues.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. 335p.

By June S. Beittel

Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) significantly influence drug trafficking in the United States and pose the greatest drug trafficking threat, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) annual National Drug Threat Assessment. These organizations control the market and movement of a wide range of illicit drugs destined for the United States; for this reason, they are commonly referred to as drug cartels and drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). These poly-criminal organizations also participate in extortion, human smuggling, arms trafficking, and oil theft, among other crimes. Homicide rate increases in Mexico are widely attributed to heightened DTO-related violence, often tied to territorial control over drug routes and criminal influence. Congress has tracked how Mexican TCOs affect security on the U.S.-Mexico border, perpetrate violence, and contribute to the U.S. opioid crisis. A major concern is the organizations’ trafficking of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Many analysts assess that Mexican TCOs’ role in the production and trafficking of synthetic opioids into the United States has significantly expanded since 2018. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 106,000 overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2021, more than 70% of which involved opioids, including fentanyl.

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2022. 43p.

Edited by R. Forte

The policy paper (ed. Forte, R., Sapucca, 2013) offers a description of the situation of organized crime in the Western Balkans in general and in individual countries - Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro - as well as a focus on the recent legislation on the recovery and management of criminal assets in Bulgaria, used as a term of confrontation with the consolidated approach applied in Italy to such issues. It offers as well a feasibility analysis on the extension of the model to the Western Balkans.

Sofia, Bulgaria: Center for the Study of Democracy, 2013. 88p.

By Philip Keefer, Norman V. Loayza, and Rodrigo R. Soares

This paper reviews the unintended consequences of the war on drugs, particularly for developing countries, and weighs them against the evidence regarding the efficacy of prohibition to curb drug use and trade. It reviews the available evidence and presents new results that indicate that prohibition has limited effects on drug prevalence and prices, most likely indicating a combination of inelastic drug demand (due to its addictive properties) and elastic supply responses (due to black markets). This should turn the focus to the unintended consequences of drug prohibition. First, the large demand for drugs, particularly in developed countries, generates the possibility of massive profits to potential drug providers. This leads to the formation of organized crime groups, which use violence and corruption as their means of survival and expansion and which, in severe cases, challenge the state and seriously compromise public stability and safety. Second, prohibition and its derived illegal market impose greater costs on farmers than on drug traffickers. In many instances, this entails the transfer of wealth from poor peasants to rich (and ruthless) traders. Third, criminalization can exacerbate the net health effects of drug use. These consequences are so pernicious that they call for a fundamental review of drug policy around the world.

Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008. 36p.

By Peter Reuter

The production of cocaine and heroin, the two most important drugs economically, has been concentrated in a small number of poor nations for 25 years. A slightly larger number of developing nations have been affected by large-scale trafficking in these two drugs. This paper reviews what is known about drug control programs and considers non-traditional options. The usual array of programs for suppressing drug problems, enforcement, treatment, harm reduction and prevention have been assessed almost exclusively in wealthy nations. Although treatment has been shown to be cost-effective, it is of minimal relevance for reducing the drug problems of nations such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico or Tajikistan, which are primarily harmed by production and trafficking rather than consumption. Efforts to reduce drug production and trafficking have not been subject to systematic evaluation but the best interpretation of the available evidence is that they have had minimal effect on the quantities produced or trafficked. It is reasonable to conclude that international drug control efforts can do more to affect where these drugs are produced rather than the quantity. If that is the case, and given that spreading a specific level of production or trafficking to more rather than fewer nations probably decreases global welfare, it may be appropriate to consider a less aggressive stance to current producers and to make strategic decisions about the location of an industry producing a global bad.

Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008. 38p.

By Daniel Mejia and Carlos Esteban Posada

The main purpose of this paper is to summarize the information currently available on cocaine production and trafficking. The paper starts by describing the available data on cocaine production and trade, the collection methodologies (if available) used by different sources, the main biases in the data, and the accuracy of different data sources. Next, it states some of the key empirical questions and hypotheses regarding cocaine production and trade and takes a first look at how well the data match these hypotheses. The paper states some of the main puzzles in the cocaine market and studies some of the possible explanations. These puzzles and empirical questions should guide future research on the key determinants of illicit drug production and trafficking. Finally, the paper studies the different policies that producer countries have adopted to fight against cocaine production and the role consumer countries play in the implementation of anti-drug policies.

Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008. 62p.

By Daniel Mejía and Pascual Restrepo

This paper provides a thorough economic evaluation of the anti-drug policies implemented in Colombia between 2000 and 2006 under the so-called Plan Colombia. The paper develops a game theory model of the war against illegal drugs in producer countries. We explicitly model illegal drug markets, which allows us to account for the feedback effects between policies and market outcomes that are potentially important when evaluating large scale policy interventions such as Plan Colombia. We use available data for the war on cocaine production and trafficking as well as outcomes from the cocaine markets to calibrate the parameters of the model. Using the results from the calibration we estimate important measures of the costs, effectiveness, and efficiency of the war on drugs in Colombia. Finally we carry out simulations in order to assess the impact of increases in the U.S. budget allocated to Plan Colombia, and find that a three-fold increase in the U.S. budget allocated to the war on drugs in Colombia would decrease the amount of cocaine that successfully reaches consumer countries by about 17%.

Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes–Facultad de Economía–CEDE, 2008. 60p.

By Ruggero Scaturro and Walter Kemp

Despite the prevalence of trade over land, South Eastern Europe (SEE) also contains more than a hundred ports and 12 container terminals, which are important entry and exit points for trade in the Adriatic, Aegean, Black and Ionian Seas, as well as along the Danube. This report reveals that there is also a maritime Balkan route bringing drugs into SEE through key commercial seaports: cocaine from Latin America and heroin via Türkiye and the Middle East. Other commodities being smuggled along this route include weapons, waste, counterfeit goods and cigarettes. In addition, it provides a glimpse of smuggling along the Danube. The case studies, which feature nine of the region’s commercial ports, are a central element of this report. The map below shows the ports (in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Slovenia) that form the basis of the analysis in this study. These ports were chosen to provide an overview of different types of ports (based on size, ownership, location and history of seizures) and to assess their vulnerability to organized crime.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 111p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This report shows that the total value of illicit heroin and opium trafficked from Afghanistan to Western Europe through the Balkans amounts to some $28 billion every year. Sixty-five per cent of this total ($18 billion) is generated in Western and Central Europe. The four largest European markets for heroin - France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy - account for nearly half of the gross profits, as the major heroin benefits are made by traffickers on the retail markets. The report shows that the total value generated by Afghan heroin and opium trafficked in Europe and through the Balkan route is one third bigger than the entire GDP of Afghanistan itself, which, in 2014, amounted to some $21 billion. Other findings indicate that the negative economic impact of heroin and opium are actually greater in Europe and the Balkan route countries than in Afghanistan itself. The report also shows the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey as the two countries which interject the greater percentage of heroin and opium destined for Europe. Iran seizes about 30 per cent of the 155 tons of heroin and opium entering its territory every year, while Turkey seizes 17 per cent. All other countries in Europe interject an average of 6 per cent of heroin in their territory. Data show that the impact of illicit profits in the national licit economy across countries is significant, with heroin and opium traffickers gaining between 0.2 to 2 per cent of their country's GDP. For some countries this share is bigger than the public expenditures dedicated to drug policies - if all drugs, and not only heroin and opium, are considered. The large amounts of money generated through this illicit activity can distort the licit national economies in the region.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015. 92p.