Drug Trafficking - Research Paper Example

Drug addicts are usually morally corrupt people and so are the drug traffickers. This paper discusses the potential means and ways by which drugs reach US and how it impacts the American society. According to the statistics noted by UNODC (2011), about 340 tons of heroin is currently consumed all over the world every year while an annual discharge into the global market of heroin ranges from 430 tons to 450 tons as represented by the seizures. 50 tons of this quantity are yielded by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and the opium retrieved from Myanmar whereas the Afghan opium produces about 380 tons of morphine and heroin.

Of the 380 tons, only 5 tons of heroin are consumed by the Afghanis and the rest is supplied to countries far and wide all over the world via routes in the neighboring countries. UNODC (2011) also shares information regarding the routes through which heroin is smuggled to the world from Afghanistan. Heroin is primarily trafficked through the northern and Balkan routes which connect Afghanistan with the large markets belonging to the Western Europe and the Russian Federation. The Balkan route links Afghanistan with Iran via Pakistan from where, the heroin is passed over to Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece in the South-East Europe.

Its market value upon reaching the European market in the West is about $20 billion. Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia exist on the northern route. That market’s size is worth $13 billion annually. Every year, US has to bear a cost of $70 billion as a result of the illegal trade of drugs (Finckenauer, Fuentes, and Ward, 2007). The chief smugglers of narcotics into US are the drug traffickers of Mexico. Most of the drugs are transferred from Mexico to US through the 2000 mile long border that the two share.

Mexico, today is the main transporter of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine to the US and also plays a cardinal role in the sale of