Drug Trafficking in the United States - Research Paper Example

Running Head: English Drug Trafficking in the United s Introduction Trafficking of illegal drugs in the United States is an issue of global scope. The United States is mainly aware of the global problem. In reaction to what is believed to be an unmatched global threat in the contemporary period, the U.S. government has, aside from eliminating illegal drug operations within its boundaries, put into effect an aggressive foreign policy against illegal drug activities (Destefano, 2007). This essay will briefly discuss the current problem of drug trafficking in the United States and how the government tries to solve the enduring issue. Criminal drug operations in the United States have been a crisis for decades now and display no indication of disappearing. The National Drug Threat Assessment in 2004 shows that (Swanson, 2006): In adults age eighteen to twenty-five, 15.4 percent report having used cocaine in their lifetime, 53.8 percent report having used marijuana, and 15.1 percent report having used MDMA (commonly known as ‘Ecstasy’). In 2002, there were 1,209, 938 mentions of drug use by emergency room patients (compared with 899,977 in 1995), and in 2000 alone, over 1.5 million people were admitted to substance abuse treatment programs in the United States. Americans consumed over 259 metric tons of cocaine in 2000 and over 13.3 metric tons of heroin in the same year (ibid, p. 779). The U.S. government, as a solution to the growing problem of drug trafficking, invests more resources into law enforcement, rehabilitation, and prevention initiatives (Destefano, 2007). The United States confront major threats of drug trafficking from neighboring Western countries because they can simply satisfy or surpass the demands of the United States for prohibited drugs (Destefano, 2007). The drug control goals of the U.S. government are articulated in diverse ways by policymakers, but they have in common the goal to mitigate the use, accessibility, and negative impacts of drugs. Solving the Problem of Drug Trafficking in the United States The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is given the task of supervising the U.S. global drug control initiative. One of the objectives of the initiative is ‘to help stop the flow of illegal drugs to American soil’ (Swanson, 2006, 779). The agency believes that the prosecution of drug traffickers is a major element of its plan, and functions to reinforce overseas criminal justice systems to reduce their fraud by drug traffickers (Swanson, 2006). The Office of National Drug Control Policy of the Clinton administration proclaims its major priorities for national policing as “the disruption and dismantling of drug trafficking organizations, including seizure of their assets, and the investigation, arrest, and prosecution and imprisonment of drug traffickers” (Swanson, 2006, 780). The presence of an International Criminal Court with authority over illegal drug activities would promote all of these (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). The United States, primarily, should back up this scheme because it will provide a greater assurance of punishment and conviction for drug traffickers. The judicial body would furnish another medium for prosecution, aside from the United States’ and other countries’ criminal justice system. More suspected drug traffickers would be convicted, sentenced, and thus pulled out from current systems of drug production and distribution (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). The disturbance of drug traffickers and their loss of profits from drugs could aid in mitigating political corruption and fraud, and safeguard the authority of social institutions, law, and democracy from disrupting forces (Destefano, 2007). The United States would hence gain from the consequent boost in international defense. Subsequently, the Court would probably make global policing more productive and responsive. It will offer procedures for mitigating jurisdictional conflicts between countries and for transferring drug traffickers to the Court instead of to another autonomous country (Swanson, 2006). Lastly, the United States should back up the vigorous prosecution of offenders in the Court for it would contribute in the reduction of volumes of drugs brought into the U.S. markets (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). As a result, gains streaming to the United States could involve alleviations of drug-related federal offences, abuse, and violence. As stated by a distinguished U.S. policymaker: “We have to do more if we are to break the deadly grip of drug dependency and drug-related crime” (Swanson, 2006, 780). The International Criminal Court offers a solution to this problem and to the roots of the increasing spate of illegal drug activities in the United States. The Relationship between Drug Trafficking and Free Trade in the United States Global trade and unlawful drug trafficking are naturally connected (Swanson, 2006). With the intensified international trade liberalization over the recent decades, markets have been exposed to individual and regional country points, and the quantity of illegal and legal products and services moving along national borders has grown dramatically (Swanson, 2006). Western countries have been particularly implicated in this occurrence; from the GATT to the NAFTA, and possibly to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), American countries are struggling to harvest the gains of more liberal trade (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). Nevertheless, the current global trade system, although endowing a medium for acceptable economic development, has also permitted drug trafficking in indirect and direct ways. Free trade has indirect influences on drug trafficking. Important trade contracts usually result in major economic reformation, and regimes normally withdraw from local economic policy (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). Individuals displaced or otherwise negatively influenced by these reforms to the economic system may resort to drug trafficking as a feasible means of profit. Particularly in the Americas, the impacts of market reorganization are usually most severe in the sectors of agriculture (Swanson, 2006). For instance, in Mexico, conformity to the regulations of NAFTA obliged the government to disregard its agenda of ‘food sovereignty’ to make way for market regulation, forcing Mexico’s farmers to take in hand global market forces (Swanson, 2006). Confronted with dropping profits from basic food provisions, large numbers of rural farmers in Mexico resorted to farming of marijuana and poppy crops (Swanson, 2006). Illegal production and trafficking of drugs automatically entail the utilization of otherwise permitted goods and services, which, with international market liberalization, are trafficked more simply and with modest constraints (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). For instance, production of heroin and cocaine needs ‘precursor chemicals’ which have completely legal industrial uses (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009, 25). These substances are trafficked easily in the global market and are hence openly available to drug manufacturers. Certainly, the Convention of 1988 acknowledges that trade in ‘precursor chemicals’ is a significant motivating factor for the global drug trafficking crisis and tries to mitigate this through the 1988 Convention’s Article 12, a proviso requiring each Party to implement procedures to deter ‘diversion’ of specific chemicals utilized in the production of illegal drugs (Swanson, 2006, 781). These strategies involve watching for suspicious export and import agreements, arrest of chemicals, notice to officials in the nation to which the chemicals are exported, and recording and labeling of all chemicals, irrespective of the suspicions of authorities (Swanson, 2006). By promoting global commerce, liberalization of trade enables the international flow of products by “lowering transport prices, improving transportation infrastructure, and enhancing distribution networks” (Swanson, 2006, 781). Large volumes of drugs cross the borders of the United States through legal commercial entities rather than mediums exploited purposely for smuggling (Destefano, 2007). Greater trading quantity between the U.S. and neighboring nations also offers bigger opportunities for drug trafficking organizations in the form of free trade areas (FTA) and customs unions, which are the outcomes of regional trade agreements that commonly support increased tariff regulation of products traded between member nations, majority of which are situated near to one another (Destefano, 2007). NAFTA, within which the United States, Mexico, and Canada trade one another’s products on greatly beneficial agreements, is a case in point of an FTA (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). NAFTA has significantly boosted exchange between the three nations, and due to the total volume of products traversing the borders of the United States, traffickers are provided with considerably better opportunities to cover up their goods in legal commercial consignments (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). Even with improved processes of detection and restructured modus operandi, customs officials cannot check all shipment of products crossing the United States. Definitely, at a basic point, intensified checking of imports is in conflict with free trade premises, which promote the exposure of markets (Destefano, 2007). The United States Customs Service is aware that “[t]he greatest threat comes from the volume of trucks, containers, and rail cars that enter the United States each year” (Swanson, 2006, 781). The vulnerability of the United States to this danger is shown by the total volume of its border traffic (Swanson, 2006): During fiscal year 2002, 11.2 million trucks, 118 million vehicles, and nearly 415 million passengers and pedestrians entered the United States (ibid, p. 781). Liberalization of trade, which has exposed markets to products, has also enlarged exposure to financial organizations and their products/services, which consequently provides bigger opportunities for illegal drug operators to conceal their illegally acquired riches (Destefano, 2007). Moreover, developments in information and communications technology, which have remarkably cultivated legal capital ventures across boundaries, have also furnished the prohibited drug market with greater available ways of hiding illegal wealth (Destefano, 2007). The FTAA tenders an unparalleled chance for the United States to put into effect a trade regulation that will successfully eliminate unlawful drug trafficking (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). Since the FTAA ponders over the involvement of all main drug-producing American nations, the United States can initiate large-scale reforms to its trade regulation with wide-ranging impacts on drug production and trafficking (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). The FTAA, from an economic point of view, provides substantial advantages. Primarily, the trade preferences stated in the FTAA will assume the function of an obligatory treaty provision instead of a flexible process within which preferences could be given or denied by the United States on the basis of protectionist goals (Bartilow & Eorn, 2009). Furthermore, any contract instituting a FTA will normally support more advantageous tariff policy of a broader range of products from drug producing nations. Ultimately, any FTA contract will enforce duties of support for trade liberalization (Swanson, 2006): all involved parties to the contract will have to open their markets (ibid, p. 782). The trade policy of the United States toward neighboring nations shows conflicting ideals of trade liberalization and protectionism. Trading contracts with the Andean and Caribbean regions and Mexico advance the free movement of products and services between constituent countries (Swanson, 2006). In contrast, these agreements demonstrate the entrenched anxieties of the United States over actual rivalry and over political counterattack from major national industries (Destefano, 2007). More unfortunately, the ‘big stick’ (Swanson, 2006, 782) agenda of the United States on unlawful drug trafficking injures attempts toward liberalization of trade by castigating neighboring countries for failing to deal with the drug market’s supply side. Conclusion So long as the trade policy of the United States wrestles the problem of drug trafficking with protectionism, drug-generating nations will be stripped of inducements to expand and take advantage of their comparative leverages in legal products and services. The United States should, if sincerely dedicated to eradication the danger created by illegal drug trafficking, fulfill its dedication to free trade by removing barriers to trade. References Bartilow, H. & Eorn, K. (2009). “Free Traders and Drug Smugglers: The Effects of Trade Openness on States’ Ability to Combat Drug Trafficking,” Latin American Politics and Society, 51, 23+ Destefano, A. (2007). The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Swanson, J. (2006). “Drug Trafficking in the Americas: Reforming United States Trade Policy,” The George Washington International Law Review, 38(4), 779+ Read More