Expert report
The problem of corruption schemes in drug trafficking
RANEPAMUN
MOSCOW, 2018
Contents
INTRODUCTION.. 3
Background information.. 4
Current situation.. 7
Classification of Corruption Generated by Illegal Drug Trafficking.. 9
Proposed solutions. 10
INTRODUCTION
Drug trafficking is a global illicit trade involving the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. UNODC is continuously monitoring and researching global illicit drug markets in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their dynamics. Drug trafficking is a key part of this research. Further information can be found in the yearly World Drug Report.
Recent international treaties define "illicit traffic" as the cultivation, manufacture or trafficking of drugs banned by such treaties. The term is, however, more generally used to describe the link between the demand for and the supply of illegal drugs, the distribution mechanism between production and the market. It is not just the street peddlers, but the vast hidden network that places the drugs on the street -- the fleets of planes and ships, the weapons, the criminal syndicates, the bribery and coercion that is a thriving multi-billion-dollar industry.
Drug trafficking is sophisticated and complex in nature, involving a wide variety of drugs from many different sources throughout the world. Traffickers keep abreast of peak demand areas and the "drug of choice" in specific geographic locations, whilst maintaining the flow of narcotics around the world. This illicit traffic not only violates national drug laws and international conventions, but also involves many other criminal activities, including racketeering, conspiracy, bribery and corruption of public officials, tax evasion, banking law violations, illegal money transfers, import / export violations, crimes of violence and terrorism. This wide range of illegal activities presents an equally wide range of vulnerability to law enforcement action, but the challenge is to even the odds posed by logistics and the covert nature of the drug trade. Stopping one supply route by apprehending minor players, or even a "master criminal", may do little to interrupt the flow of drugs because the complicated network continues to be maintained by other members and rapidly can shift its operations to fill the gap.
Illicit drug trafficking besides using organized crime distribution rings, also depends on younger tourists and poor people, of whom tens of thousands illegally transport drugs each year. The smuggling of illicit drugs is presumed to be aided by some official corruption since the quantities apprehended by the authorities, despite tighter control measures, remain relatively small. Drug trafficking is also greatly aided by the production and manufacture of legal drugs, such as alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, which soften social opinions about drug use. The newest aspect of the illegal drug trade is the increasing demand for synthetic drugs. The world's drug control agents encounter huge laboratories with state-of-the-art technology and a work-force of chemists who can manufacture synthetic drugs in vast quantities.
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The process which many countries have adopted for disrupting drug trafficking organizations include strengthening of legal tools such as judicial assistance, sentencing and appropriate penalties; forfeiture of assets gained illegally from the profits of the drug trade; extradition of persons accused of drug crimes; and denial of entry to persons convicted of drug offences. One step taken by the international community in this regard was the adoption of a United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances,which deals with those aspects of the problem not covered in other international agreements.
Background information
Although the present "War on Drugs" is a distinctly modern phenomenon, drug laws have been a common feature of human culture throughout history.
Religious intolerance was also the motivation for drug prohibition in Christian Europe. In a move interpreted as support of the efforts of the Spanish Inquisition against the Arabs, in a 1484 fiat, Pope Innocent VIII banned the use of cannabis. The persecution of heretics in the form of witch-hunts also gathered momentum around this time, and frequently targeted users of medicinal and hallucinogenic herbs. The Inquisition proceeded apace in Meso-America and South America, where peyote (péyotl), ololiúqui, toloáche, teonanácatl, and other sacred plants of the Mexican culture were prohibited as works of the devil.
Chinese authorities issued edicts against opium smoking in 1729, 1796 and 1800. The West prohibited addictive drugs throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the early 19th century, an illegal drug trade in China emerged. As a result, by 1838 the number of Chinese opium-addicts had grown to between four and twelve million. The Chinese government responded by enforcing a ban on the import of opium; this led to the First Opium War between the United Kingdom and Qing-dynasty China. The United Kingdom won and forced China to allow British merchants to sell Indian-grown opium. Trading in opium was lucrative, and smoking opium had become common in the 19th century, so British merchants increased trade with the Chinese. The Second Opium War broke out in 1856, with the British joined this time by the French. After the two Opium Wars, the British Crown, via the treaties of Nankingand Tianjin, obliged the Chinese government to pay large sums of money for opium they had seized and destroyed, which were referred toas "reparations".
In 1868, as a result of the increased use of opium, the UK restricted the sale of opium in Britain by implementing the 1868 Pharmacy Act. In the United States, control of opium remained under the control of individual US states until the introduction of the Harrison Act in 1914, after 12 international powers signed the International Opium Convention in 1912.
Twentieth century
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent displays a large bag of seized counterfeit Viagra pharmaceuticals.
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The next great wave of anti-drug legislation began in the late nineteenth century and continues to the present day. The United States has been the driving force in the present-day "War on Drugs."
The first law outright prohibiting the use of a specific drug was a San Francisco, California, ordinance which banned the smoking of opium in opium dens in 1875. This was followed by other laws throughout the country, and federal laws which barred Chinese people from trafficking in opium. Though the laws affected the use and distribution of opium by Chinese immigrants, no action was taken against the producers of such products as laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol, commonly taken as a panacea by white Americans. The dividing line was usually the manner in which the drug was ingested. Chinese immigrants smoked it, while it was included in various kinds of medicines for people of European descent. The laws were aimed at smoking opium, but not otherwise ingesting it. As a result of this discrepancy, modern commentators believe that these laws were racist in origin and intent.
Cocaine was prohibited in the first part of the twentieth century. Newspapers used terms like "Negro Cocaine Fiends" and "Cocainized Niggers" to drive up sales, causing a nationwide panic about the rape of white women by black men, high on cocaine.
This was followed by the Harrison Act, passed in 1914, which required sellers of opiates and cocaine to get a license, which were usually only distributed to white people. While originally intended to require paper trails of drug transactions between doctors, drug stores, and patients, it soon became a prohibitive law. The laws wording was quite vague; it was originally intended as a revenue tracking mechanism that required prescriptions for opiates. It became precedent that any prescription for a narcotic given to a drug addict by a physician or pharmacisteven in the course of medical treatment for addictionconstituted conspiracy to violate the Harrison Act. In the Supreme Court decision JinFuey Moy v. United States, 254 U.S. 189 the court upheld that it was a violation of the Harrison act even if a physician provided prescription of a narcotic for an addict of any kind and thus, was subject to criminal prosecution. The supporters of the Harrison Act did not support blanket prohibition of the drugs involved. This is also true of the later Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. Soon, however, the people who were allowed to issue the licenses did not do so, effectively banning the drugs.
The American judicial system did not initially accept drug prohibition. Prosecutors argued that possessing drugs was a tax violation, as no legal licenses to sell drugs were in existence; hence, a person possessing drugs must have purchased them from an unlicensed source. After some wrangling, this was accepted as federal jurisdiction under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The prohibition of alcohol commenced in the United States in 1920, and Finland in 1919. Because alcohol was the most popular recreational drug in these countries, reactions to its prohibition were very different to those of other drugs, which were commonly perceived to be associated with racial and ethnic minorities. Public pressure led to the repealing of alcohol prohibition in 1933, in the United States and 1932, in Finland. Residents of many provinces of Canada also experienced alcohol prohibition for similar periods of time in the first half of the twentieth century. In Sweden, a referendum in 1922, decided against an alcohol prohibition law, but starting in 1914 and until 1955, Sweden employed an alcohol rationing system with personal liquor ration books.
1937 saw the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act. In response to rising drug use amongst young people and the counter-culture in particular, efforts to enforce prohibition were strengthened in many countries from the late 1960s onwards. In 1972, United States President Richard Nixon announced the commencement of the so-called "War on Drugs." Later, President Reagan added the position of drug czar to the President's Executive Office.
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Support at an international level for the prohibition of non-medical drug use has been a consistent feature of United States policy during both Republican and Democratic administrations, to such an extent that U.S. support for foreign governments is sometimes contingent on adherence to U.S. drug policy. Major milestones in this campaign include the successful introduction of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances in 1988.
In 1973, New York State introduced mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment for possession of more than 113g of a hard drug, called the Rockefeller drug laws after New York Governor and later Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Similar laws were introduced across the United States.
California's broader "three strikes and you're out" policy, adopted in 1994, was the first mandatory sentencing policy to gain widespread publicity and was subsequently adopted in most United States jurisdictions. This policy mandates life imprisonment for a third criminal conviction of any offense.
A similar "three strikes" policy was introduced to the United Kingdom by the Conservative government in 1997. This legislation enacted a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years for those convicted for a third time of a drug trafficking offense involving a class A drug.
Nowadays
The beginning of the 21st century saw drug use increase in North America and Europe, with a particularly increased demand for marijuana and cocaine. As a result, international organized crime syndicates such as the Sinaloa Cartel and 'Ndrangheta have increased cooperation among each other in order to facilitate trans-Atlantic drug-trafficking. Use of another illicit drug, hashish, has also increased in Europe.
Current situation
About 275 million people worldwide, which is roughly 5.6 per cent of the global population aged 1564 years, used drugs at least once during 2016. Some 31 million of people who use drugs suffer from drug use disorders, meaning that their drug use is harmful to the point where they may need treatment. Initial estimations suggest that, globally, 13.8 million young people aged 1516 years used cannabis in the past year, equivalent to a rate of 5.6 per cent.
Roughly 450,000 people died as a result of drug use in 2015, according to WHO. Of those deaths, 167,750 were directly associated with drug use disorders (mainly overdoses). The rest were indirectly attributable to drug use and included deaths related to HIV and hepatitis C acquired through unsafe injecting practices.
The headline figures for drug users have changed little in recent years, but this stability masks the striking ongoing changes in drug markets. Drugs such as heroin and cocaine that have been available for a long time increasingly coexist with NPS and there has been an increase in the non-medical use of prescription drugs. The use of substances of unclear origin supplied through illicit channels that are sold as purported medicines but are destined for non-medical use is also on the increase. The range of substances and combinations available to users has never been wider.
Opioids continued to cause the most harm, accounting for 76 percent of deaths where drug use disorders were implicated. PWID some 10.6 million world- wide in 2016 endure the greatest health risks. More than half of them live with hepatitis C, and one in eight live with HIV.
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A notable increase has been seen in cocaine products.
Global cocaine manufacture in 2016 reached its highest level ever: an estimated 1,410 tons. After falling during the period 20052013, global cocaine manufacture rose by 56 per cent during the period 20132016. The increase from 2015 to 2016 was 25 per cent.
Most of the worlds cocaine comes from Colombia, which boosted its manufacture by more than one third from 2015 to 2016, to some 866 tons. The total area under coca bush cultivation worldwide in 2016 was 213,000 ha, almost 69 per cent of which was in Colombia.
The dramatic resurgence of coca bush cultivation in Colombia which had almost halved from 2000 to 2013 came about for a number of reasons related to market dynamics, the strategies of trafficking organizations and expectations in some communities of receiving compensation for replacing coca bush cultivation, as well as a reduction in alternative development interventions and in eradication. In 2006, more than 213,000 ha were eradicated. Ten years later, the figure was less than 18,000 ha.
The result has been a perceived decrease in the risk of coca bush cultivation and a dramatic scaling-up of manufacture. Colombia has seen massive rises in both the number of cocaine laboratories dismantled and the amount of cocaine seized.
Non-medical use of prescription drugs is becoming a major threat around the world
The non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids is of increasing concern for both law enforcement authorities and public health professionals. Different pharmaceutical opioids are misused in different regions. In North America, illicitly sourced fentanyl, mixed with heroin or other drugs, is driving the unprecedented number of overdose deaths. In Europe, the main opioid of concern remains heroin, but the non-medical use of methadone, buprenorphine and fentanyl has also been reported. In countries in West and North Africa and the Near and Middle East, the non-medical use of tramadol, a pharmaceutical opioid that is not under international control, is emerging as a substance of concern.
Womens drug use differs greatly from mens
The prevalence of the non-medical use of opioids and tranquillizers by women remains at a comparable level to that of men, if not actually higher. On the other hand, men are far more likely than women to use cannabis, cocaine and opiates. Women continue to account for only one in five people in treatment. The proportion of females in treatment tends to be higher for tranquillizers and sedatives than for other substances.
While women who use drugs typically begin using substances later than men, once they have initiated substance use, women tend to increase their rate of consumption of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and opioids more rapidly than men. This has been consistently reported among women who use those substances and is known as telescoping. Another difference is that women are more likely to associate their drug use with an intimate partner, while men are more likely to use drugs with male friends.
Classification of Corruption Generated by Illegal Drug Trafficking
Trafficking organizations use corruption within the state and society in a variety of ways.
a. Direct Participation of State Officials in Trafficking Organizations: In this theory, compromised state officials not only collaborate with drug rings, but they also directly participate in them, with leadership roles at some level of the organization. In this case state officials maintain a coordinating relation with the organization and they have its approval.
State officials also directly participate in trafficking by entering the circuit and selling drugs confiscated by the authorities, such as the Peruvian Executive Office of Drug Control, OFECOD, according to the findings of a congressional investigative commission in 1991. The resale of these drugs is a form of disloyal competition, unacceptable to the trafficking groups, and is looked down upon within the criminal logic of drugs. It provokes vendettas and other types of retaliation.
These forms of state officials' direct participation constitute the most serious and dangerous corruption cases because the employees involved maintain a dual ability to control and direct their state institutions and
the trafficking organization. The officials' ability to maintain and extend corruption to the rest of the state is much greater.
b. State Officials' Failure to Control: In this case, state officials participate indirectly. They fail to fulfill the control and supervisory duties of their posts. This type of corruption is visible at three different levels of the law enforcement system - police (in some cases carried out by military personnel), judiciary, and penal.
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In terms of police or military rank, "consent" for the organization to freely carry out its activities is granted. Traffickers pay officials not to guard forts, posts, and bases.
Some drug lords' testimonies refer to Peruvian decorated military officers in the jungle that permit light aircraft carrying drugs, such as the case of the recently captured "Vatican." They also mentioned that this support includes handing over routes or replacement parts in exchange for food and money.
Proposed solutions
1) Measures to control supply and demand, which is reflected in visible reductions since 2007 in the production and use of cocaine, the use of opiates in some regions, injecting drug use and the spread of HIV/AIDS 2) Treatment delivery and international cooperation
3) Successful global and interregional activities of the past few years include the Paris Pact Initiative, a well-established key international partnership to counter the trafficking in and consumption of opiates originating in Afghanistan
4) 7,000 parents and children have benefited from family skills training in 15 countries, improving family life, an important factor protecting against the initiation of illicit drug use.
5) Curbing demand for heroin in Western Europe, which for many years constituted the most lucrative market.
6) Supply of and trafficking in cannabis resin have declined at the global level
7) The global cocaine market has shrunk in the last five years
8) Implementation of effective national measures to address both demand and supply reduction
9) Residential and outpatient drug treatment facilities with counselling, cognitive behavioral therapies, motivational interviewing, detoxification, peer support groups, screening, brief interventions, treatment facilities, social assistance, and rehabilitation and aftercare more widely available than opioid maintenance and opioid antagonist therapy, needle and syringe programs, antiretroviral therapy for people who use drugs, and screening and treatment of drug users for sexually transmitted infections
10) Special training courses to raise the awareness of law enforcement personnel and increase their capacity to meet the challenges arising from the use of new technologies
11) A majority of the countries responding to the annual report questionnaire reported the placing of liaison officers and the undertaking of joint operations and information exchange with other countries. About 40 percent of the countries extradited drug offenders to other countries under bilateral, regional or international agreements. Half of
the reporting countries received technical assistance and another half provided technical assistance to other countries
12) Alternative development programs: have produced sustainable reductions in some of the areas under illicit crop cultivation, in particular coca bush cultivation. Programs which have effectively reduced illicit crop cultivation and improved the socioeconomic situation of small farmer households have included comprehensive interventions targeting the improvement or building of necessary infrastructure, improvement in the quality and yield of food crops, to address food insecurity, and the introduction and improvement of productive cash crops, to generate income. The financing of alternative development and the facilitation of market access for products stemming from alternative development made possible by donors and the international community has proved to be a pillar of sustainable crop control strategies if implemented in a framework of long-term commitment.
