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Britain's Dope, Inc.:
Marker for Humanity's New Dark Age
by
Dennis Small
Before
you start reading this report, I would like you to look closely, again, at
the photograph printed on the cover of this magazine. It is a haunting
picture of a young Peruvian girl, chewing coca leaves—hungry, exhausted,
frightened, with no hope for the future, yet crying out to the heavens for
justice. There are millions like her all around the world—from Peru and
Bolivia, to Afghanistan and Nigeria, to the inner city streets and the suburbs
of the United States—all victims of Dope, Inc., the international drug cartel
headquartered in London, as it has been for over a century.
This
young girl is the face of the New Dark Age towards which humanity is
careening, should we fail to enact Lyndon LaRouche's policies to dismantle
Dope, Inc., and to place the current global financial system, which created
it, into bankruptcy reorganization. And if that battle is lost, then those
haunting images of millions will become, literally, billions.
There
are a number of pressing reasons why EIR
decided to research and publish this in-depth study of Dope, Inc. now,
in the first weeks of the new Obama Administration in Washington, nearly 13
years after our last systematic report on the subject: "Britain's Dope,
Inc. Grows to a $521 Billion Business" (EIR
Vol. 23, No. 30).
One
reason is the fact that the global financial system is imploding under its
own cancerous weight, and Dope, Inc. is moving in to take over the entire
world economy. On Jan. 28, Lyndon LaRouche warned: "This is Doomsday
Time. The world's available money supply is tied largely to the attempted
bailout of financial institutions, and you've got a shortage of money, of any
kind of credit, building up rapidly into catastrophic levels in every other
area. Now, the argument is that you have to be good to the drug pushers,
because they are the only ones who are supplying the loose cash with this
situation presently, in which the world money supply is collapsing and the
drug supply of money is increasing."
A
second reason is that the British drive for drug legalization is rapidly
accelerating, spearheaded by the Nazi-trained mega-speculator George Soros.
Soros and his legions are beating the drums for
"decriminalization," "medical marijuana," and so-called
"harm reduction strategies," in the United States, South America,
and around the world. They have placed particular focus on the upcoming
special ten-year review by the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs,
which will meet in Vienna, Austria, March 11-20, 2009, where London's
legalizers hope to induce the world community to take steps towards
legalization by discussing "medical marijuana," by endorsing the
"harm reduction" sophistry as an alternative to actually stopping
drugs, and even by removing coca from the list of prohibited substances.
Their basic argument is that the war on drugs simply can't be won, so we
should admit defeat and throw in the towel.
To
which LaRouche responded on Jan. 19: "The only reason we have a drug
problem is because governments don't want to take it away. People say, 'Well,
you can't solve the problem.' What do you mean you can't solve the problem?!
We have the technological means to detect everything in fine detail, to find
all of this stuff; we know how to develop methods for solving the problem.
They choose not to do it! That's the reason—it's the only
reason. Because you have a system
which is doing it. You have to shut down the system."
A
third urgent consideration for publishing this study now, is the fact that the
United States is in danger of stumbling into a blunder of strategic
proportions, by sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan
to "fight the insurgency," a fool's errand concocted in London.
"There is no hope for Afghanistan or Pakistan, so long as the drug trade
is allowed to flourish," LaRouche stated on Jan. 19. "The most
direct way to shut down that trade, and establish the necessary conditions
for a viable policy for South and Central Asia, is to first eliminate George Soros.
Shut down his offshore operations, remove him from any access to the American
political process. Cart him off to jail. Then, come and talk to me about an
appropriate strategy for bringing stability and prosperity to Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
"George
Soros is so pivotal to the British opium war operations," LaRouche
added, "whether in Afghanistan/Pakistan, or in Mexico and other parts of
the Western Hemisphere, that no victory is possible in either of these areas,
so long as Soros is allowed to operate."
But
behind each of these considerations, there is a single underlying reality: That the
drug trade is the marker of humanity's descent into a New Dark Age.
The British Empire is wielding Dope, Inc., today, just as it waged its Opium
War against China in the 19th Century, with an eye towards menticide and the
bestialization of the entire planet's population.
That
coming Dark Age can already be seen in the shocking way Afghanistan has been
transformed into a giant opium- and heroin-producing machine, with production
soaring 280% over the last four years—a dynamic not seen, according to one
frightening UN report, since the Opium War.
It
can be seen in the horrific violence which the drug gangs have unleashed in
Mexico, including more than 5,000 people murdered in 2008, and countless
cases of bestial beheadings and ritual torture of competing narcos and of
anti-drug police chiefs and army generals alike.
It
can be seen in the fact that millions of peasants in drug-producing
countries, such as Afghanistan or Bolivia, have become de facto work slaves
of the cartels, since the collapsing world economy provides them and their
families no source of simple survival, other than the drug economy.
It
can be seen in the uncharted, huge rise of global consumption of
high-potency, highly addictive marijuana, including in hapless Africa—most of
which is starving, and yet today produces a fifth of the planet's marijuana.
And
it can be seen, again, in the face of our young Peruvian girl.
Dope, Inc. in the 21st Century
The
widely cited United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) asserted in its
2008 World
Drug Report that there has been "long-term
stabilization" in drug markets, and that "there is every indication
that all four drug markets [opiates; marijuana; cocaine; and ATS
(Amphetamine-Type Stimulants)] have been contained over the long term."
Alas,
would that it were so.
A
systematic review of the published literature—including the UNODC reports as
well as numerous official U.S. sources—cross-checked with law enforcement and
other experts in the field, in the United States and other nations, shows
that between 2000 and 2007, the international drug trade has grown in tonnage
of production available for sale by about 43%, with marijuana leading the
way. The total street value of those drugs—i.e., Dope, Inc.'s potential
annual "take"—rose from about $550 billion in 2000, to over $800
billion in 2007, according to EIR's
conservative estimate. In fact, it is quite possible that the actual total is
closer to $1 trillion.
Qualified
American intelligence professionals concur: They tell EIR
that the figure for world drug sales most often bandied about by
international agencies, $320 billion, probably underestimates the problem by a factor
of three.
That
same process is reflected in the statistics of prevalence of drug use which
the UNODC itself, and others, report. Although the accuracy of these
statistics, like all consumption-based analysis of the drug trade, is highly
questionable (see "Methodology" box), they nonetheless are
indicative of the trend. At the turn of the century, the annual prevalence of
drug use across all categories was reportedly some 180 million people. By
2007-08, that number had risen to about 210 million—a 17% rise, or 30 million
new drug users.
Thirty
million!
And
this only purports to measure the total number of regular users, not the
quantities that they consumed.
In
part, the increased physical production of drugs may not be translating
entirely into increased consumption. There are indications that some
narcotics, especially heroin, are being "commoditized" and used in
barter arrangements for the purchase of weapons for terrorists and others,
gold, and even other speculative commodities.
The
21st-Century growth in potential drug sales occurred in all the major
categories of drugs except cocaine, and it came after a period of relative
stagnation in the late 1990s. But already, in our 1996 study, we had warned
against being misled by this apparent subsidence: "It would be a serious
mistake to conclude from this that the drug problem is somehow levelling off.
Rather, what is going on is a period of relative consolidation, preparatory
to a new take-off stage in production, consumption, and the value of total
sales In other words, what we are seeing is a classic 'S-shaped' function,
whose stage of relatively slower growth has already ended, as the curve
accelerates back upwards."
We
were right—unfortunately.
In
part, this is a result of a deliberate—and successful—marketing strategy
employed by Dope, Inc., taken straight from the pages of a Harvard Business
School manual: slash prices of your "product" in order to increase
the volume of purchases by an even greater proportion. How well this worked
for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana can be seen in in the statistics
which cover the period 1980-2007. Heroin prices were cut by a factor of 5.5
over that period, while the quantity produced increased 17-fold. In the case
of cocaine, prices were cut by a factor of 5.1, while production rose
5.5-fold. And for marijuana, when prices are adjusted to take into
consideration the rapidly rising THC content of street sales, a similar
process is evident from 1990 forward.
The
idea that drug prices are somehow set by "market supply and demand"
is utterly ludicrous. Dope, Inc. is a cartel, which establishes "fiat
prices," in the words of one U.S. intelligence specialist consulted by EIR.
This also points to the idiocy of the argument that drug legalization will
get rid of the nasty criminals, supposedly because lower prices will make
drug trafficking "less profitable." Lowering prices is exactly what
Dope, Inc. itself has been doing for decades, with a resulting vast expansion
of its market—and profits!
You
can almost hear George Soros sneering: "You're threatening to lower drug
prices by legalizing? Make my day!"
None
of this need have happened. Lyndon LaRouche laid out the strategy for
conducting a successful war on drugs as far back as his 1985 15-point plan,
and he has reiterated and refined it over the years. Most recently, he has
urged that high-technology measures be adopted, with a minimum of lethal
force, to identify, eradicate, and seize the physical drugs and their
required precursor chemicals, and especially, that drug money laundering be
brought to a grinding halt as part of a global bankruptcy reorganization of
the world financial system. This must be done, LaRouche has insisted, with
cooperative agreements among nations which fully respect the national
sovereignty of the affected states, and by placing special emphasis on great
economic development projects to help free the millions of captive producers
and consumers from their enslavement to Dope, Inc.—much as the Allied armies
liberated the world from the grip of Fascism during World War II.
"Destroy
the bastards! Shut them down. There's no reason to put up with this crap.
Civilization is at stake," LaRouche stated bluntly Jan. 28.
Opiates: Where in the World Is All the Heroin Going?
Opium
and heroin production today is completely out of control. This fact may not
be immediately apparent, if you look only at the trend of the area under
poppy cultivation internationally. From 2000 to the present, there were
yearly ups and downs, but the total area cultivated rose only slightly. About
14% of that was eradicated in 2007, leaving about 225,000 hectares
harvested—well below the peak of 313,000 hectares in 1993.
But
there is something else going on. In the late 1990s, Myanmar, which had
historically been the world's leading opium producer, cracked down and
reduced production by almost 90%, from a high of 2,575 tons in 1993, down to
270 tons in 2007. Dope, Inc. did not look kindly on what Myanmar had done,
but quickly shifted its base of opium production to Afghanistan—where the per
hectare poppy yields are three times greater
than in Myanmar (48.5 kg/ha vs. 15 kg/ha), because of the variety of poppy
plant used, better irrigation, and so on. This explains the phenomenon of a
relatively constant total world area under poppy cultivation, at the same
time that world production has been skyrocketing.
The
results: No lasting significance should be ascribed to the visibly dramatic
plunge in Afghan production in 2001, when the orthodox Islamist
"old" Taliban decided to crack down heavily on drugs, bringing
production down to a mere 74 tons in that one year. Some experts say that
this was merely a supply-control decision made by Dope, Inc., to use up a
significant portion of the stockpiles of heroin which had been accumulating.
In any event, production zoomed in subsequent years, under the watchful and
approving eye of British and allied NATO troops deployed in the country. In
2003, Afghanistan produced 2,865 tons of opium, an amount that rose 280% to
8,000 tons over the next four years. The country's share of world production
leapt from 75% to 94% in the same period.
The
vast majority of Afghan opium is converted into heroin and morphine, in labs
both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan. In this stage of the
process, too, Afghanistan has become something of an opiate superpower,
because the efficiency of conversion of opium into heroin—which has
historically been calculated at a ratio of 10:1, for all countries—improved
significantly in Afghanistan, beginning in 2002, where it now takes only 8.5
kg of opium to produce 1 kg of pure heroin, a 15% increase in efficiency.
The
opium boom of the last five years has meant that supply now far outstrips
demand from consumption. According to the UNODC's 2008 World Drug
Report, "vast amounts of opium, heroin and morphine
(thousands of tons) have been withheld from the market." The report
correctly notes, "These stockpiles are a time bomb for public health and
global security." Further, the report states that nobody knows where the
stockpiles are, except that they are not in the hands of the poppy farmers.
We have to "find the missing opium," the UNODC says urgently.
"As a priority, intelligence services need to examine who holds this
surplus, where it may go, and for what purposes."
The
UNODC could start by calling in George Soros for questioning.
Part
of the answer may lie in the commoditization of heroin we mentioned above.
Another significant factor is the vast increase in heroin use in nations
along the overland trafficking routes from Afghanistan to Europe, especially
Iran and Russia, which are known to be especially hard hit by skyrocketing
addiction rates.
In
2008, according to the UNODC, Afghan opium production fell slightly to 7,700
tons, in part due to a drought in the north of the country. But opium
cultivation in the British-controlled Helmand Province in the south grew
from 102,800 hectares in 2007 to 103,600 in 2008. The vast majority of the
world's opium comes from Afghanistan, and the vast majority of that is grown
in Helmand Province; in 2007, Helmand's opium was 53% of the national total,
but in 2008 it skyrocketed to two-thirds of the total. Between 2002 and 2008,
cultivation in Helmand Province more than tripled.
The
northern provinces may be shifting out of opium, but they are shifting into
marijuana. Marijuana production has risen dramatically in Afghanistan, to the
point that today the hectares cultivated are one-third the total dedicated to
opium. Furthermore, the UNODC notes, "This is happening in some of the
provinces that are opium free (for example in the north)," and marijuana
cultivation actually "generates even greater net
income (because of opium's high labor costs)."
Afghanistan
may be the epicenter of the heroin holocaust, but it is not the world's only
producer of opiates. There are three distinct production regions, which
supply three distinct markets.
- Mexico
and Colombia:
Their entire opium crop is converted into heroin, and most of it is
shipped to the United States, where it supplies about 95% of the U.S.
market; Afghanistan provides only 3% of the total consumed in the United
States. The Mexican share has increasingly taken over from the
Colombians, including in the east coast urban market which had long been
Colombian turf. Mexican heroin production increased 105% from 1999 (8.8
tons) to 2007 (18 tons), while Colombian production decreased 47% in
that same period, going from 8.7 to 4.6 tons.
- South
East Asia:
Myanmar remains the largest producer in the region, and supplies the
area, notably China and Australia.
- Southwest
Asia, i.e.,
Afghanistan, which supplies the "traditional" European market,
and the newer and rapidly growing addict populations of Russia, Iran,
and other victim countries along the trafficking routes. The growing
preponderance of the south of Afghanistan in national opium production,
has meant a corresponding shift in routes. Most opiates are now
trafficked from southern Afghanistan via the Balkan routes into Europe,
with the northern Silk Route declining in relative terms.
For
example, the UNODC estimates that 53% of all opiates left Afghanistan via
Iran, 33% via Pakistan, and 14% via Central Asia (mainly Tajikistan). If only
heroin and morphine are considered, 51% exited via Pakistan, 30% via Iran,
and 20% via Central Asia.
Intelligence
sources consulted by EIR have also
emphasized the growing importance of a sea route, where heroin is transported
by land to Pakistani ports on the Arabian Sea, shipped to Dubai in the United
Arab Emirates, and from there on to Europe.
How
much of its opiate line of "products" does Dope, Inc. lose along
the way? Only a small percentage of the opium crop is eradicated, as noted
above. The key precursor chemical for producing heroin—acetic anhydride—is
not produced at all in Afghanistan, but is smuggled in principally from
China, India, and Germany, through neighboring countries. Seizures of acetic
anhydride almost never occur.
As
for seizures of the opiate drugs themselves, the global rate rose from 13% in
1996, to 23% in 2006. For opium, Iran seized 81% of the total world seizures;
for heroin, Iran seized 19% of the total, followed by Turkey (18%), and China
(10%).
As
unimpressive as the results have been, the fact is that, instead of the 6,900
tons of opiates that were available for sale in 2007, there would have been
nearly 10,000 tons, had it not been for the half-hearted anti-drug efforts
undertaken.
Imagine
what the world could do if we decided to get serious.
Marijuana: No One Even Knows How Much Is Grown
Marijuana
is the most widespread narcotic drug trafficked by Dope, Inc., and is well
established as its entry-level product line for expanding the cartel's deadly
grip on captive producing and consuming populations. For example, in the
United States, marijuana has by far the highest abuse rate of any drug—five
times that of cocaine.
There
were about 520,000 hectares under cannabis cultivation in 2006, according to
the UNODC—or perhaps it was actually three times that amount. As the UNODC
itself admitted in its 2008 World Drug Report,
it is "difficult, for most countries, to introduce scientifically
reliable crop monitoring systems" for marijuana, since there are lots of
small plots, hidden indoor hydroponic cultivation, and so on. "If all
cannabis growing wild was included in the area estimates, the global surface
covered by cannabis could be two to three times larger."
Yield
estimates also vary widely, from 5 kg/ha (wild cannabis) to 40,000 kg/ha for
hydroponic cultivation. So the total cannabis produced worldwide in 2007 may
have been about 50,000 tons, or it could well have been double that amount!
For example, in the United States, arguably the world's largest consumer and
producer of marijuana, no one really has the faintest idea of how much is
produced or imported into the country. As the Department of Justice's 2008
National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) stated frankly: "No reliable
estimates are available regarding the amount of domestically cultivated or
processed marijuana. The amount of marijuana available—including marijuana
produced both domestically and internationally—in the U.S. is unknown."
As
for the number of consumers, the UNODC puts the figure at 166 million
worldwide, but that also is more of a guess than anything else, since it
derives its consumption estimates from "expert perceptions reported by
States Members"—whoever they are, and whatever that means. Furthermore,
these consumption-based estimates give wildly different numbers than most
production-based estimates, which led the UNODC to admit in its 2004 report:
"It should be noted that the current production estimates do not tally
with consumption estimates for individual countries. Supply-side estimates
for the U.S.A., for instance, see a cannabis herb market (including exports)
of close to 18,000 tons for 2001-02. Consumption based estimates see a cannabis
herb market of around 1,000 tons for the U.S.A. Thus far, this discrepancy
[an 18-fold "discrepancy"!-ed.] has not been resolved."
Some
intelligence professionals consulted by EIR
have simply thrown up their hands, arguing that U.S. marijuana production is
"intrinsically unmeasurable," since so much of it is grown: a)
indoors in high-tech hydroponic environments; b) on public lands and parks,
under double-canopied forests which make it largely undetectable from the
air, even if U.S. intelligence services were allowed to engage in satellite
imaging of the U.S. (as they do of other countries), which they are not,
since it is prohibited by law; and c) in individual plots cultivated by
millions of aging Baby-Boomer consumers.
Official
estimates of the extent of domestic cultivation in the U.S. thus vary by more
than a factor of six.
What
is
known, is that worldwide production and consumption of marijuana is rising
rapidly, and that the THC content in the United States is double what it was
a decade ago, producing a highly addictive effect on the consumer. In part,
the zooming potency is due to the shift from outdoor to indoor cultivation,
since "controlled growing conditions generally yield higher-potency
marijuana," according to the 2008 NDTA. "Additionally, indoor
cannabis cultivators are able to cultivate year-round with four to six
harvests a year," they note, "compared to one or two harvests a
year typical of outdoor cultivation."
Indoor
cultivation occurs mainly in California, Oregon, and Washington state,
"largely because of the exploitation of medical marijuana laws in some
states," the NDTA notes. The case of Mendocino County, California, was
recently made notorious by a CNBC documentary appropriately titled Marijuana,
Inc..
What
is also known, is that there has been a huge explosion of production,
consumption, and trafficking of cannabis in Africa. According to UNODC
statistics, Africa today produces about 10,000 out of the 50,000 tons
produced worldwide. The UNODC didn't even start reporting African production
regularly until 2003, nor are there statistics available from other sources
for earlier years. This accounts for an anomalous Africa "bump,"
although the reality of the matter is that substantial African marijuana cultivation
was surely going on prior to 2003, albeit under the radar of most
international agencies. South Africa, Nigeria, and Lesotho are among the
continent's major producers, but almost every country produces for its own
consumption, especially by the poor, who use it to be able to work longer and
harder—much as occurs with coca leaves among South America's Andean peasants.
We
also know that cannabis cultivation in Afghanistan has risen dramatically in
the last few years. In 2007, the UNODC reports, "the area under cannabis
cultivation in Afghanistan was equivalent to over a third of the area under
opium poppy cultivation. If production truly takes hold in Afghanistan there
could be a rebound in consumption in West and Central Europe and an expansion
in Eastern Europe." Much of the Afghan marijuana may be being converted
into hashish, whose largest producer is currently Morocco.
It
is also known that Mexico is the world's leading eradicator of marijuana;
Mexican authorities reported that in 2006, they wiped out about 75%, or
31,000 out of a total of 40,000 hectares cultivated—although the State
Department's INCSR thinks that the remaining amount available is higher than
the Mexicans report. Very little marijuana is seized in the distribution
chain. The combined impact of eradication and seizures in 2007 meant that the
tons available for sale were cut in half, down to "only" 45,000
tons.
The
net result is that cannabis (marijuana and hashish) has become the single
largest component of the value of all potential drug sales, accounting for
some $368 billion in potential sales in 2007.
In
2006, the UNODC issued an alarming special study of marijuana as part of its
annual report, headlined: "Cannabis: Why we should care." In it,
the UNODC warns: "Cannabis has been allowed to fall into a grey area.
Technically illegal but widely de-prioritized, the drug has grown in
popularity at a rate outpacing all others. A global blind spot has developed
around cannabis, and in this murk the plant itself has been transformed into
something far more potent than in the past."
This
brings into clear focus the sheer criminality of the Soros-led drive for
"medical marijuana." Soros et al. are pushing it with a precise
understanding that it is a foot-in-the-door for the unfettered expansion of
Dope, Inc., and the drugging of virtually the entire planet's population.
Cocaine: Eradication Works ... If You Do It
Of
the four major drug groups, cocaine is the only one which has remained pretty
much flat from 1990 to the present, both in terms of area harvested as well
as amount produced—although there has been an internal shift among the
world's three producers, with Colombia taking over first place from Peru in
the late 1990s. In the case of opium, total production (before seizures)
increased by 122% between 1990 and 2007, from 3,816 to 8,484 tons. Marijuana
likewise more than doubled in the same period. But cocaine production was 920
tons in 1990, and 940 tons in 2007—albeit with yearly ups and downs in
between.
The
reason? Eradication of over half of all coca plantations, principally in
Colombia. If there had been no coca eradication, all 471,000 hectares
cultivated would have been harvested, as opposed to the 233,000 that was the
case in 2007. Production would have been 1,903 tons, more than double the 940
tons that actually were produced. And the curve of rising cocaine production
from 1995-2007 would have looked like a close copy of the curves for opium
and marijuana production.
Achieving
this success—partial though it may be—has come as the result of a
decades-long political and military battle, both in the Andean region and in
the United States. Drug legalizers and environmentalists have screamed bloody
murder at aerial spraying of the (totally safe) herbicide glyphosate; Wall
Street brazenly rallied to the defense of the Colombian narco-terrorist FARC
cartel, as enshrined in the infamous Grasso Abrazo
photograph of June 1999; and countless patriotic Colombian soldiers,
policemen, judges, politicians and even Presidential candidates gave their
lives to stop Dope, Inc.
But
eradication alone is hardly sufficient. To be successful, crop eradication
must be deployed as part of a total anti-drug strategy. Especially under
today's circumstances, you cannot simply wipe out the coca or poppy crop in a
country and walk away, when the livelihood of millions depends on it, as with
the captive populations of Afghanistan or Bolivia today. Those populations
first have to be freed from their slavery to Dope, Inc.'s drug lords, and won
over through a policy of serious economic development of their nations. At
the same time, the drug-processing laboratories, and the drug-trafficking
routes, and the international drug-money laundering financial interests
especially, must be put out of business. As LaRouche has repeatedly stressed,
this should be done with an emphasis on high-technology capabilities,
employing only a minimum of lethal force, as needed to get the job done.
The
cocaine case also raises another fundamental question that goes to the heart
of the nature of Dope, Inc.
There
are two possible interpretations. The first argues that there is an existing
market demand for cocaine, and over the years the narco-traffickers
cultivated enough coca to keep final production, after eradication, at the
level needed to meet that market demand. This is the standard, "free
market" axiomatics to which the legalizers and others always revert.
The
second view is that demand for drugs is not a "market" phenomenon,
but is created by Dope, Inc., in the same way that the British created a
"market" for their opium in China in the 19th Century—by shoving it
down peoples' throats, with war if need be. This view argues that Dope, Inc.
always tries to figure out a way to sell as much cocaine as could be produced
without eradication, as it has with all drugs.
This
second view is, of course, correct—for reasons we explain more fully in the
"Methodology" box. Dope, Inc. is a drug cartel run by the world's
most powerful financial interests intent on bringing on a New Dark Age, not a
market competitor with a product line to sell wherever it finds
"effective demand."
All
of the world's coca and cocaine is produced in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia,
and the United States is the world's leading consumer market. A full 90% of
the amount entering the United States now goes through Mexico. The 2009
National Drug Threat Assessment issued by the Department of Justice specifies
that 69% goes through what they call the "Eastern Pacific Vector,"
travelling up to Mexico's Pacific coast by "go-fast" boats and
fishing boats. The cartels are also increasingly using "Self-Propelled
Semisubmersible-Low Profile Vessels (SPSS-LPV)"—i.e., mini submarines—on
this route. An additional 21% is sent via the "Western Caribbean
Vector," again with "go-fast" boats and private airplanes.
The
second major market is Europe, where "cocaine use and cocaine-related
problems have increased markedly since the mid-1990s," according to the
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, an EU body set up in
1993. It expresses special concern that, although the UNODC reports stable
cocaine production for the last decade, "in Europe, overall cocaine
seizures have tripled during this period," rising from 8% of the world
total in 2000, to 14% in 2005, and 17% in 2006. This indicates that use in
Europe has increased while prices have declined. The UNODC freely admits that
"there is a lack of information on how much cocaine European markets may
be consuming."
The
European Monitoring Centre identifies three main smuggling routes from South
America:
- The Northern
route, from South America to Europe via the Caribbean, which brings in
an estimated 40% of European cocaine, using "rapid and difficult to
detect 'go-fast' boats, but also pleasure boats, cargo freighters and
container ships. Aircraft are also used for dropping cocaine bundles in
international waters to awaiting pick-up vessels."
- The Central
route, from South America to the Iberian Peninsula, with possible
transits in Cape Verde, the Azores, or the Canary Islands.
- The African
route, to West Africa by large cargo ships or by fishing boats. The
drugs are then taken to the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula.
With
these trafficking patterns, not surprisingly Spain and Portugal are the two
main ports of entry for cocaine in Europe. The UNODC reported in 2007 that
new trends include consumer markets in central and eastern Europe, and the
"incorporation of cocaine into the range of products offered by
traditional heroin trafficking groups operating along the Balkan route."
Worldwide,
a significant and rising amount of cocaine is being intercepted en route: In
2007 it was some 400 out of the 940 tons produced, or 42% of the total—a
substantially higher rate than for either opiates or marijuana. South America's
share of global seizures has been increasing, from 31% in 1996 to 45% in
2006. The bulk of these seizures (181 tons) was carried out by Colombia.
Taken
together, eradication of coca and seizures of cocaine knocked out nearly 75%
of the drug in 2007—which is good, but not nearly good enough. It is EIR's
contention, based on a review of the historical evidence and consultation
with experts in the field, that a serious war on drugs, employing
high-technology detection and combat capabilities, could lead to the
eradication of about 90% of each of the major drug crops—poppy, cannabis, and
coca—and seizure of some 75% of the remaining 10% that is produced. That
would leave only 2-3% of the initial total that gets through.
The
third leg of the stool, along with eradication and seizures, is to completely
shut down the laundering of drug money—the most crucial step of all, and one
which has to be carried out as a concerted, international campaign. As we
said in our 1996 study: "The drug trade has to be fought simultaneously,
in a coordinated fashion, on a global scale. Since Dope, Inc. is a
multinational enterprise with operations in dozens of nations, it does little
good to shut it down in one country only: It will simply move its operations
to a more favorable environment."
ATS: A Quarter Trillion Dollar Business
Unlike
the other three main drug groups, where one can physically measure crops and
yields as a starting point for estimating total production and availability,
Amphetamine-Type Stimulants, or ATS, can only be estimated indirectly, based
on seizures of drugs and precursor chemicals, consumption studies, and so on.
With that caveat, the available statistics indicate that total tonnage
produced increased dramatically over the course of the 1990s, and has then
grown more slowly from 2000 to 2007. Today, some 550 tons of ATS are
produced, of which a mere 10% is seized, bringing the total available to
about 500 tons per year. The estimated total street value of those ATS is a
cool quarter-trillion dollars.
The
ATS category of drugs has two major groups: 1) the amphetamine group (which
includes both methamphetamines and amphetamines); and 2) the ecstasy group
(which includes MDMA, MDA, etc.). In 2007, out of a total 496 tons available,
methamphetamines accounted for 267 tons (54%), amphetamines were 126 tons
(25%), and ecstasy was 103 tons (21%). Judging by the pattern of seizures,
methamphetamines are the dominant ATS drug in the U.S. market; amphetamines
predominate in Europe and the Near East; and South East Asia has a large and
growing methamphetamine problem.
As
for ecstasy, Europe's role as the main manufacturer is declining. In July
2008, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that "Asian Organized
Crime groups play an important role in the global MDMA trade." Overall,
the DEA reported, "synthetic drugs are the primary threat in South East
Asia." And consumption of ATS in Africa and South West Asia is also on
the rise.
In
the United States, methamphetamines are the major ATS problem. In 2006, the
6,832 U.S. laboratories busted accounted for 88% of all dismantled
methamphetamine laboratories worldwide. In the last few years, U.S. domestic
manufacture of meth has been declining, but it has been more than offset by a
shift of manufacturing to Mexico and Canada, with the product then smuggled
into the United States. The DEA estimates that 65% of the meth available in
the U.S. is produced in Mexico, with precursor chemicals coming into Mexico
through Central America.
The
NDTA's December 2008 report admits that a major part of the problem is
"the limitations placed on customs inspectors by Free Trade Zone
mandates" in various countries. As EIR
has asserted for years, the provisions of NAFTA have not only been an
economic disaster for both the United States and Mexico, but they have also
helped open the doors wide for drugs to flow freely.
Highly
centralized distribution networks of ATS are thought to be replacing
independent dealers in the United States, which goes along with a shift from
smaller labs to super and mega-laboratories. "Organized criminal groups
in Mexico have expanded their methamphetamine distribution networks and they
have also introduced highly addictive crystal methamphetamine into these
markets," according to a DEA report.
As
for Europe, the dubious distinction of being the leading producer of ATS
falls to the Czech Republic; in 2006, 88% of all European laboratories
detected were found there.
By Way of a Postscript
George
Soros and his troop of legalizers are fond of arguing that consuming drugs is
a "victimless crime," so why not legalize it? This is as offensive
to the human mind as Soros's continuing defense of his collaboration with
Hitler's Waffen SS in Nazi-occupied Hungary, against his own fellow Jews.
There
is scarcely a family in the United States today that has not been scarred in
one way or another by drugs—a brother, a daughter, a cousin, a father who
were casualties of this modern Opium War. Nor is there a nation on the planet
where the policies of Dope, Inc. have not wrought havoc.
Now
return, if you would, to the picture of the young Peruvian girl with which we
began this account. There is more to the story. That photograph was taken in
Peru by Mark Sonnenblick, a founding member of the LaRouche organization who
passed away in 2004, and who dedicated his life to being the voice and mentor
of the uncounted millions who, like that little Peruvian girl, cry out for
justice.
When
I first saw that picture, probably taken in 1967, I thought immediately of
Lyndon LaRouche's trip to Peru in 1987, 20 years later, where he talked about
Peru's children—about that same girl. On that visit, LaRouche delivered an
address commemorating the 20th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical,
"Populorum Progressio," where he said:
"Where
others see only poverty, I see potential. It was 41 years ago, in India, that
I first committed myself to economic justice for what we today call the
developing sector. The children and grandchildren of some of today's poorest
rural families of Peru, will land on Mars. Some will stay as colonists;
others will return, perhaps to share their experiences with some of you, who
are here today in this hall."
LaRouche
stressed: "Never accept the spectacle of human misery; human misery is unnecessary.
Never accept the idea that some nations are rich, and others are poor. Never
think of yourselves as people from a poor country."
And
he concluded: "I've asked you to turn your eyes to the stars to see,
with pride and with confidence, that which the mind makes you capable of
achieving. In dreaming that dream, lies the potential of your nation; the
potential of your nation is its future reality. What your nation will be in
the future, is what it begins to do today."
And today, we should add that we will
get that little Peruvian girl to Mars yet—and Dope, Inc.'s New Dark Age be
damned!
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