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Illicit drug trafficking has been a major industry since the beginning of the 20th century, and even then the transit of drugs had a long history in geopolitics. (Britain broke open Qing Dynasty China to foreign investment using the opium trade).
The trade of illicit drugs is a major industry. Today, it’s roughly the size of the global steel industry in terms of revenue. Beyond just its sheer economic weight, it is the ballast of a whole complex of black-market industries. Other industries grow right alongside it: human trafficking, illegal wildlife trafficking, arms trafficking; it requires services like counterfeiting, money laundering, illicit bank transfers. It buoys up countless fake storefronts and industries like cryptocurrency.
And, not least, it is a nearly endless pit of untraceable, unaccountable money. Several covert operations have occupied the exact same space as these black market industries. Drug trafficking was used to fund anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan, to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua, CIA planes likely transported opium in Laos, and there are countless connections that have been traced between CIA-stay behind networks set up in Europe in case of invasion by the Soviet Union and organized crime.
Drug trafficking, insofar as it's related to America, is typically depicted as a straightforward issue: drugs flooding into the United States. But ask yourself: where do these cartels put their money? How do they transport their goods? Where do they get their guns?
The answer, of course, is complicated. Every sale is also a purchase, every purchase is a sale– every exchange goes two ways.
Photo credit: Atlantic Council (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/decapitation-strikes-are-not-enough-to-take-on-mexicos-cartels-heres-what-else-the-us-should-do/)
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