After Ramos, Narco-Politics Proliferate by Erick San Juan
“I don't want to defy economic logic and say supply creates demand, but to a certain extent it feels that way," Steven Dudley, co-founder of InSight Crime, a foundation that studies organized crime in Latin America.
Because as long as there are people willing to produce and supply the illicit drugs to users and would-be users, demands will be created in the process for something that is very addicting creating the demand would be that easy.
This perennial problem of drug trafficking tackled at the meeting of diplomats and top officials from governments around the world in mid-April this year at United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss what to do about the global drug problem. Over the course of four days and multiple discussions, the assembled dignitaries vowed to take a more comprehensive approach to the issue than in years past — but they also decided to keep waging the war on drugs.
The "outcome document" adopted during the UN General Assembly's special session (UNGASS) calls for countries to "prevent and counter" drug-related crime by disrupting the "illicit cultivation, production, manufacturing, and trafficking" of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other substances banned by international law. The document also reaffirmed the UN's "unwavering commitment" to "supply reduction and related measures."
Yet according to the UN's own data, the supply-oriented approach to fighting drug trafficking has been a failure of epic proportions. Last May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued its 2015 World Drug Report, which shows that — despite billions of dollars spent trying to eradicate illicit crops, seize drug loads, and arrest traffickers — more people than ever before are getting high.
The UNODC conservatively estimated that in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, 246 million people worldwide, or 1 out of 20 individuals between the ages of 15 and 64, used an illicit drug, an increase of 3 million people over the previous year. More alarmingly, 27 million people were characterized as "problem drug users." Only one out of every six of these problem users had access to any sort of addiction treatment. (Source: The Golden Age of Drug Trafficking: How Meth, Cocaine, and Heroin Move Around the World by Keegan Hamilton, April 2016)
The efforts of the Duterte administration on its war on drugs for its first month has already shown how this drug problem has deeply penetrated the very roots of our society. Unfortunately, President Rody Duterte said that the so-called big fish is not here in the country. Supplies are just coming in from abroad and the contacts here – the drug lords and its minions are the ones selling the “merchandize” to the locals.
How to stop drug trafficking is the number one problem now because experts believe that the rise of globalization and high-speed and hi-tech form of communications made the trafficking or transactions of illegal drugs much easier.
Of the three most used illegal drugs - meth, cocaine, and heroin, it is the methamphetamine (or shabu) that is very popular here in the country.
According to Hamilton in his article, demand for methamphetamine has soared since the UN's last drug summit in 1998, and it has become one of the most popular — and profitable — illicit substances in nearly every corner of the world. From Australia and Asia to Africa and North America, meth is the poster drug for the global narco economy.
The quantities of meth confiscated by authorities over the past decade reflect its rise. According to the UNODC, global meth seizures nearly quadrupled from 24 tons in 2008 to 114 tons in 2012. Meth seizures in Mexico increased from 341 kilograms in 2008 to 44 tons in 2012. In Australia, meth seizures in Australia soared by more than 400 percent in a single year, climbing from 426 kilograms in 2011 to 2,269 kilos in 2012.
In Asia, meth is primarily produced in China, where the precursor chemicals needed to synthesize the drug are abundant, and in the lawless Golden Triangle region of Myanmar and Laos. Douglas, the UNODC rep in Southeast Asia, said that "crystal meth is exploding in the region." According to the UNODC's preliminary estimate, 25 tons of meth were seized last year across the region.
Douglas said part of meth's appeal for drug traffickers is the relatively low startup and overhead costs. Producing heroin requires paying hundreds of farmers to tend crops that can produce only a limited amount of poppy gum per harvest. For meth, it takes only a shipment of relatively easy-to-obtain chemicals and a little bit of scientific knowhow. The drug can be shipped to countries like Australia, which offers the highest price per kilo of meth anywhere in the world, and sold for an enormous profit.
But for the most part, the chemicals used to make the world's meth originate in China, where a booming pharmaceutical industry manufactures all the raw ingredients to produce "ice," the common name for glassy shards of high-purity crystal meth. According to data presented by the Chinese government at UNGASS, the country seized a whopping 20,338 tons of meth precursor chemicals from 2009 to 2015. Busts have shown that individual villages are capable of producing enormous quantities of the drug. On a single day in 2013 in Boshe, a village northeast of Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland, authorities seized three tons of meth and more than 100 tons of precursors.
"With crystal meth, the leader appears to be China, but they also produce significant amounts in the Philippines and in Indonesia, and also to some extent in Myanmar," Douglas said. "But what we've seen in recent years is industrial-scale production from a few labs in China."
In 1995, i wrote an article, 'After FVR, Narco-Politics in the Offing', published by several newspapers. I'm now vindicated.
It is about time that all of us should be ever vigilant and help the Duterte government to put a STOP to this drug menace and really pray harder that his administration will have the strength to continuously fight this ‘war’ and that he may live longer to see its success. May God bless us all.
“I don't want to defy economic logic and say supply creates demand, but to a certain extent it feels that way," Steven Dudley, co-founder of InSight Crime, a foundation that studies organized crime in Latin America.
Because as long as there are people willing to produce and supply the illicit drugs to users and would-be users, demands will be created in the process for something that is very addicting creating the demand would be that easy.
This perennial problem of drug trafficking tackled at the meeting of diplomats and top officials from governments around the world in mid-April this year at United Nations headquarters in New York to discuss what to do about the global drug problem. Over the course of four days and multiple discussions, the assembled dignitaries vowed to take a more comprehensive approach to the issue than in years past — but they also decided to keep waging the war on drugs.
The "outcome document" adopted during the UN General Assembly's special session (UNGASS) calls for countries to "prevent and counter" drug-related crime by disrupting the "illicit cultivation, production, manufacturing, and trafficking" of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other substances banned by international law. The document also reaffirmed the UN's "unwavering commitment" to "supply reduction and related measures."
Yet according to the UN's own data, the supply-oriented approach to fighting drug trafficking has been a failure of epic proportions. Last May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued its 2015 World Drug Report, which shows that — despite billions of dollars spent trying to eradicate illicit crops, seize drug loads, and arrest traffickers — more people than ever before are getting high.
The UNODC conservatively estimated that in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available, 246 million people worldwide, or 1 out of 20 individuals between the ages of 15 and 64, used an illicit drug, an increase of 3 million people over the previous year. More alarmingly, 27 million people were characterized as "problem drug users." Only one out of every six of these problem users had access to any sort of addiction treatment. (Source: The Golden Age of Drug Trafficking: How Meth, Cocaine, and Heroin Move Around the World by Keegan Hamilton, April 2016)
The efforts of the Duterte administration on its war on drugs for its first month has already shown how this drug problem has deeply penetrated the very roots of our society. Unfortunately, President Rody Duterte said that the so-called big fish is not here in the country. Supplies are just coming in from abroad and the contacts here – the drug lords and its minions are the ones selling the “merchandize” to the locals.
How to stop drug trafficking is the number one problem now because experts believe that the rise of globalization and high-speed and hi-tech form of communications made the trafficking or transactions of illegal drugs much easier.
Of the three most used illegal drugs - meth, cocaine, and heroin, it is the methamphetamine (or shabu) that is very popular here in the country.
According to Hamilton in his article, demand for methamphetamine has soared since the UN's last drug summit in 1998, and it has become one of the most popular — and profitable — illicit substances in nearly every corner of the world. From Australia and Asia to Africa and North America, meth is the poster drug for the global narco economy.
The quantities of meth confiscated by authorities over the past decade reflect its rise. According to the UNODC, global meth seizures nearly quadrupled from 24 tons in 2008 to 114 tons in 2012. Meth seizures in Mexico increased from 341 kilograms in 2008 to 44 tons in 2012. In Australia, meth seizures in Australia soared by more than 400 percent in a single year, climbing from 426 kilograms in 2011 to 2,269 kilos in 2012.
In Asia, meth is primarily produced in China, where the precursor chemicals needed to synthesize the drug are abundant, and in the lawless Golden Triangle region of Myanmar and Laos. Douglas, the UNODC rep in Southeast Asia, said that "crystal meth is exploding in the region." According to the UNODC's preliminary estimate, 25 tons of meth were seized last year across the region.
Douglas said part of meth's appeal for drug traffickers is the relatively low startup and overhead costs. Producing heroin requires paying hundreds of farmers to tend crops that can produce only a limited amount of poppy gum per harvest. For meth, it takes only a shipment of relatively easy-to-obtain chemicals and a little bit of scientific knowhow. The drug can be shipped to countries like Australia, which offers the highest price per kilo of meth anywhere in the world, and sold for an enormous profit.
But for the most part, the chemicals used to make the world's meth originate in China, where a booming pharmaceutical industry manufactures all the raw ingredients to produce "ice," the common name for glassy shards of high-purity crystal meth. According to data presented by the Chinese government at UNGASS, the country seized a whopping 20,338 tons of meth precursor chemicals from 2009 to 2015. Busts have shown that individual villages are capable of producing enormous quantities of the drug. On a single day in 2013 in Boshe, a village northeast of Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland, authorities seized three tons of meth and more than 100 tons of precursors.
"With crystal meth, the leader appears to be China, but they also produce significant amounts in the Philippines and in Indonesia, and also to some extent in Myanmar," Douglas said. "But what we've seen in recent years is industrial-scale production from a few labs in China."
In 1995, i wrote an article, 'After FVR, Narco-Politics in the Offing', published by several newspapers. I'm now vindicated.
It is about time that all of us should be ever vigilant and help the Duterte government to put a STOP to this drug menace and really pray harder that his administration will have the strength to continuously fight this ‘war’ and that he may live longer to see its success. May God bless us all.
2 comments:
So, it is mentioned that Narco-politics started under the watch of FVR. Question is, how? Was there a deal somewhere that paved the way for the audacious entry of the drug trade? Today, if majority of the cities and municipalities are plagued by Shabu, it means that elected officials are powerless to fight against the drug trade, and have to instead turn a blind-eye else die, or cooperate and profit. With judges, policemen from all levels being involved, with even lawmakers tagged, the only way to have a major cleansing turn them against each other because really, anyone could be a narco-protector and anyone who dares to try and fight, immediately gets neutralized by this elaborate web of evil. Can we have an article on how drugs proliferated in our country, rather than just pointing out that it is now widespread? We need to burn the roots so that no need shoots would spring up from the stump that we cut down.
So, it is mentioned that Narco-politics started under the watch of FVR. Question is, how? Was there a deal somewhere that paved the way for the audacious entry of the drug trade? Today, if majority of the cities and municipalities are plagued by Shabu, it means that elected officials are powerless to fight against the drug trade, and have to instead turn a blind-eye else die, or cooperate and profit. With judges, policemen from all levels being involved, with even lawmakers tagged, the only way to have a major cleansing turn them against each other because really, anyone could be a narco-protector and anyone who dares to try and fight, immediately gets neutralized by this elaborate web of evil. Can we have an article on how drugs proliferated in our country, rather than just pointing out that it is now widespread? We need to burn the roots so that no new shoots would spring up from the stump that we cut down.
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