Our new globalized world has become increasingly interconnected. The quantity of goods and services exchanged has increased drastically over the years. One of the sole contributors of this is trade liberalization. Trade liberalization refers to the removal or reduction of tariffs and trade barriers to more foreign competition and investment in the economy. Additionally, the increase in trade is also caused by the ease of transportation and communication due to countries opening their physical and cultural borders. The introduction of communication devices easily connects people all over the globe. With communication applications such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, there has been an influx of the sharing of ideas and interconnectedness. However, with the positive advancements in transportation, communication and the opening of borders for trade, negative downsides are inevitable. Illegal activities plague the new globalized world, and one major activity is drug smuggling.
The article ‘By Land, Sea or Catapult: How Smugglers Get Drugs Across the Border’ published in The New York Times discusses the various ways drug traffickers smuggle drugs from Mexico. Examples of this include “trucks and trains carrying fresh produce have been used to bring in narcotics” and “using ultralight aircraft to conduct drug drops”. Another article, ‘Interpol Operation Across 14 Countries Unearths New Routes, Methods for Drug Trafficking’ published in The Straits Times, focuses on the ways to tackle drug trafficking on a regional scale through Operation Lionfish, an “Interpol-coordinated operation involving more than 2,000 police and customs officials across 14 countries”. This operation targeted Western African and Asian organised crime groups and ultimate seized 2 different drugs, namely methamphetamine and ‘ice’. The third article discussed is one published in The Daily Mail and entitled ‘The unlucky 13’ . This article discusses the effectiveness of the methods to deter drug trafficking on a local level in relation to China. It focuses on the public sentencing of 13 people in China that was “part of a public hearing watched by some 10,000 people”, staged and manipulated by China’s government to showcase their hard line against drugs. However, the effectiveness of this scare approach has been questioned and proven ineffective, with the article also stating how drug trafficking in China is on the rise.
Upon reading the 3 articles mentioned, it is evident that to win the ongoing war on drugs, our focus should be less on global strategies but more on regional and local strategies to stop drug trafficking. Historically, global efforts by the United Nations (UN) have been ineffective at dealing with transnational drug trafficking. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was set up to deal with global drug related problems. However, the General Assembly of UN allocated “less than one per cent” of the UN budget to the UNODC. This budget was not significant enough to fund the efforts against the global drug problem. Even though the UN promised that the world would be drug free by 2008, it is salient that this is still a colossal failure even in 2017. While global efforts by the UN have failed and even caused an increase in drug related crimes, the continual effort to talk about these problems may still yield a successful strategy in the future.
Regional efforts on the war on drugs have statistically been more effective in bringing down drug trafficking, a fact further shown in the article by The Straits Times mentioned above. The regional efforts by Interpol by the 10 ASEAN nations was successful in seizing “illicit drugs including cocaine, cannabis, heroin and amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS)”. Even though the drug market is transnational, regional efforts to stop drug trafficking can help concentrate operations and crack down the suppliers and roots of the illegal drug operations. Furthermore, it is easier to coordinate anti-narcotics operations regionally than globally and as such regional efforts have been more successful at making the difference in the drug war and thus “marks a new beginning in the approach to combating illicit drug smuggling”. Additionally, the first article in The New York Times show that an increase of Border Patrol agents by the American federal government is used to fight drug smuggling across the border. This in turn shows how lower level regional efforts are more effective than global ones.
The war on drugs led to an intended consequence- a criminal black market for drugs. The root of the problem with all drug related black markets is the growing demand for drugs. The 3 articles mentioned shows the crackdown on drugs, and how drug traffickers continually are incarcerated. However, this increase in mere incarceration ignores the most fundamental market forces behind the growing drug trade- supply and demand. The articles show how the methods in place currently focuses on decreasing the supply of drugs. A decrease in the supply of drugs should lower sales of drugs in theory, however, this is not the case due to its addictive nature and thus low elasticity. If this demand disappeared, there will be no need for black markets, and illegal drug trafficking will cease to be a prevalent problem as it no longer will be lucrative. The drug trade, like every other trade and consumerism in the world, is motivated by money. Thus, I feel that we should start locally and target the root of the problem- the consumers. Education is a fundamental step and by educating the citizens of a country of the horrendous side effects of drugs, they would be less inclined to abuse drugs. However, the effectiveness of this is also limited and often already in place, seen in Singapore’s multiple anti-drug use campaigns in schools. Another local method is the legalization of certain drugs. It is already proven that the war on drugs is a failure, and the goal of a drug-free world is less achievable than ever. Thus, countries could legalize cannabis and other softer drugs to help drive demand away from illegal drug markets. The upside to this is that the government can control the consumption of the drug as well as monitor the exchange of the commodity on a legal market instead of the illegal black market where the distribution and consumption is not recorded.
However, this solution seems far-fetched and governments are likely to be averse to legalizing any form of drugs. Thus, another more pragmatic solution can be used. Using our local context as a case study, Singapore fights the influx of drugs largely through our death penalty. According to another article by The Guardian, Singapore has seen a decrease by two-thirds of drug abusers. Hence, countries can follow suit and scare the suppliers and consumers of these drugs by implementing the death penalty. However, The Daily Mail article about the execution of thirteen drug offenders in front of 10,000 people is an extreme case of a disincentive to deal with drugs that proved to be ineffective. This success could be because Singapore is a much smaller society and thus is easier to control than China. For the death penalty to work, a lot of resources need to go into ensuring that this punishment is carried out. Still, this punishment mainly decreases the supply of drugs again and fails to decrease the demand instead. Thus, changes can be made to policies and punishments by law can be tweaked to focus on consumers instead of suppliers.
From the discussion, we can learn that global efforts to target drug trafficking have not worked in the past. The case studies in the articles have shown that regional and local efforts have been a more effective way of dealing with drug trafficking. However, they do come with the downsides. We can still deduce that the best way forward is to build on these methods and to understand that the global drug problem may never fully disappear but it can be reduced tremendously through cooperative efforts by regions and countries.