Opium’s Orphans: The 200-Year History of the War on Drugs by P. E. Caquet

Author:P. E. Caquet [Caquet, P. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social History, Law, Drugs & the Law
ISBN: 9781789145595
Google: -QFjEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2022-07-06T20:49:49+00:00

PART III

THE SYSTEM

CHALLENGED

8

DRUG LORDS

The period from 1970 onwards saw an explosion in the means devoted to fighting narcotics around the world. As of 1967 the Federal Bureau of Narcotics employed 295 agents: by the year 2000 the DEA would count more than 4,000 field personnel. As of 1967 active staff abroad totalled 23 people. By the early 1990s the DEA possessed 293 agents in 73 foreign offices. The FBN had functioned on an insignificant budget throughout its history. In 1997 the DEA received its first billion-dollar allowance, itself a small slice of the sums allocated to American drug enforcement.1 There was also a qualitative leap. Ronald Reagan, when president, passed legislative amendments enabling the military to assist in drug enforcement.2 The change ushered in the deployment of helicopters, gunships, aircraft and special operation units in what had essentially been a detective’s field. This is without counting the means allocated to the chase by the countries of the European Union, by UNODC and the UN agencies, or by the states within whose borders it took place, especially in Latin America.

There were victories, even spectacular victories. Another characteristic of the fight is that it featured actions against a handful of drug lords: high-profile figures destined to make it to the front pages of newspapers or as characters in television series. Most of them fell, some in dramatic scenes – epitomized by Pablo Escobar’s 1993 killing by multiple gunshots while trying to escape on a house roof. Yet the war was lost. Beefier enforcement did not stem the tide that was the fiftyfold rise in refined opiates and thousandfold surge in cocaine use described in the last chapter. New gang bosses took the place of the old. Trafficking thrived, becoming more diversified both geographically and in its product range. Supply suppression proved once again a costly fool’s errand as the sources of drugs, extinguished in one place, merely sprang up in another.

The assault began with the 1970s campaign against the French Connection. President Nixon’s strategy was two-pronged, and it was effective. At one end, it leant on the Turkish government to shut down poppy cultivation. At the other, it shamed the French authorities into prosecuting the Marseilles-based heroin refiners and dealers.

These tactics were well adapted to the differing conditions in both countries. In Turkey, opium cultivation, collection and morphine-base refining were all fragmented. There was no gang boss or cartel to be decapitated. From the farmer, the opium gum went to countless small collectors, who were either local notables or the underlings of caïds further up the chain. These caïds refined the opium gum into morphine base and dealt with the French buyers. Transport was similarly decentralized. There were many routes. A small proportion still passed through Lebanon for shipping out, but by 1970 this outlet was heavily patrolled. Most of the product now moved by road, via Bulgaria, Austria, Yugoslavia and Germany, where the borders were weakly policed.3 (Inquisitive journalists from Newsday crossed the borders into Germany and France multiple times, proudly displaying bags of sugar behind their windshields or on their car seats: they were never stopped.

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