Nexus - 0704 - New Times Magazine-pages

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THE INTERNATIONAL COMPLEX DRUG Criminal forces in collusion with established elites have put the drug industry on a truly transnational footing, while increasing their power over individuals, societies and economies. Part 2 of 2 he growth of the drug industry and concomitant real or perceived threats to states’ authority gave an important impulse to the development of law and the organisa- tion of crime control. Since the beginning of the 20th century, starting with the Shanghai Conference in 1909, step by step a global prohibition regime was creat- ed, sanctioning the production, dealing and trafficking of psychotropic substances. * Almost every country in the world, by ratifying international treaties, obliged itself to adapt its national laws in accordance with these treaties and thereby to suppress the now illegal drug business. The responsibility for control and furthering the design of the regime came to fall on the United Nations in 1946.’ This regime is still under construction, targeting new drugs and expanding its organisational structure. It encompasses multinational organisations, state bureaucracies, banks, medical institutions and morality. Thereby an unprecedented regu- latory framework is established, comparable to the non-proliferation regime for nuclear weaponry. In the evolution of this international regime, individual states attained a high degree of worldwide uniformity and mutual tuning in the regulation of one category of intoxicating, mind-bending substances (Gerritsen, 1993:75). There exists a formal global prohibition regime, but, to date, there is no global criminal justice system to meet the challenge of drug trafficking and globalised crime. Although formal regime control and design are with the United Nations, execution and dedication of control efforts are in the hand of governments and state agencies of individual nation- states. In spite of formal compliance to the predispositions of the prohibition regime, in practice the strategies and tactics for its enforcement are broadly disputed. Historically, the conception of the 'drug problem’ has been subject to dramatic transformations. Fiscal, balance of payments, civic security, public health, social welfare and moral considerations can be found as determining the main diagnosis of the problem. Within and between societies, the conception of the problem and the discourses guiding government intervention in the drug industry vary widely, over time and in geographic space. The multi-dimensionality of the drug problem makes it a very complex policy field. With prohibition in place, repression is still no panacea. It was only after their dependencies gained independence that the major European pow- ers dissolved their colonial monopolies on the opium trade. Prohibition also met with fierce resistance from the pharmaceutical industries in Germany, Japan and Switzerland. These were often shielded by state interests in the preparation for war, in which the secured supply of anaesthetics plays an important role. Coaxing governments into com- pliance with prohibition has been, and still is, an arduous process. From the beginning, it has been the United States that has taken the lead in building the prohibition regime. Especially since the 1980s, unilateral, bilateral and multilateral forms of pressure, intervention and collaboration have been proliferating to force governments to comply with prohibition and to stifle the growth of the drug economy. Conditional development aid, extradition treaties (so-called International Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties), new types of financial policing to 'chase the money’ around the international banking system, financing and advising foreign military and police, political pressure and even outright military intervention count among the plethora of instruments applied in the relations between states in this War on Drugs. In the process, institutional structures (e.g., Interpol, Europol, UNDCP) are strengthened to intensify international cooperation. Besides that, many informal structures have developed between police, military and by Hans T. van der Veen © 1999 European University Institute San Domenico, Italy Published on the Internet by Centre for Drug Research (CEDRO) University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands E-mail: CEDRO@frw.uva.nl Website: www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/ JUNE — JULY 2000 NEXUS 25 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DRUG LAW ENFORCEMENT