-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: The Geography of Illegal Drugs George F. Rengert Westview Press©1996 550 Central Avenue Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877 147 pps. – First Edition – In-print ----- An interesting little book. Lots of charts. A taste. Om K ---- 1 Introduction The production and distribution of illegal drugs has much in common with legal sales enterprises. Producers of raw materials are often located in foreign countries, manufacturers convert the raw material into consumable products, and distributors transport these products to the final consumers. For those who believe that these enterprises should remain illegal, the task is to disrupt the smooth functioning of these operations in any legal manner possible. Although legal, many people view as less than ethical some of the efforts by the United States government which focus on foreign producers. For example, we have pressured Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia to eradicate the production of the coca plant while encouraging them at the same time to import tobacco produced in the United States. Bourne (1989) argues that more Colombians die from the effects of U.S. tobacco products than the number of Americans who die from Colombian cocaine. Evidence shows that more Europeans die from the use of United States tobacco products than from the use of drugs imported from other foreign countries (Polman, 1993). Even within our own borders, the American Cancer Society claims, "More Americans die each year from illness related to smoking than from heroin, crack, homicide, car accidents, fires and AIDS combined" (Will, 1992, p. Al). "For every person who dies from cocaine poisoning, 15 people die from the direct effects of alcohol and 60 from tobacco-related illnesses, according to the Public Health Service. No deaths from marijuana have ever been reported" (Baum, 1993, p. 70). Therefore the inconsistency of the United States government's policies has caused many people to doubt the sincerity of our "war on drugs." Newcomb and Bentler sum up this inconsistency: The United States is a drug culture. Drugs are used commonly and acceptably to wake up in the morning (coffee and tea), get through the stresses of the day (cigarettes), and relax in the evening (alcohol)... Adolescents are quite adept at spotting hypocrisy and may have difficulty understanding a policy of "saying no to drugs" when suggested by a society that clearly says yes to the smorgasbord of drugs that are legal as well as the range of illicit drugs that are widely available and used. (1989, p. 242) Furthermore, there is little evidence that crop eradication programs can be successful because the products which are illegal in the United States can be grown in a wide variety of locales (Albini, 1992). The United States government has little influence in many of these countries, such as Mayanmar (formerly Burma), Vietnam, and Cambodia. For similar reasons, there is little hope that the United States government can stop the manufacture of illegal drugs in foreign countries. Most citizens of other countries resent our attempts to solve our domestic problems on their soil, especially in countries where these drugs are not illegal (Gorriti, 1989). Cigarettes are manufactured legally in the United States, and tea brewed from the coca plant is sold in marketplaces in Bolivia and Peru. Our country has chosen to legalize certain drugs and criminalize others, but we have no right to demand that foreign countries legalize and criminalize the same combination of substances. Coca leaves were chewed or made into tea before Europeans reached Bolivia. As the name implies, Coca-Cola contained extracts of coca between 1884, when it was invented, and 1903. The manufacturers of Coca-Cola were forced to switch to decocainized coca leaves after 1903. Such "sanitized" coca leaves are still used as a flavoring agent in Coca-Cola (Fuqua, 1978). Another "soft drink" manufactured at the turn of the century and including extracts of coca was aptly labeled "dope." Europeans, however, decided to legalize coffee but not tea or other drinks which contain cocaine. Our government policy would be more consistent if we either criminalized or legalized all harmful drugs. In fact, some authorities have questioned the policy of criminalizing drug use in the United States (Schmoke, 1990). Criminalization and its counterpart, legalization, can mean many different things. At one extreme, they mean the complete elimination of any legal restrictions on the production, distribution, possession, or use of any drug. At a less extreme level, they can mean allowing the use of some drugs (such as marijuana) while restricting the use of others. Or, they can mean restricting the distribution or sale of drugs but allowing possession and use. This latter restriction corresponds to the ban on alcohol sales during Prohibition, when people nevertheless were allowed to grow grapes and produce wine for their own consumption. Also, until recently, Alaska residents were allowed to grow marijuana for their own use. Drug legalization therefore can be regarded as moving drugs along a spectrum of regulated statuses toward increased availability (Kleiman and Saiger, 1992). People who favor the legalization of drugs are likely to base their arguments on crime reduction, especially on how the legalization of drugs would affect organized crime. If legitimate business operators could enter the picture, illegal sales would be reduced and there would be less need for violence because the courts could be used to solve disputes. Those who favor continued prohibition focus on availability and on the impact of drug use on the users' health. Drug laws make currently illicit drugs more expensive and less available than they would be if legalized. For example, the repeal of prohibition against alcohol increased alcohol use substantially (Moore and Gerstein, 1981). Kleiman and Saiger note: Black market cocaine costs nearly twenty times as much as legal, "free market" cocaine; and it is implausible that a twenty-fold change in a drug's price would have only a trivial effect on volume. It is also unlikely that even holding price constant, the convenience and safety of a licit purchase would fail to attract new customers (or to increase the volume consumed by existing ones) ... Making the cocaine problem more like the current alcohol or tobacco problem would be a major public health disaster. (1992, p. 225) Public health concerns are the primary reason why currently illegal drugs are likely to remain illegal. In addition, it is possible that tobacco will be added to the list, also for public health reasons. President Clinton and leaders of the Food and Drug Administration argue that nicotine is an addictive drug. They have proposed a broad new attack on smoking, focusing especially on advertising, vending machines, and over-the-counter sales to persons under age 18 (Madigan and Armstrong, 1995). The general public is concerned about the costs of these drug-related health problems as well as other public expenses associated with illegal drug use. One challenge of drug policy is to find least-cost solutions to the problems of drug abuse. For years, economists have attempted to estimate this impact. The problem is that the costs are complex and often difficult to estimate. Scholars at the Research Triangle in North Carolina, for example, estimated the costs of drug abuse in the United States at $60 billion in 1983 (Staley, 1992). Over half of these costs, however, were attributed to marijuana. Ostrowski (1989) revised the costs to exclude marijuana; the revised costs were $26.4 billion. Nearly 80 percent of these costs were crime costs. This seems a rather large proportion of costs to pin on crime. In the early 1970s, Alan Leslie (1971) estimated that the yearly cost of a heroin addict on the streets of New York City could be broken down as follows: Lost employment earnings $3,260.00 Economic value of premature death or morbidity $1,890.00 Crime costs $4,000.00 Costs to the criminal justice system $1,640.00 Multiplier effects of spreading addiction $3,000.00 Therefore each person-year of heroin addiction in New York City cost approximately $14,000 in the early 1970s. For the country as a whole, Mehay (1973) used these figures to estimate that the total social cost of heroin ranged from $4 to $8 billion a year. I believe that this figure is absurdly low by today's standards. If we update Leslie's figures using the Consumer Price Index and/or more recent estimates of these costs, we obtain a more accurate idea of the true cost of a heroin addict. We begin by using the Consumer Price Index to update the first two estimates: lost employment earnings and economic value of premature death and morbidity. Applying changes in the Consumer Price Index between 1971 and 1994 to the lost employment earnings for 1971 results in a revised figure of $11,918.12 for 1994. In the case of the economic value of premature death and morbidity, the revised figure is $6,909.59. For crime costs, recent ethnographic research provides us with a more accurate figure. On the basis of Pettiway's (1994) figures, crack users in Philadelphia earn an average of $19,119.10 per year from crime. Of this amount, about 66 percent is earned from theft, shoplifting, and burglary-crimes in which the criminal usually must fence stolen goods to obtain money to buy drugs. The remaining 34 percent is obtained from other means such as performing illegal services, including prostitution or selling drugs. In these instances, cash or drugs are received for the service. In the case of stolen property, however, the value of the stolen goods is at least four times as great as the money the crack user receives. Therefore, if we figure the cost in terms of the value of the stolen articles rather than the amount the drug user receives after fencing the goods, the crime cost to society of each crack user in Philadelphia is (($19,119.10 x .66) x 4) + (19,119.10 x .34) = $56,974.91. The difference lies in whether the cost to society is computed from the income that the drug users earn from crime, or from the value of the stolen items before they are fenced. This figure is still conservative because it does not consider emotional costs to victims, costs of repairing broken windows in cars and homes, lost days of work, and other related expenses. Even so, it is far higher than the figure estimated by Leslie in 1971. Costs to the criminal justice system also must be updated. These costs are not trivial; marijuana enforcement at the federal level alone cost nearly $1 billion in 1988 (Kleiman, 1989). Reuter (1990) notes that enforcement efforts are estimated at $4.4 billion at the state and local levels and at $2.5 billion at the federal level, a total of $6.9 billion for enforcement alone in 1986. The situation has changed greatly by 1995 in which the federal government spent $13.3 billion on drug control. Of this total, $2.6 billion was spent for treatment-only a slight increase over the $2.5 billion spent in 1987 (Bureau of justice Statistics, 1995b). The federal government has nearly doubled its expenditure for drug control in the past 10 years. There are other criminal justice costs beyond enforcement and treatment efforts at the federal level. Because we impose mandatory sentences for many drug offenses, criminal justice costs must include prison costs, which average about $25,000 per year (Zedlewski, 1989). Also, by conservative estima tes, as much as 50 percent of an urban police officers' investigative time is spent on investigating drug-related activities (drugdependent property and violent crime as well as drug possession and sales) in our major cities. Sixty-two percent of arrestees tested positive for one or more drugs (National Institute of Justice, 1992). Therefore a percentage of court costs also must be assigned to drug-related issues. Reuter (1990) estimates that $1 or $2 billion must be added for prosecutors, courts, and prisons. The total cost to the criminal justice system is estimated to be at least $30,000 per year per addict at today's prices, not including the $2.6 billion spent on treatment in 1995 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995). This figure is much higher than the $1,640 estimated in 1971 by Leslie. Finally, we have the multiplier effects of spreading the addiction to other users. Leslie estimated this to be 28 percent of the previous costs. Twenty-eight percent of our revised 1994 figures equals: Lost employment earnings $11,918.12 Value of premature death or morbidity $6,909.59 Crime costs $56,974.91 Costs to the criminal justice system $30,000.00 These figures sum to $105,802.62. When multiplied by 28 percent to include the multiplier effect of spreading addiction, they total $29,624.73. The total cost of each addict to society each year, based on these figures, is $135,427.35. The total cost to society of the estimated 500,000 heroin addicts sums to nearly 68 billion dollars. This does not include other more commonly used drugs such as crack cocaine. Clearly, society has a right to be concerned. This figure may seem high, but other estimates are much higher. Zedlewski (1989), for example, estimates the average costs of crime committed by each released inmate at $430,000 per year in victim losses, police costs, court work, private security expenses, and other expenses. Not all addicts commit crimes to support their habits, but many do so. These figures provide a foundation for evaluating the effects of drug policies proposed by our governments. For example, legalization of drugs would lower (but not eliminate) crime costs because drugs would be cheaper and courts, not violence, could be used to solve business disputes. Costs to the criminal justice system would be lowered dramatically because the costs associated with processing drug users would be eliminated. For example, the 968,606 persons arrested for drug abuse violations in 1993 would not have been charged; thus the extensive investigation, court, and punishment resources would have been freed for other uses (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995b). With the legalization of crack cocaine or heroin, however, the economic costs of premature death and morbidity would increase dramatically, as would lost employment earnings, because more people would use these drugs if they were legal. On balance, government efforts to combat drug trafficking and drug abuse are only a holding action pending a clearer public consensus. Extensive social costs are associated with any action, including continuing our current policies. Another way of understanding the impact of current government policies is by analyzing the effects of these policies on the structure of illegal drug-distribution organizations in the United States. I say "in the United States" because if the United States government chooses not to legalize illicit drugs and is not likely to succeed in stopping the production and manufacture of such drugs in foreign countries, it should concentrate on the distribution and sale of these drugs within its own borders. In other words, we should attempt to disrupt the smooth operation of the distribution and sales organization existing in this country. To evaluate this effort, we must first consider the characteristics and makeup of this organization. Several scholars have identified the levels, from the importer or smuggler to the lowest-level dealer (Albini, 1992; Inciardi, 1986; Johnson, Hamid, and Sanabria, 1992). The heroin distribution network has as many as five levels. Johnson et al.(1992) identify these levels as the importer who smuggles large quantities of substances into the United States; the kilo connection, who transports kilograms of illegal drugs to regional centers; the weight dealer, who adulterates (or cuts) the product and distributes to retailers; the house connection who further adulterates the product and packages it into dosage units; and the street drug sellers who makes direct sales to consumers. Each of these categories includes subcategories and/or providers of special services such as money launderers, muscle men, crew bosses, lookouts, tasters, and injectors. We might add a sixth level—the user who consumes the drug. Law enforcement officials have tended to concentrate on the very top and the very bottom of this sales organization, for good reasons. At the top, the focus has been on the smuggler or importer, who often moves the drug in relatively large volume. Some smugglers, however, import products that have a small volume but a very high value, which make them difficult to detect. At the borders of our country, interdiction efforts have not been completely successful against illegal drugs with a very high retail value per unit weight, such as heroin and cocaine. Interdiction has been more effective in interrupting the smooth flow of bulkier products such as marijuana. Even against marijuana, however, the results have not been completely satisfactory: evidence exists to show that the success of the marijuana interdiction program has led to increased domestic cultivation (Reuter, 1992). The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws believes that marijuana is now one of the most valuable agricultural products grown in the United States, second only to corn. Abadinsky (1993, p. 367) claims that marijuana has surpassed corn to "make marijuana the number one cash crop in the United States." Other evidence shows that former marijuana smugglers have turned to smuggling cocaine, which is less bulky per unit value and therefore less easy to detect at the borders. In fact, the price of cocaine has declined in recent years and its purity has increased at the street level, indications that the supply is plentiful (Reuter, 1990). The plentiful supply of cocaine has caused drug traffickers to search for new markets for their commodities. Fagan and Chin (1991) argue that crack cocaine was developed in an effort to expand the base of the cocaine market to low-income customers. Williams (1989) explains this strategy as follows: At this point, a new product was introduced which offered the chance to expand the market in ways never before possible: crack, packaged in small quantities and selling for $5 and sometimes less—a fraction of the usual minimum for powder—allowed dealers to attract an entirely new class of consumers. (Quoted in Abadinsky, 1993, p. 367) Law enforcement has some advantages in operating at the borders of our country because importers are not accorded many of the constitutional protections that lower-level distributors enjoy. For example, customs officials are not required to obtain a warrant to search the persons or property of suspicious individuals entering the country. At the border, the confiscation of the unadulterated illegal drug is likely to have a greater impact than if part of the shipment is confiscated after it has been divided among several distributors. Even so, the effectiveness of this approach has been questioned. Miller (1992) argues that the sheer size of the inspection task makes it difficult to be effective. The United States has more than 12,000 miles of international boundary, which must be patrolled. Over this boundary more than 420 billion tons of legal goods and more than 270 million persons move each year. Among these legal shipments, officials must detect a few hundred tons of marijuana, and less than 20 tons of heroin or cocaine arriving in small shipments, usually much less than 100 pounds each. Reuter (1990) argues that increased interdiction at the borders is likely to have little effect on the availability of drugs in the United States because most producer nations are generating only a fraction of their production capacity. Furthermore, because most of the value is added during the adulteration process within the United States, the actual value of confiscated drugs may be relatively small when calculated back to the producing country rather than forward to street prices, as is the common law enforcement practice in the United States. Fully 99 percent of the price of the drug, when sold on the streets in the United States, is accounted for by payments to people who distribute it (Reuter, 1990). In other words, confiscated drugs can be replaced easily at relatively low cost within producing nations. Thus there is little indication that interdiction at the borders is effective over the long run. Once illegal drugs have entered the United States and have been divided among distributors, detection and confiscation become much more difficult because most middle-level dealers are very careful to sell only to known persons. Eck (1994a) refers to this as the "social network" model of drug distribution, in which the dealer sells drugs only to screened buyers. In this case, the seller either knows the buyer personally, or knows someone who knows the buyer and can vouch for him or her. On the other hand, the buyers purchase drugs only from screened sellers. They also know who they are transacting business with or know someone who can vouch for that person. Eck (1994a) lists four characteristics of a "social network" model of drug distribution, which make it difficult to detect. First, because security and access are provided through the network, place attachment is low. Therefore the location where drugs are exchanged for money can change over a wide area. Furthermore, enforcement actions are likely to result in wide spatial displacement, much like throwing water on an oil fire. Second, in places where money is exchanged for drugs, there is no need for owners or managers to be involved in the transactions. Therefore "place managers," such as apartment house owners who control an environment, have little control over this type of exchange. Third, because the geography of the distribution is widespread, law enforcement cannot focus on a particular section or location in the region where the exchange is likely to take place. Finally, because the exchange involves relatively few sellers and customers, the density of illicit market places will be low and, again, difficult to detect. Gugliotta describes these transactions as follows: Through the early 1990's, cocaine arriving in U.S. ports of entry was still owned by Colombians in most cases. At some point, however, the cartels' distributors transferred ownership to and took payment from U.S.-based criminal organizations that controlled the traffic in most U.S. cities. Even a fter years of cocaine interdiction. as of 1990 almost nothing was known about this crucial moment—the last transaction in the neck of the hourglass. Several stateside Colombian distributors (high-level messengers of the cartels) were arrested…, but the U.S. wholesalers (high-level messengers of the U.S. gangs) were largely ignored. (1992, p. 122) The emphasis is added to the original to stress the fact that enforcement has not been effective at the upper levels of the drug distribution organization within the United States. There have been arrests, but few convictions. Twenty alleged leaders of the Lucchese crime family in New York City, for example, were charged with distributing and selling cocaine. There was evidence of their involvement in the cocaine distribution business, although the trial ended in the acquittal of all the defendants (Cooper, 1990). Wholesalers attempt to sell as large a volume as possible to as few persons as possible to further reduce the risk of detection. Law enforcement is very difficult at these levels. Once the drugs pass to the street dealers, however, law enforcement again becomes easier because sales may become more open; thus tactics such as "buy and bust" operations are more practical. Street-level distribution has been described by Eck (1994a) as a "routine activities" model of drug distribution. In this model, sellers may sell to strangers and buyers may buy from strangers. This arrangement has an advantage because it increases the number of potential sales for the sellers. Yet because buyers and sellers may be unknown to each other, they must come to the same place at the same time in order to make contact with each other. Therefore sellers will locate at sites along routes that are used routinely by many potential customers, such as near schools or shopping centers. The sellers locate at these positions and the buyers come to them. Street-level distribution organized according to a routine activities model has four characteristics that make it easier for law enforcement officers to detect (Eck, 1994a). First, these marketplaces are not likely to be spread out. Instead they are clustered along major thoroughfares and arterial routes near nodes of major activity, such as schools and recreation areas. In other words, they have high place attachment and thus can be identified more easily by law enforcement officers. If enforcement tactics force them to move, spatial displacement will be much more limited than in the social network model. Second, people who control places legitimately will be critical to the functioning of these distribution locations. Place managers may attempt to control illicit behaviors on or near their properties. For example, store owners may not want drug sellers loitering in front of their place of business, and may aid the police in identifying and arresting these distributors. On the other hand, corruption and intimidation of place managers will be relatively common. Third, sellers will be found disproportionately at locations where place managers are not attentive to behaviors or do not attempt to control them. Because of the need for weak place management, the thoroughfares and nodes in economically depressed areas will be particularly vulnerable but will be known to the police. Finally, these kinds of locations tend to be very large, with many sellers serving many customers. This concentration of illicit activities in a small area may lead to violence as sellers compete for the best locations (Rasmussen, Benson, and Sollars, 1993). Therefore, open locations for illicit drug distribution at the retail level will be difficult to hide. They will be well known to the police, the public, and potential buyers of illicit drugs. Overt tactics can be used as a supplement to undercover operations to control these distributors of illicit drugs (Eck, 1994a). In spite of these advantages at the street level, enforcement has been spotty. The literature is filled with stories of success (Kennedy, 1993; Moore, 1977) and lack of success (Eck, 1989; Kleiman, Barnett, Bouza, and Burke, 1988; Kleiman and Smith, 1990). I believe that the results are inconsistent because we have not explicitly considered the different forms that retail sales at the street-level can take in different localities. An effective effort against one form of street level retail sale may not be effective against another. For example, consider the retail sales of a legiti-mate commodity such as groceries. Groceries can be sold in "mom and pop" comer stores or in giant supermarkets. They can be sold from side-walk stands in open-air markets or delivered door to door from the back of a pickup truck. Obviously, if we wanted to stop the retail sales of gro-ceries, we would not use the same tactic for a "mom and pop" comer store as we might employ against a giant supermarket. Yet drug law enforcement tactics are copied from place to place, with little regard for the form taken by illegal retail sales of drugs in different locales. Officials in Lawrence, Massachusetts, for example, modeled their tactics after a successful program in Lynn. The program in Lawrence, however, failed to produce any important effects on the levels of crime or drug use because the effort was too small relative to the size of the trafficking networks. Also, the effort was focused on wholesale cocaine rather than retail heroin, which was more prevalent in Lawrence (Miller, 1992). In addition, the drug market in Lawrence was more widely dispersed than the market in Lynn. A nearby market in Lowell, not under comparable pressure, provided an alternative source not available in Lynn (Kleiman and Smith, 1990). Therefore the tactics that were successful in Lynn could not be expected to work in Lawrence. Successful tactics depend on the characteristics of the drug market targeted; these characteristics may be unique to each locality. Therefore a thorough knowledge of the drug marketplace should precede any intervention. In the following chapters we will examine in detail the different types of illegal drug distribution at the retail level of the sales organization, and will relate them to the quality of life and to the viability of our communities. First, however, we examine the upper, wholesale levels of the illegal drug distribution network. pps. 1-11 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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