NCJ Number
162048
Journal
Transnational Organized Crime Volume: 1 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1995) Pages: 261-287
Date Published
1995
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This is an executive summary of the U.S. State Department's 1995 International Narcotics Strategy Report, which provides a comprehensive assessment of the global drug trade.
Abstract
The report contains a detailed assessment of each country and considers whether its counternarcotics activities have been sufficient to allow it to be certified so that it can obtain U.S. foreign assistance. The report also contains an assessment of the major trends in drug production and trafficking. This executive summary of the report provides an overview of both the positive and negative developments during 1994, a commentary on money laundering, and assessments of cocaine and heroin production. The summary notes that global antidrug efforts in 1994 show a mixed record. There were some accomplishments, as more governments than ever before expressed their willingness to combat the international drug trade. Domestic legislation was introduced to restrict the spread of precursor chemicals or the use of the Nation's financial institutions to launder trafficking proceeds. There were sustained eradication efforts in several key areas. Major traffickers were arrested, and their organizations dismantled. Seizures were up on several major trafficking routes, along with law enforcement and interdiction cooperation. Despite enforcement and interdiction efforts, however, the principal drug trafficking organizations did a brisk business in cocaine and heroin. They showed an unprecedented degree of sophistication, rivaling that of the world's great multinational corporations, as they moved more cocaine than ever before to Europe and Southeast Asia. They fed a growing appetite for heroin in the Western Hemisphere. The independent states of the former Soviet Union offered laboratories not only for developing democracies and new market economies, but also for trafficking organizations in Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Colombia, seeking to exploit political instability to open up new routes to markets in Europe. A table shows worldwide illicit drug cultivation totals for various countries for the years 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994.