NCJ Number
159310
Date Published
1995
Length
234 pages
Annotation
Focusing on nine countries, this volume addresses the intended and unintended socioeconomic and political consequences of the production, consumption, and trade involving illicit drugs; analyzes the impact of laws and policies designed to criminalize, discourage, or otherwise deal with drug law offenses; and explores the potential impacts of likely future drug policies.
Abstract
The analysis uses the country studies commissioned by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the United Nations University to analyze drug law offenses and drug policies in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, Laos, Pakistan, and Kentucky in the United States. An overview notes several linkages between drugs and crime, including drugs' pharmacological effects, the economic-compulsive drives of drug abusers, the systemic violence characteristic of traffickers' efforts to protect turf and open new markets, and the corrupting influence of drug money on public officials and institutions. It also notes that the development of computer and communications technology, the collapse of communism, and the declining significance of national borders around the planet all facilitate the development of integrated criminal organizations for drug trafficking. The analysis concludes that conventional wisdom about prospects and possibilities for addressing drug problems needs to change. It emphasizes the need to try to reduce consumption abuse and its harmful externalities and to eliminate and avoid drug policies that produce unacceptable unintended consequences, or at least reduce those consequences as much as possible. Tables, chapter reference notes, index, and 221 references