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Between Politics and Reason
Chapter 7. Business as Usual?
Erich Goode — State University of New York, Stony Brook
The sale and distribution of illegal drugs is a business—a huge
business. Estimates range from between $40 billion and $150 billion
for the yearly sales of illegal drugs at the retail level in the
United States. This is an enormous range, of course, but, given
the clandestine nature of drug sales, a precise, definitive, and
authoritative figure is impossible to come by. Suffice it to say
that tens of billions of dollars are earned by the American drug
trade each year; perhaps the total is roughly $100 billion. If
drug sellers were arrested in large numbers, would the drug trade
and, hence, illegal drug use be eliminated as a consequence? Would
busting these dealers, sellers, growers, and distributors wipe
out drug abuse? Is this the way to fight the "war on drugs"?
Prohibitionists and criminalizers argue that this is an extremely
effective strategy. In contrast, the legalizers say this line
of attack is futile—worse than futile, counterproductive.
STAMPING OUT DRUGS AT THEIR SOURCE?
Is stamping out drugs at their source an effective means of prohibiting,
eliminating, or controlling use? Looked at superficially, the
idea seems appealing. After all, what could possibly work better
than pinching off the flow of a substance at the very peak of
a pyramid-shaped distribution system? Cut off the head of the
monster, and the monster will die—or so the saying goes. Does
it apply in this case? A closer look at how drugs make their way
to the consumer demonstrates the flaws in every prohibitionist
plan that is based on wiping out drugs at their source. Indeed,
historical experience with this program has demonstrated its fallaciousness
time and time again.
The drug trade has become an international or multinational
enterprise. Drugs used on the streets of American cities now
have their origin in dozens of countries around the world. Why?
Consider the current international picture. The Soviet Union has
collapsed, replaced by 15 separate, independent nations. Each
one faces economic problems; those in central Asia are sparsely
populated, remote, impoverished, and marked by relatively weak
central governments. In 1992, Kazakhstan legalized the cultivation
of the opium poppy. Over the past decade or two, Third World countries
have experienced shrinking gross national products; political
instability in the form of conflict between and among ethnic,
racial, tribal, and religious groups; and the growth of terrorism.
Centralization has receded in China; its economy is moving toward
privatization. National currencies in most of the Third World
are nonexchangeable and essentially worthless outside the borders
of each specific country. The motivation for drug dealing by greedy
entrepreneurs, insurgent groups seeking weapons, peasants who
recognize the difference between starving to death and achieving
a comfortable way of life, businesses seeking hard currency, even
governments struggling to keep afloat, is often irresistible.
The result: a proliferation in drug producers world wide (Bonner,
1995; Flynn, 1993). The fabled "Silk Road," which, in
times past, brought wealth to Central Asia and spices, carpets,
and silk to Europe, has been reincarnated in a new role: the transportation
of opium. "Propelled by the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in 1991, economic and political chaos, civil war, borders that
cannot be controlled and the aggressive anarchy of Afghanistan
..., this rugged, often unassailable region has become the ultimate
drug runner's dream come true" (Specter, 1995, p. Al).
Stamping out drugs at their source is a fatally flawed policy
for four reasons, each of which is related specifically to the
illegality of the drug trade. First, an almost infinite
number of entrepreneurs are willing to take a risk to earn a profit;
arresting one results in another's stepping in and taking over
the business. Second, logistically, growing, transporting,
and selling drugs are impossible to detect and eradicate because
the drug trade does not require much space and can be easily shifted
around when necessary. Third, the drug business contributes
to the wages even of low-level workers and the economy of regions,
even entire countries; hence, it is deeply entrenched and widely
supported. And fourth, the enormous profits of the drug
business translate, for distributors, into enormous resources
which enable them to evade detection, corrupt officials, and purchase
personnel and equipment to combat law enforcement.
PUSH DOWN/POP UP
All four of these factors can be traced to a broader master principle;
in general, eliminating the drug trade at its source cannot work
because of a phenomenon that has been referred to as the "push-down/pop-up"
factor (Nadelmann, 1988, p.9). Whenever drug production is wiped
out in one location, growers and distributors in other areas step
in to supply the shortfall. And the reason why this happens is
that the sale of drugs is enormously profitable. Imagine the automobile
industry's being wiped out overnight; within hours, steps will
be taken to replace it, again, because it is an enormous source
of profits. But what makes the drug trade different is that it
is illegal, say the legalizers, and that makes it even
more profitable than a legal industry. The risk of arrest
in a given transaction is fairly small; and, at the top of the
distribution pyramid, the chance of earning huge sums is extremely
high. Eliminating one grower or distributor means greater sales
for the ones who remain, and creates a business opportunity for
those who are thinking about taking the plunge. In other words,
criminal law yields to "a higher law," economic law—"the
law of the marketplace, the law of supply and demand" (Wisotsky,
1990b, p.8).
In 1975, the U.S. government financed a program to supply the
Mexican government with the resources to spray illicit marijuana
fields with Paraquat, a poisonous insecticide, which killed the
plants. For a time, this program (albeit temporarily) practically
eliminated Mexico as a source of marijuana imported to the United
States. Rather than allow this multibillion-dollar need to languish
unmet, entrepreneurs from a wide range of countries—including
Colombia, Jamaica, and Belize—began growing and exporting marijuana
on a massive scale. In addition, understandably, home-grown marijuana
became more popular—and far more potent. Reacting to this trend,
in 1989, President Bush launched "Green Merchant," a
program of arresting domestic, especially indoor, marijuana growers.
Growers, in turn, became more sophisticated, efficient, and secretive.
The result? In the 1970s, home-grown marijuana made up less than
10 percent of the market; by 1989, this had grown to 25 percent;
and by the mid- 1990s, this had grown to roughly half (Pollan,
1995). Whenever the source of illicit marijuana was wiped out
("pushdown"), it managed to "pop-up" somewhere
else. And the reason is always the same: the profit motive.
In the early 1970s, most of the heroin consumed on the streets
of the United States began as opium poppies grown in Turkey; they
were processed in France, Italy, or Lebanon and exported to New
York. At that time, President Nixon, with the cooperation of the
Turkish government, initiated a major program to wipe out illicit
poppy cultivation in Turkey and sever the "French Connection."
The plan worked; heroin which had its origin as Turkish poppies
ceased to make its way into the veins of American junkies. But
by 1975, Mexico had become a major opium grower and the main source
of illicit heroin. Subsequently, in the wake of the push to eliminate
Mexico as a source of illegal drugs in the mid1970s, within only
five years, Southwest Asia (Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan) and
Southeast Asia (Burma, Thailand, and Laos) became the country's
principal suppliers. Today, 70 percent of the heroin sold on the
street in the United States originated from opium poppies grown
in Burma (whose proper name is Myanmar). Today, after vast, multi-billion-dollar
efforts to wipe out heroin at its source, the drug is much more
abundant than it was a decade ago, and much more potent; in the
earlyto-mid-1980s, illicit heroin was 3 or 4 percent pure, whereas,
by the 1990s, the average purity of heroin nationwide grew to
between 35 and 40 percent (Treaster, 1993). Clearly, severing
the Turkish-Italian-French pipeline did not cut off the supply
of heroin to the United States although there was a reduction
in the short run, within a matter of a few years, demand stimulated
entrepreneurs in a variety of locations around the world to supply
the drug. At one time, the Medellin cartel supplied most of the
illicit cocaine sold in America. In the 1980s, a massive crackdown
all but eliminated that city from the drug distribution picture.
Within a matter of a few months, Colombia's sister city, Cali,
became the center for cocaine exportation to the United States.
THE LOGISTICS OF ERADICATING DRUGS AT THEIR SOURCE
The fact is, illegal drugs can be grown and manufactured in very
many places, in very small spaces, and it is enormously profitable
to do so. American addicts consume roughly 10 to 20 tons of heroin
a year, which can be made from 100 to 200 tons of raw opium. This
is less than 5 percent of the world's opium production, most of
which is legal; if only one twentieth of the world's legal opium
production is diverted into the illegal manufacture of heroin,
this would satisfy all the drug needs of all narcotic addicts
in the world. The entire world's illicit heroin supply can be
grown on a mere 25 to 50 square miles of poppy fields. This can
be accommodated by growing plants in tens or hundreds of thousands
of widely scattered fields that are virtually immune to electronic
or satellite surveillance. In Burma, the principal source of America's
illicit heroin supply, vast territories are not under the control
of the central government at all; they are controlled by warlords
in command of large, well armed and well-financed armies whose
business is to protect the poppy fields and make sure the supply
of opium and morphine makes its way to refineries in Laos and
Thailand (Brookes, 1990). In 1996, Kung Sa, the most powerful
of the Burmese opium barons, was arrested (Shenon, 1996). Will
his removal put a dent in the heroin supply shipped to the United
States? (U.S. State Department officials believe the deal Kung
Sa worked out with authorities entails his staying in business.)
Or will another group, gang, or cartel step in and take over his
business? It's too early to tell; drug experts are not optimistic.
The coca plant is the source of cocaine. Its leaves are a legal
crop in Bolivia and Peru; they are chewed by a substantial number
of Indians in those countries to offset fatigue and hunger. Less
than 1,000 square miles of land worldwide is devoted to the cultivation
of coca. According to the senior senator from New York, Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, citing a report by the Department of Agriculture,
coca plants can be grown in practically any location in the world
which receives between 40 and 240 inches of rain a year and has
no frost or swamps; in South American alone, these characteristics
fit 2.5 million square miles. Brazil has what is one of the vastest
unpatroled jungle territories in the world; if coca production
is stamped out in Peru, it can be relocated to Brazil (Gonzales,
1985; Nadelmann, 1989, pp.939-940). With the government crackdown
on marijuana growing in the United States, cultivation has become
increasingly sophisticated. Today, enough plants to generate profits
of nearly $200,000 a year can be grown in an indoor area the size
of a pool table. Within a very few years, some claim, "virtual"
marijuana gardens can be cultivated which will be self-regulating;
their ownership will be almost untraceable, the grower appearing
only to harvest the product, replant some seeds, and, once again,
disappear into anonymity (Pollan, 1995).
THE DRUG TRADE AS AN EMPLOYER
There is far more to eradicating drugs than the logistical problem
of locating and destroying them at their source. Thinking about
how the illegal drug trade works means that we have to consider
its economic contribution to an entire region or nation.
Considering the economic factor should not be construed
as an argument that claims that eradicating the drug trade is
impossible—only that it will be a much more difficult task.
In addition, the economic factor means that, if successful, eradication
will almost inevitably have serious and, in all likelihood, deleterious
consequences. (The same may apply to the impact of legalization
as well.) Considered strictly from its economic contribution,
selling drugs is no different from any legal business. Indeed,
up and down the hierarchy, from the grower to the importer to
the lowliest worker, wages are higher in the illegal than in the
legal sector. But more than this: It isn't only those at the top
who profit; it is anyone who derives employment from it. All workers
who earn a wage spend it in the legal sector—on food, clothing,
shelter, as well as other necessities and luxuries. Hence, we
have to consider the influence of the drug in "spreading
the money around"—what is sometimes referred to as the
economic "ripple" effect. Again, considered strictly
from an economic point of view, eliminating an illegal industry
is no different from eliminating any legal industry. Wiping out
the drug trade worldwide would devastate the economy of a large
number of countries throughout the world.
In Colombia, the cocaine trade is as profitable as the coffee
business. Try to picture Colombia's coffee business wiped out
overnight; the result would be economic catastrophe for the country
as a whole. In principle, this is no different for the cocaine
trade. The marijuana crop in the United States is more profitable
than the corn crop (Pollan, 1995). Picture the entire corn industry
obliterated from the face of the earth. Again, it would impact
not only the growers and sellers but everyone who is dependent
on their business, and everyone who does business with them, and
so on down the line—that is, the entire country. One reason
why the drug trade is so deeply entrenched at the supplier level
is that entire regions and even nations are dependent on it, even
citizens who have no idea that they are. Drug trafficking is estimated
to bring between $3.5 and $7 billion into Colombia's economy.
The current crackdown on its cocaine trade has brought about a
shortage of income within the Cali cartel, sales of real estate
by its members, a devaluation of the peso against the dollar,
a recession in the construction industry, and a decline in the
Colombian stock market (Anonymous, 1995). The remarkable feature
about the economy is that it does not distinguish between income
earned by "moral" and "immoral" enterprises;
while both income streams could have additional impacts,
the money that flows through an economy is completely without
a conscience.
Half of Bolivia's foreign trade derives from the coca business
(Gonzales, 1985, p.242). Bolivia is a poor country. What is going
to replace this revenue in the event of the loss of the cocaine
trade? The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that Jamaica
earns more from exporting marijuana than from all other exports
combined; if this source of income is obliterated, how can it
be replaced? What industry can possibly contribute as much to
these and other countries' gross national product? What economic
sector are the jobs that are eliminated going to come from? The
reason why drugs cannot be eradicated at their source by convincing
peasants to grow potatoes and wheat is that there is an endless
supply of entrepreneurs willing to take risks in order to earn
huge sums of money and to employ any number of laborers to work
at jobs which pay them 10 times what they would earn producing
a legal crop (Gonzales, 1985, p.238). But note: The fact that
the drug trade is a viable and lucrative employer is relevant
to both the prohibitionist and the legalization arguments
since, under legalization, drug profits would presumably plummet.
If legalization threatens to become law, would drug entrepreneurs
resist it as forcefully as they have resisted law enforcement?
Or, if legalization is instituted, would they become the legal
suppliers of formerly illegal drugs? At the present time, we can
only speculate.
DRUG PRODUCTION AS A VIOLENT ENTERPRISE
One Colombian drug dealer is reputed to earn $20 million a month;
his private army of several thousand heavily armed men represents
a force that is larger than the entire personnel of the federal
Drug Enforcement Administration (Gonzales, 1985). In Burma (or
Myanmar), in vast territories, there are no federal authorities
whatsoever; the territories are ruled by warlords who command
huge armies. Their business: the production and transportation
of opium poppies (Brookes, 1990). In order to capture a drug baron
and put his operation out of commission, the Burmese government
must expend enormous resources and, often, engage in open, bloody,
and extremely costly warfare. These territories are, in effect,
outlaw nations unto themselves. (Kung Sa was captured only because
a portion of his private army mutinied.) Some powerful drug sellers
are personally worth billions of dollars and control entire towns
and even regions with an iron fist. In Colombia, even honest judges
let arrested drug traffickers go free because they know that they
and their entire families will be murdered if they do not; they
are given a choice: "a big payoff or a bullet" (Riding,
1988)—in Spanish, plata (silver) or plombo (lead).
In locales where drug selling is deeply entrenched, corruption
is not even the issue; there, law enforcement has simply ceased
to function. Drug dealers are often more powerful than the government;
they have more money and command larger armed forces, with superior
weapons. In some areas, law enforcement against illegal drug production
is simply impossible without massive federal intervention; in
other areas, it is possible, but extremely difficult and dangerous.
In 1995, against overwhelming odds, the Colombian government launched
a concerted campaign against illegal drug sellers located mainly
in and around Cali (Brooke, 1995b). One of the fruits of their
efforts: the arrest of Henry Loaiza Ceballos, a cocaine kingpin
nicknamed "the Scorpion." Loaiza owns 30 luxurious ranches,
5,000 head of cattle, and several apartments and beach houses.
In an attempt to win over the loyalty of the populace in the towns
and regions in which he operates, he has paid for the repair of
Catholic churches, purchased a fleet of buses and given free rides
to those unable to pay the fare, sponsored beauty pageants and
distributed free rum to the audience and motorcycles to the contestants,
and handed out candy to children at Halloween. Loaiza also commands
a large army of ruthless killers. In 1990, peasants in one town
where he owns a ranch talked about organizing a union. In a reign
of terror lasting a year, 107 suspected unionists were rounded
up, tortured, and cut to pieces with chain saws; their body parts
were found in a nearby river. A Catholic priest complained of
the killings; several days later, his "decapitated and dismembered
body" was pulled out of the river. A local fruit picker went
to Cali and complained about the killings; he was arrested and
never heard from again. While the ruthlessness of such enterprises
does not argue for the impossibility of rooting them out, it does
highlight its difficulty. Indeed, the arrest of Loaiza demonstrates
that law enforcement under such circumstances is possible. Still,
some observers speculated that the Scorpion will be released within
a few years in a generous plea bargain with the government. Commenting
on Loaiza's "blazer, blue jeans, designer tie, and engaging
smile," La Prensa, one of Bogota's leading newspapers,
marveled, he "doesn't look like a... killer.... Anyone would
say that he is a math teacher" (Brooke, 1995a).
SMUGGLING: INTERCEPTING DRUGS AT THE BORDER
Policies succeed or fail not because the general principle on
which they are based is wise or foolish, but because of specific,
nuts-and-bolts features pertaining to their implementation. Think
of intercepting drugs at the border as a military campaign; think
of the nuts-and-bolts or logistical problems entailed in
stopping the drug flow at this point. Roughly 10 to 20 tons of
heroin and 120 to 150 tons of cocaine enter the United States
each year across its borders, including from international waters.
This sounds like a huge quantity until one realizes how much legal
freight enters the country from abroad. A total of roughly 100
million tons of cargo comes into the United States annually.
In addition, there are more individual border crossings into the
country than there are residents—over 300 million. What cargo
gets checked by customs officials? Which persons are searched?
In 1991, for example, nearly two million containers came through
the Port of Newark, of which customs officials were able to inspect
only 15 to 18 a day (Flynn, 1993). Tracing the many inlets, islands,
and harbors along the waters lapping the shores of this country
produces nearly 90,000 miles of coastline where small, drug-laden
boats could dock silently, surreptitiously, without attracting
attention.
Checking every item of cargo and every person crossing the border
is a 1iteral impossibility; it represents a tactical horror story
for law enforcement officials as well as a massive inconvenience
for people entering the country for legitimate reasons. A lesson
can be taken from "Operation Intercept" (1969), when
every person and vehicle crossing the U.S.-Mexican border was
subject to inspection. Traffic backed up for as much as six miles,
waits ran to two or three hours, and complaints flooded American
officials; the policy hurt tourism, hurt business, and seriously
inconvenienced Mexican workers and American travelers returning
home. Moreover, the plan resulted in no major drug seizures; the
total quantity of marijuana confiscated was no more than was true
before it went into effect, 150 pounds a day. After 20 days, Operation
Intercept was abandoned. The policy did have two effects, however.
It stimulated an increase in marijuana importation from Vietnam,
as well as an increase in home-grown marijuana (Gooberman, 1974;
Inciardi, 1992, pp.42-43).
After the problem of the sheer volume of persons and cargo
entering the United States, there is the problem of the remarkable
inventiveness of smugglers in hiding drug cargo. Quantities
of illegal drugs crossing the border have been hidden in baby
diapers, fresh fruit, frozen fruit pulp, hollowed-out religious
statues and other relics, clothing mannequins, electronic equipment,
the hulls of ships, panels and gas tanks of cars, bags of coffee,
surfboards, books, furniture, concrete fence posts, ice-packed
cases of vegetables, aerosol cans, sneakers, and pillows strapped
around someone's waist. Heroin and cocaine have been stuffed into
condoms and swallowed by couriers; animals have been surgically
cut open and, again, had heroin- or cocaine-filled condoms inserted
into their bodies, were sewn shut, and were then transported across
the border; drugs have been placed in airtight containers in a
liquid—such as olive oil, gasoline, liquor, mouthwash, shampoo,
and the water tropical fish swim in—and smuggled into the country.
Cocaine has been molded into a bust of Jesus and spray-painted
a light-gray color; 15 pounds of cocaine were chemically bonded
into two fiberglass dog kennels; half a ton of cocaine was packed
into hollow plaster shells shaped and painted to look like yams
(Speart, 1995). The possible ways that drugs can be shipped across
the border are almost infinite, limited only by the smuggler's
imagination. These are only a few of the gimmicks we know about,
since they resulted in detection and confiscation. It almost boggles
the mind to try to imagine what some of the successful attempts
have entailed.
When the Coast Guard targeted large ships carrying huge drug loads,
smugglers shifted to smaller loads and smaller, faster boats.
When one coastline attracted the Coast Guard's attention, another
coastline was chosen for off-loading drug shipments. When long-haul,
large-load planes were detected and busted, smugglers turned to
faster, lower-flying planes. When large loads generally attracted
surveillance, detection, and arrest, smugglers shifted to sending
in a large number of couriers, each with a fairly small load,
on the assumption that the majority will get through. When operations
which moved drugs directly from the source country to the United
States became vulnerable to detection, arrangements were made
with intermediaries in offshore Caribbean islands to bring drugs
into the United States indirectly, in more graduated stages. And
throughout the past two decades or so, the watchword has been
diversification—not only of techniques but also of the
national and ethnic backgrounds of importers and smugglers. No
longer the exclusive domain of a small number of nationalities
or ethnic groups, drug smuggling is conducted by Colombians, Cubans,
Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, Italians and Italian-Americans,
Chinese, Nigerians, Israelis Iranians, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—in
fact, quite possibly, every imaginable racial, national, and ethnic
category on Earth.
As important as the logistical problem of surveillance and inspection
is the fact that the persons crossing the border smuggling quantities
of an illegal drug are almost always couriers—"mules"
or "Smurfs" who are paid to deliver the goods and know
next to nothing about the operation of the organization they work
for. Each has been paid a few thousand dollars for taking a risk;
if any one of them is arrested, it represents only a small loss
to the total operation. Arresting them and confiscating their
shipment amounts to little more than a tariff or "tax"
levied against smugglers to continue doing business. Customs officials
estimate that between 5 and 10 percent of the total volume of
illegal drugs entering the United States is confiscated. And of
this fraction, again, only a small fraction results from border
inspections per se; most confiscations result from tips or intelligence
in advance of the crossing itself. As things stand now, for drug
smugglers, having a certain proportion of their goods confiscated
represents little more than the cost of doing business.
Busting at the border does have a number of effects, none, unfortunately,
has anything to do with drastically reducing drug abuse. The authorities
can report an increasing number of arrests and seizures and claim
that they are doing their job to bring drug abuse to a halt, that
the seizures are "taking drugs off the street" and the
arrests are "putting dangerous drug dealers behind bars."
The statistics on seizures and arrests can be used to back up
these claims, since they are specific, concrete, and quantitative.
After all, seizing two tons of cocaine is twice as good as seizing
one; arresting a dozen smugglers is twice as good as arresting
six. The effort is largely symbolic, however; at the level of
seizures and arrests that currently prevails, it has nothing to
do with reducing the supply of illegal drugs. A ton of cocaine
seized at the border does not translate into a ton less cocaine
on the street; in the short run, it may mean a bit more dilution
and a bit higher price. In the medium run, it means another smuggler
using a different technique to import more cocaine into the country.
In the long run, it means nothing.
In 1986 and again in 1988, two federal bills were passed which
required that the U.S. military be a party to intercepting illegal
drugs coming into the country. The most important of the provisions
of these bills allocated resources, mainly equipment and personnel,
to interdict illegal drugs at the border. Officials at the Department
of Defense, long aware of the low interdiction rate and the improbability
of success in this venture, commissioned a study by the Rand Corporation
to evaluate the feasibility of "sealing" the country's
borders off from incoming illegal drugs (Reuter, Crawford, and
Cave, 1988). The report concluded that it is "extremely difficult"
to reduce cocaine consumption in the United States by even as
little as 5 percent, even if the government were to put into operation
the most stringent and thorough interdiction program feasible.
Drug smuggling, the report said, is too sophisticated, decentralized,
diversified, flexible, versatile, adaptable, resourceful, and
intelligent an operation to be slowed down by a few seizures and
busts. There is too much to gain by getting illegal drugs into
the country, and too much to lose by giving up the business as
a result of a few busts and seizures. It simply can't be done,
concluded the Rand report. The military agrees, but to keep up
symbolic appearances (and for the purpose of relative deterrence),
the operation continues. News reports, complete with photographs
of politicians and high-level police brass standing next to huge
piles of confiscated cash and drugs, convince the public that
"something is being done" about the drug problem. The
coverage is always good for a few votes at election time.
Consider one truly sobering statistic: Only 12 percent of the
retail cost of cocaine stems from producing, refining, importing,
and smuggling the drug. Even if half the cocaine that comes
into the country from abroad were to be seized—which is unrealistic
in the extreme—cocaine prices would increase by only 5 percent.
"Since prices are already so low, such increases would not
affect consumption" (Falco, 1992a, p.8). Not only is it logistically
impractical to rely on border seizures as a means of controlling
drug abuse in the United States; from an economic standpoint,
its basis is completely illusory. But recall our distinction between
absolute and relative deterrence: If there were
no inspections at the border, it is certain that the volume
of drugs entering this country would be many times greater than
what it is today. (Yes, relative deterrence does work.)
But relying on border seizures to shut down or seriously reduce
the size of the drug trade is almost unbelievably naive. (No,
absolute deterrence does not work.)
ARRESTING AT THE DEALER LEVEL
As we've learned, the value of the American drug trade is an estimated
$100 billion a year at the retail level. Clearly, here, as elsewhere
in the world, a great many people depend on the sale of controlled
substances for their living. In principle, the economic impact
of this business is not a particle different from any other industry,
such as producing and selling hamburgers, doughnuts, motorcycles,
hang gliders, sporting goods—or tobacco and alcohol. A decade
and a half ago, a journalist estimated that, in New York City
alone, a quarter of a million people earned their primary livelihood
from the sale of illegal drugs (Pileggi, 1982). These people not
only earn that money but also spend it, and contribute to the
livelihood of others. Can anyone seriously entertain the belief
that, through the routine enforcement of the drug laws, this immensely
lucrative business will be closed down? Remember: It is not only
at the top of the pyramid where these benefits accrue, but at
every level, from top to bottom, and horizontally as well, that
is, as I said, persons outside the industry with whom drug-trade
workers spend their money.
If it weren't for the fact that there are many Americans who still
believe in the myth of a "Boss of All Bosses," it might
not seem necessary to refute it. A surprising number of my students
still believe that the illegal drug trade is highly centralized,
that there is a single, big-time, high-level dealer in the United
States who directs the sale of illicit drugs nationwide. He is
swarthy, in all probability, Latin or Mediterranean; he wears
dark sunglasses, sits at a very large desk, and speaks into a
telephone with a deep, gravelly voice. And they believe that,
if he were arrested, drug sales in the country would come to a
screeching halt. But—the myth continues—he is protected by
corrupt police officials and politicians at the highest levels
of power, possibly even up to the presidency of the United States.
If only we could clean up the corruption and arrest "Mr.
Big," we could wipe out drug abuse in the country overnight!
This belief would be amusing if it weren't so pervasive. The fact
is, drug dealing in this country is highly decentralized, and
has become increasingly so in the past generation; different dealers
operate in hundreds, possibly thousands, of independent enterprises.
Illegal drugs are smuggled into the United States from several
dozen different countries. Certainly there are one, or several,
Mr. Bigs in some countries or regions, and in the United States,
there are, again, one or several local Mr. Bigs—cartels
and monopolies that operate at the community or neighborhood level;
still, to imagine that any single powerful figure, or even a small
number of players, could run the whole show in the United States
demonstrates an almost unbelievable childlike naiveté.
Does busting at the dealer level within the borders of the United
States work? It is important to make a distinction between high-level
and low-level drug sellers. In all likelihood, arresting the high-level
dealer cannot have an impact that is appreciably different from
attempts to eradicate drugs at their source. Again, the dealer's
risk is small, while the rewards are great. But what about the
street-level dealer, that is, the person who sells drugs directly
to the customer? Would arresting the petty, small-time drug seller
(who is usually a user, even an addict, as well) be effective
in reducing drug abuse nationally? At first glance, it might seem
an extremely ineffective way of going about fighting the drug
war. Why harass and arrest the poor, miserable junkie and street-level
dealer, while permitting major drug suppliers to roam the streets,
free as a bird? It might seem that a policy of concentrating on
smaller sellers rather than a neighborhood Mr. Big represents
a policy with a misplaced or inverted emphasis, perhaps little
more than a cynical police ploy to pile up a large number of meaningless
arrests to little or no practical purpose. Doesn't it make more
sense, this logic would hold, to arrest a small number of major
dealers who supply tens of thousands of addicts, and shut down
their operations, than to arrest large numbers of petty dealers
with no more than a few dozen customers?
It is true that crippling an entire drug-dealing organization
through the arrest of all or most of the high-level figures in
it is likely to interrupt the flow of drugs into a community,
at least temporarily. However, it is rare for the police to be
able to apprehend the key players in an entire drug operation.
More often, one or a small number of key players are arrested,
and they can almost always be replaced. Of course, each time an
arrest of a drug figure is made, the police attempt to get dealers
to testify against their colleagues; this effort is more likely
to fail than to succeed. If truth be told, the police prefer to
arrest large-scale dealers—corruption aside—largely because
it carries with it publicity, professional pride, and a symbolic
message to all concerned that they are doing an effective job
in their war against illegal drugs. The police refer to these
busts as "quality" arrests, while they call the arrest
of petty street-level dealers "garbage" collars. Unfortunately,
arrests of big dealers are difficult; they require a huge investment
of time and resources. Moreover, these figures are often successful
in avoiding conviction and imprisonment by hiring expensive, sophisticated
legal counsel. In contrast, street-level busts are easier to make,
and petty dealers have fewer resources with which to fight conviction
and incarceration. In addition, and obviously, there are a great
many more street-level dealers at the bottom of the distribution
pyramid than there are Mr. Bigs at the top. Moreover, street-level
dealers may make one or two dozen observable, public transactions
a day, maximizing their vulnerability to arrest, whereas a high-level,
high-volume dealer may make one or two well-concealed transactions
a month. Hence, there are logistical reasons why there is a vastly
greater likelihood that the police will arrest the petty, small-time
drug seller-user than the high-level, high-volume dealer.
But the far greater likelihood that the police will be far more
likely to make petty or street-level dealer arrests than at the
top of the drug distribution ladder may have a practical rationale
as well as a logistical or operational dynamic. Again, disrupting
an entire operation aside, ironically, high-level busts generally
have very little if any impact on the distribution and availability
of drugs in an area. The reason is simple: The temptation for
allied or competitive dealers to step in and continue business
as usual is enormous. In contrast, there is a possibility, some
observers feel, that many low-level busts will have something
of a more long-term impact. Why? Consider this. Today, almost
all experts are agreed that eradicating the supply side
of the illegal drug equation is hopeless. Given the vastness and
versatility of the drug production and distribution enterprise,
and the huge economic incentive, there is no possibility of wiping
out drug abuse by attacking its supply. But drugs would not be
used if there were no demand for them. What about attacking the
demand side of the illegal drug equation? Many drug experts
believe that demand is influenced by supply, and by arresting
the ultimate seller, the dealer who transacts with the user and
addict, demand and therefore use are most likely to be
affected. Again, why is this?
Studies of police "crackdowns" or "street sweeps"
in neighborhoods and communities in which drug dealing is rampant
demonstrate that their impact is inconsistent; even in areas where
a reduction in selling and drug-related crime can be demonstrated,
they are almost always short-lived. Mark Kleiman studied the effect
of saturation arrests in two heavy-drug-dealing communities in
Massachusetts. In one, the arrests were followed by a two-year
reduction in the robbery and burglary rate and an increase in
new enrollments to drug treatment programs, indicating that drug
supplies had dried up. However, after two years, these changes
were wiped out, and in some categories, the situation was worse
than before. In the second community, following the crackdown,
there were no reductions in the availability of drugs, and rates
of violent crime actually increased (Kleiman and Smith, 1990,
pp.80-81, 89). In 1984, the New York Police Department launched
"Operation Pressure Point," a massive crackdown on drug-selling
arrests in the city's Lower East Side. Soon after the program
was launched, certain crime indicators were down, but experts
eventually concluded that both crime and drug dealing had been
displaced to other neighborhoods. In 1986, Operation Clean Sweep
was initiated in Washington, D.C.; again, a detailed study of
its impact showed, drug markets were displaced to other areas,
and they reopened in the original neighborhoods when the police
stopped saturation arrests (Kleiman and Smith, 1990, pp.80-81).
On the other hand, such police efforts may make other contributions.
Says criminologist Jerome Skolnick, commenting on police crackdowns
of street dealers in Oakland, while such efforts have not driven
dealers off the street, they have reduced the "wide-open
marketplace atmosphere" in the worst areas; says a police
respondent interviewed by Skolnick, "you don't have the swarms
of people all night long. They're still dealing, but not twenty-four
hours a day. At least we've thinned it out so people can get in
and out of their own driveways" (quoted in Currie, 1993,
pp.206-207). Thus, such neighborhood sweeps may reclaim the streets
for the community's law-abiding citizens. In addition, they may
convince residents that something is being done about the drug
problem, that the police are not corrupt agents of drug dealers
(Wilson, 1990b, p.533).
As we'd expect, something of the same "push down/pop up"
effect we looked at on the international stage applies to the
distribution of drugs within the country's borders. The removal
of one drug dealer through arrest will result in some temporary
disruption in the distribution of drugs, which, in turn, results
in another dealer's stepping in as a replacement. When the police
crack down in one neighborhood or community, business will move
elsewhere; when the intensive enforcement campaign is eased, typically,
business resumes in the first locale. Moreover, busting dealers
makes it more profitable for those who are willing to take the
risk of arrest. How could things be otherwise? One suitcase full
of cocaine or heroin can earn a dealer hundreds of thousands of
dollars in a single transaction. Can anyone possibly imagine that,
as a result of possible arrest, no one can be found who
is willing to take the risk? The profits will always attract enough
daring, enterprising traffickers to ensure an uninterrupted flow
of illegal drugs (Pileggi, 1982). There is enough talent to go
around to keep the ranks of drug dealing well supplied with personnel
who will guarantee that drugs continue to flow from their source
to their target. The risk is simply too low, and the profits too
great, to expect that there will be a dramatic interruption in
the flow of heroin and cocaine as a result of drug busts (Kaplan,
1983, pp.85-86).
There are some striking differences between busting at the top
and busting at the bottom of the distribution chain, however.
Unless busting at the top disrupts an entire organization, it
is likely to have little effect, since other entrepreneurs will
inevitably step in and take over the arrested dealer's business.
On the other hand, some impact can be felt at the community
level as a result of police "street sweeping." For one
thing, petty dealers are a great deal more visible and more vulnerable
to arrest than high-level dealers are. And even a temporary disruption
of business is a good thing; it makes dealing less visible and
residents more mobile and less intimidated; and it may convince
skeptical but law-abiding citizens that the police are honest
and trying to deal with the drug problem. Even these small gains
are not necessarily obtained by scattering arrests all over a
city, however; they can be made only by saturation arrests in
one area or a small number of areas. It's something like cleaning
up the litter a little bit in parks all over a city versus cleaning
up a few parks thoroughly; saturation street sweeps will have
some impact on the targeted neighborhoods, while a few busts in
neighborhoods all over the city will accomplish next to nothing
(Kleiman and Smith, 1990, p.89). In sum, although the "push
down/pop up" factor does work to some extent for low-level
busts, there is some evidence that focused saturation arrests
of petty dealers will have a modest impact on the affected neighborhoods.
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