Abstract
The drug trade in the Americas has national, regional, and global dimensions, which interact and require multifaceted responses. US concern is region-wide in aspiring to control production and transit of drugs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and is also global in aiming to disrupt the world-wide drug trade. Latin America and the Caribbean none the less occupy a position of special importance in US anti-drug policy, since this region produces and transports most drugs entering the US market. It was recently estimated that ‘Latin American countries supply one-third of the heroin, perhaps 80% of the marijuana, and all of the cocaine currently used in the United States, representing more than three-fourths of the US drug market which is estimated to exceed $100 billion annually.1 Practically every country in the Western hemisphere has been involved in some facet of the drug trade, with problems resulting for both domestic politics and relations with the United States.
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Notes
Caribbean Drug Trafficking
James M. Van Wert, ‘The US State Department’s Narcotics Control Policy in the Americas’ Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 30 (Summer/Fall 1988) p. 4.
Congress House, Drugs and Latin America: Economic and Political Impact and US Policy Options, Report of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, prepared statement by Anthony P. Maingot, ‘The Drug Threat to Caribbean Nations’ 101 Cong., 1st sess. (1989) p. 129. Two more recent sources cite the same estimate of 70 per cent of the drug traffic coming through the Caribbean, of which less than 20 per cent is interdicted. Anthony P. Maingot, ‘The Offshore Caribbean’ and Paul Sutton, ‘US Intervention, Regional Security, and Militarization in the Caribbean’ both in Anthony Payne and Paul Sutton (eds), Modern Caribbean Politics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) pp. 261, 289.
Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Washington, DC: US Department of State, April 1993) p. 2.
Ron Sanders. ‘Narcotics. Corruption and Development: The Problems in the Smaller Islands’ Caribbean Affairs, 3 (January-March 1990) p. 79.
Daniel A. Laliberte, ‘Measuring Drug-interdiction Effectiveness’ Proceedings: US Naval Institute, 118 (June 1992) p. 94.
John C. Trainor, ‘Coping with the Drug Runners at Sea’ Naval War College Review, 40 (Summer 1987): 77.
Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Washington, DC: US Department of State, March 1991) pp. 57, 58.
Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Washington, DC: US Department of State, March 1990) p. 208.
Paul Sutton, ‘Introduction’ in Paul Sutton (ed.), Europe and the Caribbean (London: Macmillan, 1991) p. 9. Anthony Payne, ‘Britain and the Caribbean’ in Europe and the Caribbean, p. 30.
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© 1994 Michael A. Morris
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Morris, M.A. (1994). Caribbean Drug Trafficking. In: Caribbean Maritime Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23399-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23399-1_5
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