Transcript Chapter Thirteen

The Drug Business
 Any
questions from Unit 7?
 Remember
 There
 One
 Very
the Unit 8 essay?
is a Unit 9 essay.
more seminar!!!!!
little time to make up missing
assignments.


The earliest “war against
drugs” in the United States
was in response to opium
At a time when the practice
of medicine was quite
primitive, opium became
the essential ingredient in
innumerable remedies
dispensed in Europe and
America for the treatment
of diarrhea, dysentery,
asthma, rheumatism,
diabetes, malaria, cholera,
fevers, bronchitis, insomnia,
and pain of any kind




Summary:
opium medically
approved
Used for a variety of ills
As the primary
ingredient in many
“patent” medicines—
actually, secret formulas
that carried no patent at
all—opiates were readily
available in the United
States until 1914



By the 1850s, morphine
tablets and a variety of
morphine products were
readily available without
prescription
In 1856, the hypodermic
method of injecting
morphine directly into
the bloodstream was
introduced to American
medicine
In the 1870s, morphine
was exceedingly cheap,
cheaper than alcohol
Beginning of 18th
century, a German
pharmacist poured
liquid ammonia over
opium and obtained
an alkaloid, a white
powder that he found
to be many times more
powerful than opium

•
He named the
substance morphium



By the 1850s, morphine
tablets and a variety of
morphine products were
readily available without
prescription
In 1856, the hypodermic
method of injecting
morphine directly into
the bloodstream was
introduced to American
medicine
In the 1870s, morphine
was exceedingly cheap,
cheaper than alcohol


At the turn of the
twentieth century,
diacetylmorphine was
synthesized, creating the
most powerful of the
opiates—heroin—
marketed as a nonhabitforming analgesic to take
the place of morphine
Opiates, including
morphine and heroin,
were readily available in
the United States until
1914

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
The American response
to drugs in the twentieth
century is directly
related to international
affairs and trade with
China
The British East India
Company enjoyed a
government-granted
monopoly over the China
trade
Opium was first
prohibited by the
Chinese government in
1729, a time when only
small amounts of the
substance were reaching
China


In 1782, an attempt by a
British merchant ship to sell
1,601 chests of opium
resulted in a total loss, for
no purchasers could be
found
By 1799, however, a
growing traffic in opium led
to an imperial decree
banning the trade
 As
consumption of imported opium
increased and the method of ingestion
shifted from eating to smoking, official
declarations against opium increased, as
did smuggling
 The outlawing of opium by the Chinese
government led to the development of an
organized underworld
In the 1830s the
shippers grew bolder,
entering Chinese
territorial waters with
their opium cargo
 In 1839, in a dramatic
move, Chinese
authorities laid siege to
the port city of Canton,
confiscating and
destroying all opium
waiting offloading from
foreign ships
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In 1840, a British expedition
attacked the poorly armed
and organized Chinese
forces
The Second Opium War
began in 1856, when the
balance of payments once
again favored China
In the 1870s, the British
opium monopoly in China
was challenged by opium
imported from Persia and
cultivated in China itself
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
By the 1860s Chinese
immigrants were
clustering in Pacific
Coast cities, where they
established
Chinatowns—and
smoked opium
In 1887, Congress
responded to obligations
imposed on the United
States by a ChineseAmerican commercial
treaty by banning the
importation of smoking
opium by Chinese
subjects
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
In 1901, Congress
enacted the Native
Races Act, which
prohibited the sale of
alcohol and opium to
“aboriginal tribes and
uncivilized races”
In 1905 Congress
banned the sale of
opium to Filipino
natives except for
medicinal purposes
and three years later
banned sales to all
Philippines residents
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Reverend Brent, supporter
of the IRB, proposed the
formation of an
international opium
commission to meet in
Shanghai in 1909
A second conference was
held in The Hague in 1912,
with representatives from
the United States, China,
and ten other nations
The conference resulted in
a patchwork of agreements
known as the International
Opium Convention, which
was ratified by Congress in
1913

The Harrison Act is in
response to this.

The Harrison Act
provided that persons
in the business of
dealing in drugs
covered by the act—
including opium
derivatives and
cocaine—were
required to register
yearly and to pay a
special annual tax of $1

The statute made it
illegal to sell or give
away opium or opium
derivatives and coca or
its derivatives without
a written order on a
form issued by the
Commissioner of
Internal Revenue

Persons who were not
registered were
prohibited from
engaging in interstate
drug trafficking, and
anyone who possessed
drugs without first
registering and paying
the tax faced a penalty
of as long as five years
imprisonment and a
fine of as much as
$2,000
Concern over
federalism led
Congress to use the
taxing authority rather
than the police
authority of the federal
government to respond
to the problem of drug
control
 The Commissioner of
Internal Revenue was
in charge of upholding
the Harrison Act

 In
1915, 162 collectors and agents of the
Miscellaneous Division of the Internal Revenue
Service were given the responsibility of
enforcing drug laws
 In 1919, a narcotics division was created within
the Bureau of Prohibition, with a staff of 170
agents and an appropriation of $270,000
 The powers of the narcotics division were
clearly limited to the enforcement of
registration and record-keeping regulations
 Beginning
in 1918, narcotic clinics
opened in almost every major city
 Following WWI, the medical profession
stopped dispensing drugs to addicts,
forcing them to look to illicit sources and
giving rise to an enormous illegal drug
business
 Like
any other business that is
international in scope, heroin trafficking
requires extensive transportation
networks, but since the commodity is
illegal, these operate in the shadows of
global trade
 Drug barons base their operations in
remote safe havens

Most of the heroin smuggled into the
United States originates in such areas
where the opium poppy thrives—parts
of Asia known as the Golden Triangle,
the Golden Crescent, Mexico, and,
more recently, Colombia
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The Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia
encompasses approximately 150,000 square
miles of forested highlands, including the
western fringe of Laos, the four northern
provinces of Thailand, and the northeastern
parts of Burma
Burma is the world’s second largest producer
of opium and accounts for about 90 percent
of the total heroin production of the Golden
Triangle
 Transnational
organized crime groups in
Myanmar operate a multibillion-dollar
criminal industry that stretches across
Southeast Asia
 In 1826, the British introduced opium use
into their colony of Burma
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French colonial officials in Golden
Triangle used paramilitary
organizations and indigenous tribes
against various insurgent groups,
particularly those following a Marxist
ideology
The French withdrew from Southeast
Asia in 1955, and several years later the
United States took up the struggle
against Marxist groups

With the defeat of the
Chinese Nationalist forces
in 1949, the Third and Fifth
Armies of Chiang Kai-shek
stationed in the remote
southern province of
Yunnan escaped over the
mountainous frontier into
Burma’s Shan States
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In 1961, the People’s
Republic of China drove
the KMT into the Thai
portion of the Golden
Triangle
In 1961 and 1969, U.S.backed airlifts of KMT
troops to Taiwan were the
last official contacts
between the KMT remnants
on the mainland and
Chiang Kai-shek’s
government.
4,000 strong, became
known as the Chinese
Irregular Forces (CIF)
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
The Shan States, an area somewhat
larger than England, lie on a rugged,
hilly plateau in the eastern part of
central Burma, flanking the western
border of China’s Yunnan Province
They contain an array of tribal and
linguistic groupings. The largest group
is the Shans

The Burmese
government’s heavyhanded approach to the
Shan States set the stage
for revolution

Originally known as the
Shan United Army (SUA),
the Mong Tai Army (MTA;
Mong Tai is Shan for
“Shan State), under the
leadership of Chang
Chifu, who is halfChinese, half-Shan and
better known as Khun Sa,
resorted to opium
trafficking in order to
purchase arms and
support its
independence
movement
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The SUA/MTA came to
dominate the opium trade
along the Thai-Burma
border where about
400,000 hill tribesmen had
no source of income other
than heroin
In the 1980s the Thai
government succeeded in
driving the MTA out of
Thailand and back into
Burma, but the group
continued to dominate
opium traffic, taxing drug
caravans crossing their
territory

Golden Triangle traffickers
began to recognize the
value of switching from
heroin to amphetamine: It
made unnecessary the
cultivating vast field of
poppies and the
manufacturing could be
accomplished in small oneroom laboratories
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In 1994, a joint U.S./Thai operation
(“Tiger Trap”) closed the
Thai/Myanmar border in areas where
the MTA operated
Khun Sa began secret negotiations with
Myanmar and in 1996 a deal was made
As a result, the amount of Southeast
Asian heroin entering the United States
dropped dramatically
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Until 1989, another
formidable private army
in the Golden Triangle
served the Burmese
Communist Party (BCP)
In 1989, its ethnic rankand-file Wa tribesmen—
fierce warriors whose
ancestors were
headhunters—rebelled,
and the BCP folded as an
armed force
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
United Wa State Army
(UWSA) uses heroin—
and more recently
methamphetamine—
trafficking as a means of
funding efforts against
Burmese control
Since the surrender of
the SUA/MTA, the USWA
has reigned supreme in
narcotics production in
Burma
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In 2000, Myanmar negotiated a truce
with the Wa which gave them autonomy
in their state and the Wa reached an
accommodation with China
In 2005, eight senior leaders of the
United Wa State Army (UWSA) were
indicted in the United States on charges
of heroin and methamphetamine
trafficking

Whether the source is
the BCP, CIF, MTA, SSA-A,
or the UWSA, opium in
the form of morphine
base or of almost pure
heroin, as well as
methamphetamine, is
usually brokered in
Thailand, which has
modern communications
and transportation
systems
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
In 1991 a military coup—
one of 17 since 1932—
overthrew the
democratically elected
Thai government
In 2001, a democratically
elected prime minister
initiated a vigorous
campaign against the
trade in
methamphetamine, a
major drug problem in
Thailand
 At
the center of much of Thai drug trafficking
are ethnic Chinese organizations such as the
Triads
 According the U.S. Department of State (2008),
ethnic Chinese groups dominate the drug
syndicates operating in areas controlled by the
UWSA and the SSA-S
 The central role that the Golden Triangle
played in the heroin trade has been
significantly diminished, in part because of
economic pressure from China
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The Golden Crescent of
Southwest Asia includes
parts of Iran, Afghanistan,
and Pakistan
Pakistan has been a
producer of opium for
export since the earliest
time of Muslim rule and the
later British Empire
Much of the heroin trade in
and from Pakistan is
controlled by a consortium
of three Quetta-based
families, referred to as the
Quetta Alliance
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
The Pashtuns: a tribal
group that founded
Afghanistan
Opium is the cash
crop that has
traditionally enabled
feuding tribes in
Afghanistan and in
Pakistan’s Northwest
Frontier Province to
purchase weapons
and ammunition

By 1998, the Islamic
fundamentalist Taliban
movement, made up
primarily of Pashtuns,
controlled most of the
country, and
Afghanistan became
one of the world’s
largest producers of
heroin
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Until 2001, the country
was the world’s second
largest grower of the
opium poppy, producing
about one-third of the
heroin entering the
United States, and about
80 percent of the heroin
consumed in Europe
Afghanistan now
produces 90 percent of
the world’s opium and
the drug trade
represents more than half
of the country’s gross
domestic product

The United States has
pressured Pakistan to
move against poppy
cultivation, but the
infusion of hundreds of
thousands of Afghan
tribesmen into Pakistan
has made this difficult, if
not impossible
 Mexico
is the source of “black tar” or
brown heroin, which gained a foothold in
the American drug market after the
demise of the “French Connection”
 In the five years after the collapse of the
French connection, Mexico became the
major source of U.S. heroin
 Black tar“ heroin is a less refined but
more potent form of the substance
 The
poppy is not native to Mexico but
was brought into the country at the turn
of the twentieth century by Chinese
laborers who were helping to build the
railroad system
 The vast and remote border between
Mexico and the United States makes
patrolling very difficult and facilitates the
transportation of drugs into Texas,
California, Arizona, and New Mexico

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Since the 1980s Colombia has become
a major poppy grower and Colombians
have become major heroin wholesalers
By 1998, Colombian heroin accounted
for more than 50 percent of the drug
smuggled into the United States

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Cocaine is an alkaloid
found in significant
quantities only in the
leaves of two species
of coca shrub
In the middle of the
nineteenth century,
scientists began
experimenting with
the substance, noting
that it showed promise
as a local anesthetic
and had an effect
opposite that of
morphine


By the late 1880s, a feelgood pharmacology
based on the coca plant
and its derivative
cocaine was promoted
for everything from
headaches to hysteria
After the turn of the
century, cocaine, like
heroin, became
identified with the urban
underworld
 From
1930 until the 1960s there was
limited demand for cocaine and,
accordingly, only limited supply
 During the late 1960s and early 1970s
attitudes toward recreational drug use
became more relaxed, a spin-off of the
wide acceptance of marijuana
 Cocaine soon became associated with a
privileged elite

For many decades,
coca leaf was
converted to cocaine
base in Bolivia and
Peru, then smuggled
by small aircraft or
boat into Colombia
where it was refined
into cocaine in jungle
laboratories

Some Colombian
traffickers set up
laboratories in other
Latin American
countries and even the
United States in
response to increased
law enforcement in
Colombia and the
increasing cost of
ether, sulfuric acid, and
acetone in Colombia

In the past, because the quality of
Colombian coca was significantly less
than that grown in Peru and Bolivia,
Colombia had not been a major coca
producer


The organizers who
arrange for the
importation and
wholesale distribution of
heroin and cocaine
typically avoid physical
possession
Importation often entails
little or no risk of
arrest—heroin or
cocaine can be secreted
in a variety of imported
goods, and possession
cannot be proven


The enormous profits
that accrue in the
business of drugs are
part of a criminal
underworld where
violence is always an
attendant reality
Below the multi-kilo
wholesale level, cocaine
or heroin is an easyentry business, requiring
only a source, clientele,
and funds
 The
sale of heroin and cocaine/crack is
carried out by thousands of small-time
operators who dominate particular local
markets
 Control is exercised through violence
 Amphetamines
are synthetic drugs, and
their effects are similar those of cocaine
 First synthesized in 1887, amphetamines
were introduced into clinical use in the
1930s and were eventually offered as a
“cure-all” for just about every ailment
 Legally produced amphetamine is taken
in the form of tablets or capsules


Illegally produced
amphetamine is
available in tablet and
powdered form (called
“ice”) that is sometimes
smoked
There are three basic
types of amphetamine,
but the methylamphetamines have the
greatest potential for
abuse because they are
fast acting and produce a
“rush”

The main active
ingredient in
methamphetamine,
phenyl-2-propanone,
referred to as P2P, is
widely available in
Europe, and bulk
shipments of P2P from
Germany are often the
source of illegal
methamphetamine
produced in the United
States

The illegal activities
associated with
methamphetamine
production and
hazardous waste
encompass more than
the clandestine lab cooks
and workers

The distribution of
methamphetamine has
been a main staple of
outlaw bikers,
although there has
been an increase in
the involvement of
Mexican gangs
operating in southern
California, where they
produce
methamphetamine in
unpopulated desert
areas
 State
laws against marijuana were often
part of a reaction to Mexican immigration
 In 1937, Congress passed the Marijuana
Tax Act, which put an end to lawful
recreational use of the substance
 The source of marijuana, the hemp plant,
grows wild throughout most of the
tropical and temperate regions of the
world, including parts of the United
States
 Hemp
has been cultivated for several
useful products
 Hashish, which is usually imported from
the Middle East, contains the drug-rich
resinous secretions of the cannabis plant,
which are collected, dried, and then
compressed into a variety of forms—
balls, cakes, or sheets
 There
is little or no pattern to marijuana
trafficking in the United States, although
some areas have apparently gotten
hooked on the business
 The marijuana business has a positive
impact on the legitimate economy
supported by the cultivators—everything
from grocery stores to car dealerships,
depend on marijuana



There are about 2,500
derivatives of barbituric
acid and dozens of brand
names for these
derivatives
Lawfully produced
barbiturates are found in
tablet or capsule form
Illegal barbiturates may
be found in liquid form
for intravenous use
because lawfully
produced barbiturates
are poorly soluble in
water


At relatively high
dosages they are used
as anesthetics for
minor surgery and to
induce anesthesia
before the
administration of slowacting barbiturates
There is no apparent
pattern to the illegal
market in barbiturates,
and traffickers may
sell them as part of
their portfoli


Methaqualone was first
synthesized in 1951 in
India, where it was
introduced as an
antimalarial drug but
found to be ineffective
Eight years after it was
first introduced into
the United States,
methaqualone’s
dangers became
evident


Although the drug is
chemically unrelated to
barbiturates,
methaqualone
intoxication is similar to
barbiturate intoxication
Methaqualone is now
illegally manufactured in
Colombia and smuggled
into the United States


Phencyclidine is
reported to have
received the name
PCP—“peace
pill”—on the
streets of San
Francisco
There are more
than one hundred
variations (analogs)
of the substance

In the 1960s, PCP
became commercially
available for use in
veterinary medicine as
an analgesic and
anesthetic, but diversion
to street use led the
manufacturer to
discontinue production
in 1978
 It
is now produced easily and cheaply in
clandestine laboratories in tablet,
capsule, powder, and liquid form and
sometimes sold as LSD
 Like methamphetamine, PCP has been
distributed by outlaw motorcycle clubs
 Ecstasy,
the common
name for 3, 4MethyleneDioxyMeth
Amphetamine or
MDMA, is a synthetic
drug with a chemical
structure similar to
the stimulant
methamphetamine
and the hallucinogen
mescaline
 Ecstasy
did not
receive a great deal
of attention until its
“rediscovery” in the
late 1970s that
ecstasy received a
great deal of
attention because of
its purported ability
to produce profound
pleasurable effects

Although most
MDMA/ecstasy
consumed
domestically is
produced in
Europe—primarily
the Netherlands and
Belgium—a limited
number of MDMA
labs operate in the
United States

In recent years,
Israeli crime
syndicates, some
composed of Russian
émigrés associated
with Russian OC,
have forged
relationships with
Western European
traffickers and
gained control over a
significant share of
the European market

In 1949, LSD was
introduced into the
United States as an
experimental drug for
treating psychiatric
illnesses, but until 1954
it remained relatively
rare and expensive,
because its ingredients
were difficult to
cultivate
LSD is colorless,
odorless, and tasteless,
and it is relatively easy
to produce
 LSD was popular for a
time during the 1960s,
when it became part of
the “hippie” culture
 Current use appears
limited, and
distribution patterns
are not well known

 There
are many chemical variations, or
analogs, of the drugs discussed in this
chapter
• For example, semi-synthetic opiates such as
hydromorphine, oxycodone, etorphine, and
diprenorphine, as well as synthetic opiates such
as pethidine, methadone, and propoxyphene
 International
Brotherhood of Teamsters
 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union
 Laborers International Union
 International Longshoreman’s
Association
 Joseph
Lanza
 Arthur Coia
 Paul Kelly
 Joseph Ryan
 Thomas Gleason
 James R. Hoffa and James R. Hoffa, Jr.
 Red Dorfman
 Jackie Presser
 Moses Steinman
 NY
Fulton Fish Market
 Construction industry
 Garment Center in NYC
 Labor racketeering
 Solid waste disposal
 Money laundering
 Stock fraud
 Private banking
 Any
questions or comments?
 One
more seminar
 Remember
the unit 8 and unit 9 essays