How Drug Prohibition Finances and Otherwise Enables Terrorism
Submission
to the Senate of Canada Special Committee on Illegal Drugs
by
Eugene
Oscapella,
B.A., LL.B., LL.M.
Barrister
and Solicitor[1]
Ottawa
Monday, October 29, 2001
Introduction
Some terrorism costs relatively little to accomplish.
Carrying out the September 11 attacks in the United States may have cost
only a few million dollars.[2]
However, many of the most feared forms of terrorism, the so-called
weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and nuclear – can be very
expensive to produce and deliver. For
example, Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult, put about 30 people and an estimated
$30m into producing the chemical sarin that was released in the Tokyo subway in
1995.[3]
Profits from the production and sale of prohibited drugs can therefore be
useful to terrorists planning these more expensive forms of terrorism.
Attempts by governments to limit the financing of terrorist
organizations generally focus on two main themes:
·
eliminating sources of financing,
and
·
reducing the capacity of terrorists
to keep and move and launder money about the globe.
This paper deals principally with the first theme – eliminating the
sources of financing for terrorists. Specifically,
it deals with drug prohibition as an important source of money for terrorism.
It explains how drug prohibition – not simply the drug trade, but
rather the drug trade under a system of prohibition – has become a major, if
not the major, source of funding for many terrorist groups.
It argues further that focusing on traditional measures to suppress
the drug trade, including law enforcement, crop substitution and measures to
reduce the movement and laundering of drug money, will fail to significantly
reduce the flow of drug money to terrorists.
The analysis concludes that because these other methods of attacking the
drug trade are ineffective – and cannot be made to be effective –
governments must reconsider and, ultimately, dismantle prohibitionist drug laws.
Refusing to address the role of prohibition in financing terrorism will
enable terrorist groups to continue to build the resources they need to engage
in even more extensive acts of terrorism than we have witnessed to date.
The Scope of the Problem: The Value of Illegal Drugs for Terrorist and Criminal Organizations
(All figures quoted are in US dollars, unless otherwise indicated.)
In May 2001,[4]
M. Alain Labrousse of the Observatoire Geopolitique de Drogues (OGD) in
Paris appeared before this Committee to explain the links between drugs
and terrorism. Terrorist
organizations in almost 30 countries now finance their activities, to a greater
or lesser extent, through the highly profitable trade in prohibited drugs. In
particular, he explained how drug trafficking became increasingly important as a
source of revenue for terrorist groups after the end of the Cold War.
With the decline of state-sponsored terrorism, terrorist groups were
forced to find other means to finance their activities.
Where the agricultural climate permitted, this could mean drug production
and sales. Even if the climate and
terrain were not suitable for the production of drugs, terrorist groups could
nonetheless reap enormous profits from the sale of prohibited drugs.
Said M. Labrousse, in a paper[5]
accompanying his presentation to the Senate Committee:
Some
. . . in Colombia, Afghanistan and Angola, were under way before the Cold War
ended. The withdrawal of sister parties and powerful protectors not only made
them less and less controllable, but also led some of the players to engage in
mere predatory behaviour. In other cases, the collapse of Communist regimes
caused new conflicts, in the former Yugoslavia, Azerbaidjan-Armenia,
Georgia (Abkhazia, Ossetia), Chechnya and Tadjikistan. These conflicts, which
resulted in a weakening, and in some instances dislocation, of states also led
to the development of drug trafficking.
In 1994, Interpol’s chief drugs officer, Iqbal Hussain Rizvi, told
Reuters News Agency that “Drugs have taken over as the chief means of
financing terrorism.”[6]
In an interview shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the
United States, Mr. John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute, a Canadian think
tank studying terrorism and organized crime, suggested that the extent to which
terrorist groups finance themselves through drugs varies widely.
“With the Islamic fundamentalists, (it is) maybe 25 to 30 per cent.
It’s probably the single biggest money earner.”[7]
One witness testifying in December 2000 before a US Congressional
committee described the increasing reliance of Central Asian terrorist
organizations on drug trade profits:
Central
Asian criminal organizations have taken advantage of these unstable conditions
[following the breakup of the Soviet Union] to become more active in such
illegal activities as drug trafficking and other smuggling activities, while
becoming ever more powerful. As a result of their domestic trafficking
activities, drug dealers and other criminal organizations have developed
transnational and international criminal connections, further spreading the flow
of drugs and becoming increasingly involved in more serious criminal activity.
A
significant part of the drug trafficking activity in the area is taking place in
conjunction with terrorist activity.[8]
Another witness made a similar point:
Terrorists
and criminals alike need a steady cash flow to operate. In the case of
terrorists, where state sources of funding may be diminishing, drug trafficking
is an attractive funding option. Increasingly, terrorist organizations are
looking to criminal activity and specifically the drug trade as a source of
funding. The FARC [the left-wing guerilla group in Colombia] is but one of many
cases in point. It is estimated that drug trafficking activity generates between
$400 and $600 million of tax free dollars a year for FARC guerrilla coffers.
. . . Funded by drug trafficking, organizations can gain the resources, routes, and networks to engage in a whole series of other forms of criminal activity, including illicit arms trading, possible proliferation of chemical and nuclear weapons . . ..[9] [emphasis added]
The
Value of the Global Trade in Illegal Drugs
The value of the global trade in illegal drugs is difficult to
determine. However, the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime
Prevention estimates that the retail value of the illegal market is $400 billion
per year, which would put it ahead of the petroleum industry.
The Economist magazine suggests that global retail sales are less,
probably around $150 billion annually.[10]
(In comparison, Canada’s annual real gross domestic product for 2001 is about
$650 billion,[11] and the US Department of Defense budget
request for 2001 was about $290 billion.)[12]
Both the lower and higher estimates of the value of the global drug
trade point to an enormously rich source of financing for criminal[13]
and terrorist enterprises, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars,
possibly more, over the past few decades.
The enormity of the profits flowing from prohibition can be seen in an
October 2001 news report about Afghanistan and Pakistan and their trade in opium
and heroin:
UN
officials believe that 2,800 tonnes of opium, convertible into 280 tonnes of
heroin, is in the hands of the Taliban, the al-Qaeda network of
militant Islamists, and other Afghan and Pakistani drug lords.
On
the wholesale market in Pakistan, this deadly harvest could be worth $1.4
billion. On the streets of London and Milan, processed into white powder, its ultimate value is estimated by Interpol and UN
officials at between $40 billion
and $80 billion. To put these figures in context, the retail turnover of the
European heroin trade is estimated at $20 billion a year. UN officials say the
current Afghan stockpile is enough to keep every addict in Europe supplied for
three years. It is also enough to allow the Taliban and their allies to dominate
the European, Russian and much of the Asian market for another two years, if
they can retain control of the stockpile.[14]
The power that flows from this trade can be seen in the remarks of
former Colombian High Court Judge Gomez Hurtado at an American drug policy
conference in 1993:
Forget
about drug deaths, and acquisitive crime, and addiction, and AIDS.
All this pales into insignificance before the prospect facing the liberal
societies of the West. The income
of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget.
With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State
and, if the State resists... they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We
are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages.[15]
Justice Hurtado may have been referring to the power to outgun smaller
states such as Colombia. Perhaps terrorists and criminals cannot outgun the
powerful states of the Western world but, as we have seen, they can certainly
wreak havoc.
Alliances
between terrorist and criminal organizations:
Increasingly, terrorist and criminal organizations (the line between them is
blurred at best) are forming allegiances where their interests coincide.
Together, criminal and terrorist organizations form an even more serious
threat to peace and stability. Neil
Pollard, Director of the US-based Terrorism Research Center, describes the
extent of this threat:
If
terrorist interaction with transnational crime syndicates is successful enough
– especially with narcotics traffickers – the infrastructures of these
interactions might be robust enough to provide terrorists with real
opportunities for WMD [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation, including the
introduction of a weapon of mass destruction into the United States. The
implications of such an infrastructure are obvious.[16]
How
Prohibition Makes Drugs So Profitable
It costs very little to grow poppies, the raw material for opium and
heroin, or to grow coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. Yet users pay
greatly inflated prices for the heroin and cocaine – often several thousand
percent more than their cost of production.
The inflated price of these drugs is purely a product of the black market
produced by prohibiting them.
Without
prohibition, these drugs would sell for much, much less.
They would not present any significant opportunity for terrorist groups
to profit from their production or sale.
The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Prime Prevention reports
on the value of many drugs at different stages of production and sales.[17]
In Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opium in the 1990s, the
“farmgate” price of a kilogram of opium varied from $30-70.
That is 3 to 7¢ a gram. Thanks
to prohibition, a gram is sold in
Canada for an average $39. That is
from 550 to 1300 times the farmgate price.
|
Opium |
|
Retail
price per gram (in Canada)
$39.00 Multiple
of retail to farmgate price
550 to 1300 |
Heroin:
In Afghanistan, the wholesale price of heroin produced from opium was an average
of $2700 per kilo. In the United
States, 40 percent pure heroin wholesaled for an average of $107,000 per
kilo -- about 40 times the wholesale price in Afghanistan.
The same product retailed in the United States for an average
$475,000 per kilo – 175 times the wholesale price in Afghanistan.
|
Heroin
(all figures in $US) |
|
Wholesale
price per kilo (Afghanistan: 1996)
$ 2,700 Wholesale
price per kilo (Western Europe: 1996) $ 60,000 (22 times Afghan
wholesale price) Wholesale
price per kilo (US: 1999)
$107,000 (40 times Afghan wholesale price) Retail
price per kilogram (US: 1999)
$475,000 (175 times Afghan wholesale price) Source:
United Nations Office for Drug Control and Prime Prevention,
Global Illicit Drug Trends, 2001 |
Cocaine:
The leaf needed to produce a kilo costs about $400-600, according to
Francisco Thoumi, author of an unpublished study of the Andean drugs industry.
Says The Economist in a recent survey on illegal drugs, “by the time it
leaves Colombia, the price has gone up to $1,500-1,800. On America's
streets, after changing hands four or five times, the retail price for a kilo of
cocaine works out at $110,000 [180 to 275 times the cost of the coca leaves],
and in Europe substantially more.”[18]
The
Economist notes that the “vast gap
between the cost of producing the stuff and the price paid by the final consumer
goes a long way to explaining why drugs policies so often fail.”[19]
Missing
the Point about the Relationship Between Drugs and Terrorism
The media, police policymakers and politicians often described the
problem simply as the financing of terrorism through the drug trade. Their
analysis stops there. They
ignore the role of drug prohibition. Prohibition
alone is what makes the drug trade so profitable for terrorists.
Even some members of the Supreme Court of Canada seem to have been
caught in the trap of attributing various harms (corruption, disease, violence)
to the drug trade itself, rather than looking to the prohibition of drugs as a
cause of these harms. This is
particularly evident in the dissenting opinion of Cory and Major JJ. in the 1998
decision, Pushpanathan v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration:
The established links between organized crime, terrorist organizations,
arms dealing and drug trafficking compound the risks to security in individual
countries and in the international community. According to the United Nations
International Drug Control Programme, “[i]n situations of armed conflict,
illicit drug revenues -- or the drugs themselves -- are
regularly exchanged for arms” (World Drug Report, supra, at p. 17). In some
countries, such as Peru, trafficking organizations have formed alliances with
guerrilla groups to ensure supplies of materials for processing (ibid., p. 128).
The financial and military power of these organizations threatens to undermine
the political and economic stability of numerous countries, and indeed the
entire international community.
The
combined effects of the trade in illicit drugs have led one author to conclude
that drug profits “do more to corrupt social systems, damage economies and
weaken moral and ethical values than the combined effects of all other forms of
crime. . . . The corrupting reach into government officials, politicians and the
business community further endangers the stability of societies and governmental
processes, and ultimately threaten political stability and even world order”
(Bassiouni, supra, at pp. 323-24).[20]
Further:
Drug
trafficking has, throughout this century, been an international enterprise and
hence an international problem. However,
the ever increasing scale of the traffic, the apparent efficiency of
organization and sophistication, the vast sums of
money involved and the increasing links with transnational organized
crime and terrorist organizations constitute a threat which is increasingly
serious in both its nature and extent. Illicit drug trafficking now threatens
peace and security at a national and international level. It affects the
sovereignty of some states, the right of self-determination and democratic
government, economic, social and political stability and the enjoyment of human
rights.[21]
These statements are accurate in part, but they are also very misleading
because of their silence on an essential point – the role of prohibition in
creating the harms identified in the statements.
Nowhere do the two dissenting judges appear to recognize that the prohibition
of drugs is behind the profits, power, violence and corruption associated with
the drug trade.
|
The
profits derived by terrorists from opium, heroin and other illegal
drugs are purely a consequence of the criminal prohibition of those
drugs. Prohibition
greases the wheels of terrorism just as it greases the wheels of
organized crime. |
Beyond
Financing Terrorism: Other Implications of Drug Prohibition for Terrorism
1.
Prohibitionist Foreign Policies
That Foster Terrorism
The pursuit of prohibitionist foreign policies can generate serous
consequential harms in the countries where those policies are imposed –
defoliation and other environmental harms due to crop eradication, adverse
health consequences from the use of herbicides on drug crops, loss of livelihood
for already desperately poor farmers. Because prohibition is often enforced selectively, production
and trafficking by some ideologically favored groups is tolerated, enhancing
their power. This enables them to
brutalize[22]
the population and destabilize the otherwise democratic governments.
Colombia is perhaps the best example.
Both the left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries in
Colombia are known to profit extensively from the trade in cocaine.[23]
Thus, prohibitionist policies both empower those domestic terrorist
groups that are able to profit from the drug trade and often create other
hardships within the countries on whom those policies are imposed.
People undergoing such hardships can become hostile to the foreign powers
that have encouraged these prohibitionist policies.
This hostility can itself lead to violent acts, sometimes against Western
interests and nationals abroad, and sometimes against them in their home
countries.
1.
Diversion of Resources
Resources spent largely on drug law enforcement efforts (in the billions
of dollars annually in the US alone, and smaller,
though still significant sums in other countries, such as Canada) are not
available for investigating and protecting against
terrorism. This point was
reinforced in a prophetic address by American Professor Arnold Trebach five
years before the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US:
All
of us ... would be infinitely safer if the courageous efforts of antidrug agents
in the U.S., Israel, and other countries were focused on terrorists aimed at
blowing up airliners and skyscrapers than at drug traffickers seeking to sell
the passengers and office dwellers cocaine and marijuana.[24]
Resources now used for drug law enforcement are also not available for
foreign aid programs. Such programs
might help prevent the desperation and disaffection that can breed terrorism.
Appropriate
Responses and Solutions
Traditional measures to suppress the production and trade in drugs –
crop substitution, money laundering legislation, demand reduction (education and
treatment), supply reduction (policing and crop eradication programs), will not
stop the flow of drug money to terrorists.
For many reasons, programs of crop substitution – encouraging farmers
to grow alternative crops – have largely failed to stop the cultivation of
drugs. Crop eradication programs
(including the use of herbicides on drug crops) have also failed.
Drug production is mobile, and crops remain abundant.
Reducing the supply of drugs through policing is also a resounding
failure. The United States, the
most powerful nation on earth, has succeeded in stopping little more than ten
percent of the drugs coming into United States from abroad.
The Associated Press reports that the goal of United States is to stop a
mere 18 percent of the illegal drugs destined for it shores in 2002 – hardly
an indication that policing has had or will have any appreciable impact on the
drug trade or drug profits.[25]
On October 1, 2001, a representative from the Canada Customs and Revenue
Agency suggested before a Commons committee that law enforcement was able to
stop only about 10 percent of the $C7billion to $C10 billion annual trade in
illegal drugs in Canada.[26]
Money-laundering legislation also has limited potential.
To date, money-laundering legislation has failed to stop or even
seriously dent the flow of illicit funds to criminal and terrorist
organizations.[27]
Even the tougher money-laundering legislation now contemplated in several
countries will not stop or seriously impair the flow of drug money.
There will always be institutions to be corrupted.
There will always be jurisdictions willing to look the other way for the
sake of profit or to secure peace with powerful drug cartels or terrorist
groups. Finally, many significant financial transactions do not occur
through the traditional banking system and will be largely untouched by
money-laundering legislation. Hawala,
for example, the informal money-transfer system popular in the Middle East
and South Asia, is based on trust. Huge
sums of money can be moved without leaving a paper or electronic trail.[28]
Besides accomplishing little, these measures deflect attention from
where attention is needed – the issue of prohibition. These measures may give the illusion of tackling the problem,
but it is just that – an illusion. These measures merely nibble at the margins
of the problem. The core of the
problem remains the criminal prohibition of drugs.
There is no complete “solution” to the harms associated with drugs.
However, dismantling prohibition will resolve or greatly diminish many of
the harms, including trade-related violence, corruption, the spread of disease,
the lack of quality control and the waste of scarce government resources.
These prohibition-related harms have been explained in detail both before
this Committee[29]
and in an extensive body of literature. This literature points out the futility
of prohibition, wholly apart from prohibition’s role in financing terrorism.
Most recently, both Britain’s highly respected The Economist
magazine and Canada’s Fraser Institute have produced analyses highlighting the
futility of prohibitionist policies and the harms they cause.
Conclusion
We cannot maintain prohibition and yet still hope to deprive terrorist
and criminal organizations of the profits associated with the drug trade.
It is as simple as that. Without
prohibition, the drug trade would not be a factor in terrorism.
Because of prohibition, the drug trade is the major source of financing
of terrorism. We must decide which
version of drug policy we want – one that fosters terrorism and enriches
terrorists, or one that does not.
The events of September 11 have made it abundantly clear that we must do
more than we have been doing to address the causes and mechanisms of terrorism.
Relying on the same ideas, showing the same reluctance to look at the
real impact of drug prohibition, will only continue to facilitate the terrorism
that has rocked countries in other continents, and that may have just begun to
rock our own.
Ending prohibition will not end terrorism. But it will remove the main, and often the easiest, source of
funding for terrorism – the “cash cow” of the trade in prohibited drugs.
This can be coupled with measures to attack other sources of funding for
terrorists – greater vigilance about charitable donations and attempts to
control extortion from members of expatriate communities.
American author Mike Gray states:
As
Western civilization stands transfixed, paralyzed by the specter of
twentieth-century Vandals devouring one country after another, it’s important
to remember that this particular impending catastrophe can be avoided with the
stroke of the pen. The criminal
enterprises that now encircle us... the powerful, ruthless combines that
threaten to overwhelm the rule of law itself – all could be cut off by simply
closing the black market money tap.... The prohibitionists have never been
called to account for their part in this disaster....[30]
Gray’s comments were directed primarily at how prohibition fosters the
growth of criminal enterprises. Their
logic applies equally to prohibition’s role in financing terrorism.
We cannot maintain prohibition and yet still hope to deprive terrorist
and criminal organizations of the profits associated with the drug trade.
It is as simple as that.
The only measure with any realistic hope of stopping the flow of
drug-related money to terrorists is to dismantle drug prohibition.
After decades of propaganda about the evils of drugs, ending prohibition
seems an extraordinary and almost unthinkable solution.
It is not. If Canada is serious about attacking the financing of
terrorism, it must get serious about abandoning prohibition.
The efforts of this committee should be directed at the admittedly
challenging task of dismantling prohibition.
It is completely irrational and destructive to maintain prohibition while
acknowledging that prohibition fosters the trade that is now the leading source
of funding for many terrorist and criminal organizations.
As long as we continue to pretend – and it is only pretending – that
significantly reducing drug profits through traditional, failed, measures of
supply and demand reduction is a realistic possibility, we will continue to
provide terrorists an alarmingly simple source of enrichment.
Without prohibition, the drug trade would not be a factor in terrorism.
Because of prohibition, the drug trade is the major source of financing
of terrorism. We must decide which
version of drug policy we want – one that fosters terrorism and enriches
terrorists, or one that does not.
Other
sources of information:
1.
on drug policy generally: Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy: www.cfdp.ca/
2.
on terrorism and prohibition: www.cfdp.ca/terror.htm
(this page also has many links to other sites dealing with terrorism)
[1]
Also a founding member, Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy (www.cfdp.ca).
[2]
“Hard evidence would help,” The Economist, September 29, 2001.
[3]
“Biological and chemical warfare: Fear and breathing,” The Economist,
September 29, 2001.
[4]
M. Labrousse appeared before this Committee on May 28, 2001.
[5]
Alain Labrousse, Contribution to the Preparatory Work for the Hague
Peace Conference, May 11 - 16, 1999 (March 1999).
[6]
Jawed Naqvi, Reuters (New Delhi), December 15, 1994.
[7]
“Terrorists get cash from drug trade: Trafficking prime source of funds
for many groups”, Ottawa Citizen, September 14, 2001.
[8]
Ralf Mutschke, “The Threat Posed by the Convergence of Organized Crime,
Drugs Trafficking and Terrorism”, statement before a hearing of the US
House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime,
December 13, 2000. Mr. Mutschke
is the Assistant Director, Criminal Intelligence Directorate, International
Criminal Police Organization - Interpol General Secretariat.
Web site: http://www.house.gov/judiciary/muts1213.htm.
[9]
Raphael F. Perl, “Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, and Terrorism in a
Changing Global Environment,” Statement before the US House of
Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, December 13,
2000. Mr. Perl is a Specialist
in International Affairs with the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade
Division, Congressional Research Service.
Web site: http://www.house.gov/judiciary/perl1213.htm.
[10]
“Survey: Illegal Drugs: Stumbling in the dark,” The Economist,
July 28, 2001.
[11]
Source: Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/Economy/Economic/econ05.htm
(accessed October 19, 2001).
[12]
U.S. Department of Defense News Release, February 7, 2000, Budget for FY
2001, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2000/b02072000_bt045-00.html
(accessed October 19, 2001).
[13]
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Criminal
Intelligence Directorate, Drug Situation Canada - 1999 (March 2000).
“Drug trafficking remains the principal
source of revenue for most organized crime groups. In Canada, the drug trade
has the potential to generate criminal proceeds in excess of $4 billion at
the wholesale level and of $18 billion at the street level.”
[14]
“Another powder trail”, The Economist, October 20, 2001.
[15]
Mike Gray, Drug Crazy: How We Got into this Mess & How We Can Get Out
(1998, Random House, New York) at 190.
[16]
Neal A. Pollard, “Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime:
Implications of Convergence,” (Terrorism Research Center).
Web site: http://www.terrorism.com/terrorism/crime.shtml.
[17]
Global Illicit Drug Trends, 2001, pp. 210-11.
[18]
“Survey: Illegal Drugs: Big business,” The Economist, July 28,
2001.
[19]
Ibid.
[20]
Pushpanathan v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration),
[1998] 1 S.C.R. 982, paras. 104-05.
[21]
Ibid.,
para. 144.
[22]
In October 2001, Human Rights Watch released an extensive report on the role
of the right-wing paramilitaries in multiple massacres and other terrorist
acts against civilians in Colombia: The “Sixth Division:”
Military-paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia .
Web site: http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/10/sixthdivision.htm
(accessed October 21, 2001).
[23]
For example, “The financing of the two main terrorist organizations
operating in Colombia, namely the FARC and the National Liberation Army
(ELN), originates from several sources, with the most important one being
the drug trafficking:” “The Threat Posed by the Convergence of Organized
Crime, Drugs Trafficking and Terrorism”, written testimony of Ralf
Mutschke Assistant Director, Criminal Intelligence Directorate,
International Criminal Police Organization - Interpol General
Secretariat, before a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee
on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, December 13, 2000.
[24]
Address by Arnold S. Trebach, former President, The Drug Policy Foundation
and Professor, The American University, Washington, D.C., Symposium
on Drug Policy, Institute of Criminology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
February 4, 1996.
[25]
“Caribbean Drug Traffic up 25%, U.S. Says”, Baltimore
Sun, October 18, 2001.
[26]
House of Commons Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs, testimony of
Mr. Mark Connolly, the Director General of Contraband and Intelligence
Services Directorate, Customs Branch, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency,
October 1, 2001.
[27]
“Getting to them through their money,” The Economist, September
27, 2001: “Some money generated by criminal activities, notably drug
trafficking, has been grabbed by the authorities. The amounts, though, are
tiny in comparison with all the world's illicit money. The International
Monetary Fund reckons that the amount of dirty money being washed through
the financial system is huge: between $500 billion and $1.5 trillion a
year—equivalent to up to 5% of gross world product.”
[28]
“The money trail”, The Economist Global Agenda, September 21,
2001.
[29]
See, for example, the testimony before this Committee in 2000 and 2001 of
Professors Line Beauchesne, Neil Boyd, John Morgan, Patricia Erickson, Peter
Cohen, Bruce Alexander and the author of this analysis.
[30]
Mike Gray, Drug Crazy: How We Gott into this Mess & How We Can Get
Out (1998, Random House, New York) at 190.