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WHY COLOMBIAN DRUG LORDS TRANSPORT ILLEGAL DRUGS |
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- they do it because they want the money and the luxurious life style |
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IF THERE IS A DEMAND, THERE WILL BE A SUPPLY... As said before, if there wasn't a demand for illegal drugs there would be no illegal drug exporting syndicates. Colombian drug lords traffic illegal drugs for the simple purpose that there is a huge demand for them. They can reap the rewards of this dangerous business and make a millions and millions of dollars. Colombians started exporting cocaine, marijuana, and now heroin to supply the United States with these illegal drugs. Colombian kingpins saw the success they were having in America and so they branched out with their networks and began to distribute all over the world. WHAT ELSE CAN THEY DO??? Poor peasant coca growers of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador don't know any other way to make a living except to crow coca and sell the crops to the guerillas or drug kingpins. There are no roads where some of these peasants live, no markets for them to sell other crops. They grow coca and sell it to cocaine producers and that is how they are able to live. The government tries to encourage them to grow another crop but that just wont work. The substitute products that the government suggests would bring a poverty stricken peasant even less money than they have now. In fact the peasants can make 500 dollars for every hectare of coca plant that they farm as opposed to the governments substitutes that only offer half that price. THE MONEY AND LIFE STYLE... If you have ever seen the movie Scarface or any movie that shows the life style of a drug dealer or a mafia don, then you know that the life style can be very tempting and sensationalized. In the late 1970's Colombia's cocaine kingpins were on the rise. There weren't a lot of people in the industry and so they were making a killing. Sometimes a drug lord would receive up to 50% profit on one of their shipments. It is said that at one point in time Pablo Escobar was making around a 500,000 dollars a day, and before the age of 30 he had purchased a ranch that cost him 63 million dollars. The major drug kingpins of the country became billionaires. The mid-level drug dealers became multi-millionaires, even the pilots that flew the planes became millionaires. Many poor kids in Colombia saw the success of someone that had risen from their own barrios and made it big as a drug dealer. People were fascinated with the drug lord life style. ECONOMY... With the economy in Colombia being so stagnant and no real opportunity for upward movement in society through the means of a legal job, what else were these poor city kids supposed to do? They turned to their heroes, the drug kingpins that made all the money and then brought some back to the city, and provided for them the way the government never had. Employment in the cocaine industry has served as an avenue of upward mobility in a country where advancement through opportunity for legal economy is limited. The wages in cocaine trade are considerably higher than those for comparable work in the legal economy. The cocaine industry actually employs roughly around 300,000 people directly and indirectly. Also, the crops that used to make the Colombian citizens money dont anymore. The cost of coffee dropped by half in 1989, making it very hard for coffee bean growers to sustain a living. Because of this, cocaine became Colombia's largest foreign exchange earner. SOCIETY... The drug barons eventually are able to buy their way into society and somehow legitimize their money, and this is the reasons they chose to traffic cocaine. In Colombia selling drugs or producing drugs during the late 70's early 80's wasn't really looked at as being highly wrong. It wasn't until the mass violence incorporated by the Medellin cartel against the government that Colombian citizens began to frown upon the illegal drug industry. The kingpin drug dealers wanted to be accepted by society. They would try to legitimize their money through mass purchases of land, investment into their own cities. The drug lords would buy build schools, housing facilities for the poor, and actually kept the country from getting into the debt problems that all the rest of the surrounding countries had gotten into. |
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| Here are some very good links as to WHY they traffic drugs: | ||
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--an interview with a partner of a famous Medellin kingpin: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/jung.html |
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| --a DEA debriefing page of the Colombian drug trade: | ||
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| REFERENCES:
Thoumi, Francisco E. (1995). Political Economy & Illegal Drugs in Colombia. Colorado: Lynne Rienner George, Susan (1992). The Debt Boomerang. San Francisco: Westview Press Scott, Peter D. & Marshall, Johnathan (1991). Cocaine Politics. Los Angeles: University of California Press Gootenberg, Paul (1999). Cocaine; Global Histories. New York: Routledge
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