The Geography Of Illegal Drugs

George F Rengert, George Rengert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429976155
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

The nightly news and other media provide a constant reminder of illegal drug transport over American borders and along routes between various U.S. cities. The general public is well aware that law enforcement efforts to address the foreign supply and trafficking of illegal drugs into the United States is an ongoing battle.This useful and readable compendium gives a fascinating account of how illegal drugs are transported into and around the United States and throughout its neighborhoods. Criminologist and geographer George F. Rengert takes a unique approach to the problem of illegal drug distribution and U.S. drug markets. Using maps and charts to illustrate his findings, Rengert applies spacial diffusion models to the illegal drug trade and explains why certain drugs are transported and found in different parts of the country. For example, the highest concentration of marijuana plants is not on either coast, but rather across the middle of the United States?throughout what is known as the corn belt. At the local level Rengert assesses the patterns and processes that interconnect drug sales and neighborhood deterioration and change.The book also addresses the important issues of how illegal drugs in this country operate on wholesale and retail levels and ways in which law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels contend with this widespread problem. Using ethnographic material to provide real-life examples, Rengert explores how drug dealers on the street expand spatially and predictably in their neighborhoods. He illustrates how this knowledge helps law enforcement in efforts to get these drugs off the streets.

1
Introduction

The production and distribution of illegal drugs has much in common with legal sales enterprises. Producers of raw materials are often located in foreign countries, manufacturers convert the raw material into consumable products, and distributors transport these products to the final consumers. For those who believe that these enterprises should remain illegal, the task is to disrupt the smooth functioning of these operations in any legal manner possible.

Although legal, many people view as less than ethical some of the efforts by the United States government which focus on foreign producers. For example, we have pressured Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia to eradicate the production of the coca plant while encouraging them at the same time to import tobacco produced in the United States. Bourne (1989) argues that more Colombians die from the effects of U.S. tobacco products than the number of Americans who die from Colombian cocaine. Evidence shows that more Europeans die from the use of United States tobacco products than from the use of drugs imported from other foreign countries (Polman, 1993). Even within our own borders, the American Cancer Society claims, "More Americans die each year from illness related to smoking than from heroin, crack, homicide, car accidents, fires and AIDS combined" (Will, 1992, p. Al). "For every person who dies from cocaine poisoning, 15 people die from the direct effects of alcohol and 60 from tobacco-related illnesses, according to the Public Health Service. No deaths from marijuana have ever been reported" (Baum, 1993, p. 70). Therefore the inconsistency of the United States government's policies has caused many people to doubt the sincerity of our "war on drugs." Newcomb and Bentler sum up this inconsistency:

The United States is a drug culture. Drugs are used commonly and acceptably to wake up in the morning (coffee and tea), get through the stresses of the day (cigarettes), and relax in the evening (alcohol)... Adolescents are quite adept at spotting hypocrisy and may have difficulty understanding a policy of "saying no to drugs" when suggested by a society that clearly says yes to the smorgasbord of drugs that are legal as well as the range of illicit drugs that are widely available and used.

(1989, p. 242)

Furthermore, there is little evidence that crop eradication programs can be successful because the products which are illegal in the United States can be grown in a wide variety of locales (Albini, 1992). The United States government has little influence in many of these countries, such as Mayanmar (formerly Burma), Vietnam, and Cambodia.

For similar reasons, there is little hope that the United States government can stop the manufacture of illegal drugs in foreign countries. Most citizens of other countries resent our attempts to solve our domestic problems on their soil, especially in countries where these drugs are not illegal (Gorriti, 1989). Cigarettes are manufactured legally in the United States, and tea brewed from the coca plant is sold in marketplaces in Bolivia and Peru. Our country has chosen to legalize certain drugs and criminalize others, but we have no right to demand that foreign countries legalize and criminalize the same combination of substances. Coca leaves were chewed or made into tea before Europeans reached Bolivia. As the name implies, Coca-Cola contained extracts of coca between 1884, when it was invented, and 1903. The manufacturers of Coca-Cola were forced to switch to decocainized coca leaves after 1903. Such "sanitized" coca leaves are still used as a flavoring agent in Coca-Cola (Fuqua, 1978) Another "soft drink" manufactured at the turn of the century and including extracts of coca was aptly labeled "dope." Europeans, however, decided to legalize coffee but not tea or other drinks which contain cocaine. Our government policy would be more consistent if we either criminalized or legalized all harmful drugs. In fact, some authorities have questioned the policy of criminalizing drug use in the United States (Schmoke, 1990).

Criminalization and its counterpart, legalization, can mean many different things. At one extreme, they mean the complete elimination of any legal restrictions on the production, distribution, possession, or use of any drug. At a less extreme level, they can mean allowing the use of some drugs (such as marijuana) while restricting the use of others. Or, they can mean restricting the distribution or sale of drugs but allowing possession and use. This latter restriction corresponds to the ban on alcohol sales during Prohibition, when people nevertheless were allowed to grow grapes and produce wine for their own consumption. Also, until recently, Alaska residents were allowed to grow marijuana for their own use. Drug legalization therefore can be regarded as moving drugs along a spectrum of regulated statuses toward increased availability (Kleiman and Saiger, 1992).

People who favor the legalization of drugs are likely to base their arguments on crime reduction, especially on how the legalization of drugs would affect organized crime. If legitimate business operators could enter the picture, illegal sales would be reduced and there would be less need for violence because the courts could be used to solve disputes. Those who favor continued prohibition focus on availability and on the impact of drug use on the users' health. Drug laws make currently illicit drugs more expensive and less available than they would be if legalized. For example, the repeal of prohibition against alcohol increased alcohol use substantially (Moore and Gerstein, 1981). Kleiman and Saiger note:

Black market cocaine costs nearly twenty times as much as legal, "free market" cocaine; and it is implausible that a twentyfold change in a drug's price would have only a trivial effect on volume. It is also unlikely that even holding price constant, the convenience and safety of a licit purchase would fail to attract new customers (or to increase the volume consumed by existing ones)...Making the cocaine problem more like the current alcohol or tobacco problem would be a major public health disaster.

(1992, p. 225)

Public health concerns are the primary reason why currently illegal drugs are likely to remain illegal. In addition, it is possible that tobacco will be added to the list, also for public health reasons. President Clinton and leaders of the Food and Drug Administration argue that nicotine is an addictive drug. They have proposed a broad new attack on smoking, focusing especially on advertising, vending machines, and over-the-counter sales to persons under age 18 (Madigan and Armstrong, 1995). The general public is concerned about the costs of these drug-related health problems as well as other public expenses associated with illegal drug use.

One challenge of drug policy is to find least-cost solutions to the problems of drug abuse. For years, economists have attempted to estimate this impact. The problem is that the costs are complex and often difficult to estimate. Scholars at the Research Triangle in North Carolina, for example, estimated the costs of drug abuse in the United States at $60 billion in 1983 (Staley, 1992). Over half of these costs, however, were attributed to marijuana. Ostrowski (1989) revised the costs to exclude marijuana; the revised costs were $26.4 billion. Nearly 80 percent of these costs were crime costs. This seems a rather large proportion of costs to pin on crime.

In the early 1970s, Alan Leslie (1971) estimated that the yearly cost of a heroin addict on the streets of New York City could be broken down as follows:

Lost employment earnings	$3,260.00
Economic value of premature death or morbidity	$1,890.00
Crime costs	$4,000.00
Costs to the criminal justice system	$1,640.00
Multiplier effects of spreading addiction	$3,000.00

Therefore each person-year of heroin addiction in New York City cost approximately $14,000 in the early 1970s. For the country as a whole, Mehay (1973) used these figures to estimate that the total social cost of heroin ranged from $4 to $8 billion a year.

I believe that this figure is absurdly low by today's standards. If we update Leslie's figures using the Consumer Price Index and/or more recent estimates of these costs, we obtain a more accurate idea of the true cost of a heroin addict. We begin by using the Consumer Price Index to update the first two estimates: lost employment earnings and economic value of premature death and morbidity. Applying changes in the Consumer Price Index between 1971 and 1994 to the lost employment earnings for 1971 results in a revised figure of $11,918.12 for 1994. In the case of the economic value of premature death and morbidity, the revised figure is $6,909.59. For crime costs, recent ethnographic research provides us with a more accurate figure. On the basis of Pettiway's (1994) figures, crack users in Philadelphia earn an average of $19,119.10 per year from crime. Of this amount, about 66 percent is earned from theft, shoplifting, and burglary—crimes in which the criminal usually must fence stolen goods to obtain money to buy drugs. The remaining 34 percent is obtained from other means such as performing illegal services, including prostitution or selling drugs.

In these instances, cash or drugs are received for the service. In the case of stolen property, however, the value of the stolen goods is at least four times as great as the money the crack user receives. Therefore, if we figure the cost in terms of the value of the stolen articles rather than the amount the drug user receives after fencing the goods, the crime cost to society of each crack user in Philadelphia is (($19,119.10 × .66) × 4) + (19,119.10 × .34) = $56,974.91. The difference lies in whether the cost to society is computed from the income that the drug users earn from crime, or from the value of the stolen items before they are fenced. This figure is still conservative because it does not consider emotional costs to victims, costs of repairing broken windows in cars and homes, lost days of work, and other related expenses. Even so, it is far higher than the figure estimated by Leslie in 1971.

Costs to the criminal justice system also must be updated. These costs are not trivial; marijuana enforcement at the federal level alone cost nearly $1 billion in 1988 (Kleiman, 1989). Reuter (1990) notes that enforcement efforts are estimated at $4.4 billion at the state and local levels and at $2.5 billion at the federal level, a total of $6.9 billion for enforcement alone in 1986. The situation has changed greatly by 1995 in which the federal government spent $13.3 billion on drug control. Of this total, $2.6 billion was spent for treatment—only a slight increase over the $2.5 billion spent in 1987 (Bureau of justice Statistics, 1995b). The federal government has nearly doubled its expenditure for drug control in the past 10 years.

There are other criminal justice costs beyond enforcement and treatment efforts at the federal level. Because we impose mandatory sentences for many drug offenses, criminal justice costs must include prison costs, which average about $25,000 per year (Zedlewski, 1989). Also, by conservative estimates, as much as 50 percent of an urban police officers' investigative time is spent on investigating drug-related activities (drug-dependent property and violent crime as well as drug possession and sales) in our major cities. Sixty-two percent of arrestees tested positive for one or more drugs (National Institute of Justice, 1992). Therefore a percentage of court costs also must be assigned to drug-related issues. Reuter (1990) estimates that $1 or $2 billion must be added for prosecutors, courts, and prisons. The total cost to the criminal justice system is estimated to be at least $30,000 per year per addict at today's prices, not including the $2.6 billion spent on treatment in 1995 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995). This figure is much higher than the $1,640 estimated in 1971 by Leslie.

Finally, we have the multiplier effects of spreading the addiction to other users. Leslie estimated this to be 28 percent of the previous costs. Twenty-eight percent of our revised 1994 figures equals:

Lost employment earnings	$11,918.12
Value of premature death or morbidity	$6,909.59
Crime costs	$56,974.91
Costs to the criminal justice system	$30,000.00

These figures sum to $105,802.62. When multiplied by 28 percent to include the multiplier effect of spreading addiction, they total $29,624.73. The total cost of each addict to society each year, based on these figures, is $135,427.35. The total cost to society of the estimated 500,000 heroin addicts sums to nearly 68 billion dollars. This does not include other more commonly used drugs such as crack cocaine. Clearly, society has a right to be concerned. This figure may seem high, but other estimates are much higher. Zedlewski (1989), for example, estimates the average costs of crime committed by each released inmate at $430,000 per year in victim losses, police costs, court work, private security expenses, and other expenses. Not all addicts commit crimes to support their habits, but many do so.

These figures provide a foundation for evaluating the effects of drug policies proposed by our governments. For example, legalization of drugs would lower (but not eliminate) crime costs because drugs would be cheaper and courts, not violence, could be used to solve business disputes. Costs to the criminal justice system would be lowered dramatically because the costs associated with processing drug users would be eliminated. For example, the 968,606 persons arrested for drug abuse violations in 1993 would not have been charged; thus the extensive investigation, court, and punishment resources would have been freed for other uses (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995b). With the legalization of crack cocaine or heroin, however, the economic costs of premature death and morbidity would increase dramatically, as would lost employment earnings, because more people would use these drugs if they were legal.

On balance, government efforts to combat drug trafficking and drug abuse are only a holding action pending a clearer public consensus. Extensive social costs are associated with any action, including continuing our current policies.

Another way of understanding the impact of current government policies is by analyzing the effects of these policies on the structure of illegal drug-distribution organizations in the United States. I say "in the United States" because if the United States government chooses not to legalize illicit drugs and is not likely to succeed in stopping the production and manufacture of such drugs in foreign countries, it should concentrate on the distribution and sale of these drugs within its own borders. In other words, we should attempt to disrupt the smooth operation of the distribution and sales organization existing in this country. To evaluate this effort, we must first consider the characteristics and makeup of this organization. Several scholars have identified the levels, from the importer or smuggler to the lowest-level dealer (Albini, 1992; Inciardi, 1986; Johnson, Hamid, and Sanabria, 1992).

The heroin distribution network has as many as five levels. Johnson et al.(1992) identify these levels as the importer, who smuggles large quantities of substances into the United States; the kilo connection, who transports kilograms of illegal drugs to regional centers; the weight dealer, who adulterates (or cuts) the product and distributes to retailers; the house connection, who further adulterates the product and packages it into dosage units; and the street drug sellers, who makes direct sales to consumers. Each of these categories includes subcategories and/or providers of special services such as money launderers, muscle men, crew bosses, lookouts, tasters, and injectors. We might add a sixth level— the user, who consumes the drug.

Law enforcement officials have tended to concentrate on the very top and the very bottom of this sales organization, for good reasons. At the top, the focus has been on the smuggler or importer, who often moves the drug in relatively large volume. Some smugglers, however, import products that have a small volume but a very high value, which make them difficult to detect.

At the borders of our country, interdiction efforts have not been completely successful against illegal drugs with a very high retail value per unit weight, such as heroin and cocaine. Interdiction has been more effective in interrupting the smooth flow of bulkier products such as marijuana. Even against marijuana, however, the results have not been completely satisfactory: evidence exists to show that the success of the marijuana interdiction program has led to increased domestic cultivat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Distribution of Drugs at the Wholesale Level: The Kilo Connection
• 3 The Distribution of Illegal Drugs at the Retail Level: The Street Dealers
• 4 Drug Markets, Property Crime, and Neighborhood Viability
• 5 Summary and Policy Implications
• References
• Index
• About the Book and Author