Describe the international efforts to combat the trafficking of Essay

Describe the international efforts to combat the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and cannabis before evaluating their success using both qualitative and quantitative data - Essay Example According to Boivin (2013), international drug trafficking could be attributed to an interplay of geographic, economic, political and cultural factors. Over 40% of trade in cocaine, heroin and marijuana occurs in peripheral countries, with the 2006/2007 United Kingdom Threat Assessment of Serious Organised Crime indicating that criminals drawn from particular ethnicities, Turkish and Columbian traffickers common in the UK case, are largely involved in trafficking. Interestingly, a majority of countries postulated to benefit from the trade in drugs rarely appear among the top global economies. Drug trafficking, and indeed drug abuse, has been associated with negative socio-economic effects among nations (Lyman 2014). Therefore, drug trafficking has been fought against by the international community for many years now. Cocaine heroin and cannabis are among the most common forms of drugs that international focus has been given to prevent cultivation and distribution. Even with such efforts, drug trafficking still remains a rampant practice in a majority of countries across the world. Whereas governments have institutionalised programmes aimed at dismantling the illicit trade, no meaningful reduction in the trade has been experienced. Thus, this paper evaluates some of these efforts to determine their effectiveness. Nations around the world have adopted critical strategies to combat international trafficking of drugs. According to the Maxwell Knowledge Group (2007), four pillars have been adopted in a majority of these cases. As borrowed from the UK Drug Strategy, these pillars encompass prevention of young people from being drug users, reduction of crimes related to drugs, increasing the number of those who could access drugs and reduction of supply of illicit drugs. Combined together, these four efforts seek to eliminate drug trafficking across