A study by the Bogota school of medicine in Colombia has found that every 24 hours another 130 people in that country start using drugs. Of the 130, 70 per cent are between the ages of 12 and 17. In Pakistan there were approximately 30,000 heroin addicts ten years ago; today the figure has risen to at least 1.5 million and is expected to increase by another million by the year 2000. Research undertaken in New York City has shown that over 80 per cent of cases of heterosexual transmission of the HIV virus involved a drug injection somewhere along the line. The World Health Organization estimates that whereas 9 million people were carriers of the HIV virus in 1990, the number could reach 26 million by the year 2000. According to some estimates, the money laundered from drugs alone amounts to $120 billion annually in Europe and North America; whilst globally, illicit capital available for laundering each year is thought to be at least $500 billion - equivalent to nearly 10 per cent of the US GDP and considerably more than the earnings of many smaller countries. Professional money laundering is now the fastest-growing criminal profession, with premiums having risen from 6 per cent a few years ago to a current maximum of 26 per cent, much of it taking place through the 70 off-shore centres scattered around the world.
No nation, however remote a corner of the globe it occupies, however robust its democracy, is immune to the adverse consequences of drug abuse and trafficking, although countries whose social and institutional fabric is weak are particularly vulnerable. The Andean countries in particular have suffered from the criminality associated with the drug trade, including civil rights abuses, political instability and extensive corruption, but also from possibly irreversible environmental damage in the form of soil erosion, water pollution and deforestation. Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley, heart of the coca industry, has as many as 300 tree species for every hectare of rain-forest, compared to 7-15 in an average temperate forest, yet slash and burn clearance throughout the Andes has led to the disappearance of 11 million hectares of rain-forest each year - an area the size of Britain.
In his latest book Richard Clutterbuck takes a close look at the production and distribution of drugs throughout the world from source to consumer, and examines the principal mechanisms by which the profits are laundered. Wisdom gained throughout a long and distinguished military career leads him to conclude that the oft-proclaimed 'War on Drugs' has been a dismal failure. He digs down deep into the historical, political and socio-economic conditions of one country in particular, Peru, and carefully analyses the growth of the drug trade. Dr Clutterbuck is even-handed in his analysis, illustrating the corner into which Peruvian campesinos were squeezed by the brutalities of both the army and the Shining Path terrorist group. Despite its illegality, coca growing has provided the basic necessities for economic survival for some 250,000 peasants for whom it is 2-8 times more profitable than cocoa, four times more than rubber and 40 times more than maize. Even so, the primary producers earn less than one per cent of cocaine's final value on the streets of the industrialized countries. He describes the endemic corruption in public administration and the army, but points out that a two-star General would be paid a mere $284 per month in 1993. First-hand experience gained on several visits to the country, including a risky trip into the Upper Huallaga Valley and discussions with those who led the operation culminating in the arrest of Shining Path's charismatic leader, Abimael Guzman, make these chapters especially vivid, and emblematic of the impossibly complex problems of drug law enforcement.
Subsequent chapters of the book examine consumer markets in Europe and the United States, and the role of the major organized crime groups. The British drug scene, policy and enforcement strategies are discussed in the light of the rigid 'zero tolerance' approach of the United States and the 'harm reduction' strategies exemplified by Holland. The author points to the eruption of drug-related crime and violence in the former Soviet Union with a concern that is more than borne out by the available data - the Russian Interior Ministry has counted over 5,000 criminal groups of which at least 300 are highly organized and have dealings in some 30 other countries. An estimated 81 per cent of the voting shares in the newly privatized companies are controlled by criminals. According to the Director of Russia's Centre for Strategic and Global Studies more than US$12 billion disappeared from the Russian banking system in 1993 into the hands of organized crime.
Dr Clutterbuck contributes to the lively and continuing debate over drug policy options with four alternative strategies: a 'no holds barred' commitment to effective repression of consumption and trafficking; decriminalization (removing criminal sanctions whilst retaining the drugs' illegal status), greater scope to doctors to prescribe addicts their drug of choice and - the fourth option - legalization. Illustrating the positive and the negative aspects of all four, Dr Clutterbuck seems ultimately to be striving for a formula which will help protect the genuinely drug-dependent individual from having to resort to crime, whilst incorporating severity and certainty of punishment for those who exploit the weak and the vulnerable. He would like Britain to become a testing ground for drug policies, to be introduced in a tentative, experimental way that allows for flexible response. His suggestions for greater concentration on more effective money-laundering legislation will be welcomed by many in the law enforcement field, whose frustration with lack of political commitment in this area has turned to deep pessimism in the face of political enthusiasm for liberalization and deregulation of financial markets. Dr Clutterbuck offers much food for thought for policy makers, academics and law enforcement officials alike in this stimulating new work.
ALISON JAMIESON