By Ruggero Scaturro and Walter Kemp

Despite the prevalence of trade over land, South Eastern Europe (SEE) also contains more than a hundred ports and 12 container terminals, which are important entry and exit points for trade in the Adriatic, Aegean, Black and Ionian Seas, as well as along the Danube. This report reveals that there is also a maritime Balkan route bringing drugs into SEE through key commercial seaports: cocaine from Latin America and heroin via Türkiye and the Middle East. Other commodities being smuggled along this route include weapons, waste, counterfeit goods and cigarettes. In addition, it provides a glimpse of smuggling along the Danube. The case studies, which feature nine of the region’s commercial ports, are a central element of this report. The map below shows the ports (in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Slovenia) that form the basis of the analysis in this study. These ports were chosen to provide an overview of different types of ports (based on size, ownership, location and history of seizures) and to assess their vulnerability to organized crime.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 111p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This report shows that the total value of illicit heroin and opium trafficked from Afghanistan to Western Europe through the Balkans amounts to some $28 billion every year. Sixty-five per cent of this total ($18 billion) is generated in Western and Central Europe. The four largest European markets for heroin - France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy - account for nearly half of the gross profits, as the major heroin benefits are made by traffickers on the retail markets. The report shows that the total value generated by Afghan heroin and opium trafficked in Europe and through the Balkan route is one third bigger than the entire GDP of Afghanistan itself, which, in 2014, amounted to some $21 billion. Other findings indicate that the negative economic impact of heroin and opium are actually greater in Europe and the Balkan route countries than in Afghanistan itself. The report also shows the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey as the two countries which interject the greater percentage of heroin and opium destined for Europe. Iran seizes about 30 per cent of the 155 tons of heroin and opium entering its territory every year, while Turkey seizes 17 per cent. All other countries in Europe interject an average of 6 per cent of heroin in their territory. Data show that the impact of illicit profits in the national licit economy across countries is significant, with heroin and opium traffickers gaining between 0.2 to 2 per cent of their country's GDP. For some countries this share is bigger than the public expenditures dedicated to drug policies - if all drugs, and not only heroin and opium, are considered. The large amounts of money generated through this illicit activity can distort the licit national economies in the region.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015. 92p.

By Daniel Mejía

No one can deny that Colombia has worked tirelessly to fight illegal drug production, trafficking, and organized crime groups linked to these activities. Since 1994, more than two million hectares of coca have been sprayed with glyphosate, 1,890 metric tons of cocaine have been seized, and 28,344 coca leaf processing laboratories have been destroyed. The costs that Colombia has paid in this “war” are very high. Since 2000, the country—with partial funding from the U.S. government—has invested more than US$1.2 billion, or about 1 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), per year into the military component of Plan Colombia.1 However, the costs have not solely been public financial resources. More than 57,000 Colombians are estimated to have been killed between 1994 and 2008 as a consequence of growing illegal drug markets and resulting confrontations between drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and the Colombian government during the war on drugs.2 This translates into approximately 3,800 additional homicides (or about 25 percent of total homicides) per year from drug-related violence alone. Yet despite such enormous investments and costs, Colombia continues to be a key producer and trafficker of illicit drugs, and in particular of cocaine.

Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2016. 17p.

Edited by Enrique Desmond Arias and Thomas Grisaffi.

The contributors to Cocaine analyze the contemporary production, transit, and consumption of cocaine throughout the Americas and the illicit economy's entanglement with local communities. Based on in-depth interviews and archival research, these essays examine how government agents, acting both within and outside the law, and criminal actors seek to manage the flow of illicit drugs to both maintain order and earn profits. Whether discussing the moral economy of coca cultivation in Bolivia, criminal organizations and drug traffickers in Mexico, or the routes cocaine takes as it travels into and through Guatemala, the contributors demonstrate how entire ways of life are built around cocaine commodification. They consider how the authority of state actors is coupled with the self-regulating practices of drug producers, traffickers, and dealers, complicating notions of governance and of the relationships between economic and moral economies. The collection also outlines a more progressive drug policy that acknowledges the important role drugs play in the lives of those at the urban and rural margins. Contributors. Enrique Desmond Arias, Lilian Bobea, Philippe Bourgois, Anthony W. Fontes, Robert Gay, Paul Gootenberg, Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, Thomas Grisaffi, Laurie Kain Hart, Annette Idler, George Karandinos, Fernando Montero, Dennis Rodgers, Taniele Rui, Cyrus Veeser, Autumn Zellers-León.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. 377p.