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How can I buy cocaine online in El Alto

Relationship between human development and drug use. Human development index and drug use. Correspondence : Doctor Fernando Salazar Silva. E-mail: fernando. Received: July 10, Accepted: November 12, Human Development Index is currently considered a reference indicator to account for the social and economic situation experienced by countries. Target was urban population, from both sexes and of 12 to 65 years. Samples were stratified, three-staged and probabilistic. Sample sizes were theoretical with the inclusion of a non-response rate. Prevalence of drug consumption during last year and last month prior to the survey is higher in countries with high HDI compared with medium HDI countries. There is less consumption in lifetime prevalence of legal drugs of countries with higher human development index and an equal rate of cigarette consumption. High development index implies that the inhabitants of a country have a long and healthy life, more access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. Population with a favorable view on these indicators are not only exposed, but they are also active drug users. The higher the index of human development is, the higher the drug consumption rates are, which indicate that although the human development index can reflect material or economic improvements, it is not necessarily traduced in the human value of the people or society and does not assure quality of life or well-being. Key words: Human development index, drug use, Latin America. Human development is a process which seeks to expand opportunities of human beings 1 to create an environment of possibilities in which people can live long, healthy, and creative lives. The Human Development Index HDI is currently considered a reference indicator to account for the social and economic situation of countries. The HDI includes three criteria: a long and healthy life assessed by life expectancy at birth, access to knowledge currently measured by calculating the adult literacy rate combined with the total school enrollment ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary education, and a dignified living standard measured by the gross domestic product GDP per capita, expressed through the purchasing power parity PPP in dollars. Development achievements in countries of the region are annually monitored and they explain a part of the social phenomena that affects the reference population. Thereby, a country with low HDI of less than 0. In contrast, it is possible that countries with high HDI of 0. However, different human development reports state that material wealth is not a synonym of good quality of life. In the twenty-first century, concerns about national security, armed conflicts, terrorism, weapon sales, and drug trafficking 6 overwhelm many nations because they are accompanied by corruption, violence, and drug consumption. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime UNO-DC says that commercial transactions revolving around drugs are evident in 'urban settings controlled by criminal groups', and that this problematic will worsen in megacities because the issue of drugs is human and not economic. Usually, addicts are not engendered in marginal areas but rather in mainstream populations that also give rise to mafias. Currently, large cities are a reflection of the economic and social growth of a region, where the availability of drugs and violence rates are increasing. At the same time, Chile is also the country with the highest rate of cannabis consumption of the region in high school population When comparing drug consumption in different countries according to their HDI, apparently there is a correlation between drug use prevalence and development. The link between HDI and drug use has not been studied thoroughly. The present article aims to examine the relationship between HDI and drug use in six Latin American countries. Recognizing this relationship will contribute to a better understanding of the social and economic factors at play in drug use in the Latin American region. We expect this information will help guide political efforts and may provide the basis to develop improved indicators for addressing the drug problem in our region. In this study, target was male and female urban population, from 12 to 65 years old. Seventy percent of the population consisted of urban settlements and cities. In all countries the sample was stratified, three-staged and probabilistic. Sample sizes were theoretical with the additional inclusion of a non-response rate table 1. Logistic regressions considering the sample design and controlled by age and sex were used to assess the association between lifetime, last year and last month drug prevalence. All participating countries except Chile piloted the instrument and methodology. Chile did not participate in this phase because it already had a standardized questionnaire. Each country was able to add modules to the questionnaire according to their specific needs, while maintaining a common and comparable core questionnaire. Table 2 shows that prevalence of drug consumption during the month prior to the survey is higher in countries with high HDI compared with medium HDI countries. The same situation occurs with the prevalence of drug consumption in the last year shown in table 3. Table 4 shows that lifetime prevalence of alcohol consumption is higher in countries with medium HDI compared to those with high HDI, but in all of the other drugs, lifetime prevalence is higher in countries with high HDI compared to the ones with medium HDI. To evaluate the effect of HDI with drug use, several logistic regressions were performed, taking into account the sample design and controlled by age and sex. Tables 5 and 6 show that consumption in the last month and last year is higher in countries with a high level of human development compared with the ones that have medium human development index, excepting cocaine paste in which there is no difference between both groups of countries. Table 7 shows the same trend with the exception that, in relation to legal drugs, there is less lifetime prevalence consumption in countries with higher human development index and an equal rate of cigarette consumption. As countries develop and social economic power increases, governments face new social and public health challenges. Over the past few decades, many Latin American countries have gone through a continuous period of development and improved their socio-economic conditions. Just as a rise in economic means may translate into issues such as obesity due to increased access to food, 10 increased wealth may result in greater access to drugs, posing risk for a potential drug epidemic in countries where drug use was previously low and not considered a priority. According to World Bank reports, 11 Latin America is a region composed by countries with low, middle, and upper middle incomes based on their gross domestic product GDP. Difference in drug use prevalence is notable between high and middle HDI countries, as shown on the results of this study. The average prevalence of licit or illicit drugs consumption is higher in countries with high HDI, and lower in countries with medium HDI. A possible issue at play may be increased longevity. As humans mature they may experience demands, challenges, and frustrations that generate stress, peer pressure or other factors that influence drug use choices. The social fabric of a country shaped by the trust between social actors, their behaviors and norms, also plays an important role in drug use. For example, Argentina, with the highest HDI in Latin America, is a country with one of the highest drug use prevalences in the region and a growing market for illegal drugs. This high drug use combined with inadequate political infrastructure and adding institutional gaps lead to the difficulty of effectively implementing a comprehensive public health policy on drugs. A possible explanation for higher drug use prevalence rates in high HDI countries might be related to perceived access to drugs, which has also been shown to play a role as a predictor of drug consumption. Remarkably, a perceived access to drugs is higher in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay such as the prevalences of drug use are. It is difficult to argue that drug producing countries have fewer drugs available than transit countries. The discriminating factor in both groups of countries is the HDI. Our data support the idea that perception of access correlates with HDI, which in turn may act as another potential predictor of drug use. Wealth may play a role in drug consumption through an increased purchasing power of the citizens of countries with high HDI. According to Dreyfus, 'criminal activities are structured around the demand of illegal products in the wealthier regions of the world, which is the case of drug traf-ficking'. The same is for Although good for society as a whole, high HDI may have negative consequences, which must always be taken into account when approaching public health policy. Whether such consequences outweigh the overall gains of development, each society will have to examine on their own. However, we must not ignore the potential social problems that may accompany development as society transitions. Developing countries, with increased access to economic opportunity, are at higher risk of gestating drug epidemics than countries that have experienced less development or less wealth increase. The present paper does not imply that HDI is the cause of drug consumption but rather that the HDI might be an indicator for potential drug use. Given the developmental process that most countries in the region are experiencing, drug consumption has become a public health priority that demands active intervention. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. Informe sobre desarrollo humano Barcelona: Aedos; Reflections on human development. Human Development Indices. A statistical update New York: Green Ink; Sen A. Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Informe Mundial Sobre Drogas ; s. Hopenhayn M. Oficina contra la Droga y el Delito. Bulmer-Thomas V. The economic history of Latin America since independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries: context, determinants, and health policy. Trop Med Int Health ;13 10 National Institutes of Health. Young adult drinking. Alcohol alert Senior adults and alcohol: A National Health Issue. Alcohol alert. Putnam RD. Bowling alone: America's Declining Social Capital. J Democracy, ;6 1 Kliksberg B. Sain MF. El fracaso del control de las drogas ilegales en Argentina. Lejckova P, Csemy L. Risk perception and attitudes of young people towards drug use. Adiktologie ;5 1 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Washington: United States Department of State; Erghougassian KD. El crimen organizado. En: El Cono Sur. Buenos Aires: OAS; Dreyfus P. World drug report New York: United Nations; In the case of Uruguay, the report only mentioned its 'vulnerability' to drug trafficking because of its permeable borders with Brazil and free trade zones. Declaration of conflict interest: None. Servicios Personalizados Revista. Similares en SciELO. Results Prevalence of drug consumption during last year and last month prior to the survey is higher in countries with high HDI compared with medium HDI countries. Discussion High development index implies that the inhabitants of a country have a long and healthy life, more access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

The Lowest Rung of the Cocaine Trade

How can I buy cocaine online in El Alto

D candidate in Political Science at York University; master of Political Science from Laval University; interests include international political economy, critical security studies, and peasant studies. E-mail: dtoconno yorku. Abstract This study provides up-to-date scientific estimates of annual revenues generated by Colombia's illicit cocaine industry , imputed from data on coca production collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. While Colombian producers appropriate only a fraction of global revenues from cocaine trafficking and sales, control over production and appropriation of revenues is highly concentrated, suggesting a great capacity for illegal drug-firms to impact Colombian economy and society. We compare narco-capital accumulation within the wider context of the Colombian economy in terms of productivity, employment patterns, growth and concentration of wealth and power and find that narco-production ranks among the most productive and lucrative sectors of the economy. But while the potential for profits is high, the illegal nature of the industry means firms are prone to sabotage and violence from competitors and vulnerable to attempts at suppression of production by the state, making the industry highly volatile and risky. If illegally accumulated drug-money can serve as a source of financing for legal economic activities, thus propping up economic growth in the formal sector, it must also be said that illegally accumulated narco-dollars are used to finance illegal armed groups and contribute to violence and insecurity, particularly for rural peasants. Key words author Colombia, illicit drugs, cocaine production, drug trafficking, narco-capital. While relatively few Colombians are directly involved in narcotics production and trafficking, political-economic scholarship suggests that illegal drug-industry revenues seep into virtually all segments of the Colombian economy. To convert large sums of illegally accumulated cash into bank holdings and financial capital, narco-firms invite popular investment in pyramid schemes, create jobs through construction and commercial investment, or provide opportunities for mass consumption of cheap commodities imports. In the countryside, rebel armies collect rents from coca producers and traffickers which fuel political insurgency by permitting rebel armies to pay for arms imports Thoumi, Despite being seen as an international security problem, and despite its nefarious effects on political stability and domestic security, past-research has suggested that illicit drug production actually boosts Colombian economic growth Pardo, Such a task requires accurate quantitative data on the size of revenues generated by cocaine production and the amount of illegally generated drug-dollars that are available to potentially launder and convert into financial capital. Therefore, in order to supplement valuable historical, sociological and journalistic accounts, this paper provides some up-dated data on Colombia's cocaine industry. First we ask: exactly how much annual revenue does cocaine production generate? How much of this revenue is appropriated by Colombian producers and traffickers and how much by non-Colombians? Thus we provide our own, more recent time-series estimate of cocaine industry revenue based on raw UNODC data. We then use these estimates to compare employment, productivity, income distribution and concentration of ownership within the cocaine industry to figures from the formal economy. In addition, we provide figures which allow us to speculate on the relative political-economic power of drug-lords alongside the executives of legitimate capitalist firms by comparing the profitability of the largest drug cartels to those of Colombia's largest legal firms, both private and state-owned. Providing up-to-date empirical data on the relative importance of the cocaine industry to the Colombian economy provides the necessary foundations for the development of a theoretical framework to describe the dynamics of contemporary narco-capitalism. We thereby hope to advance debate among scholars and activists on the financial, economic, political and social impacts of underground economic activity on Colombian society. Varying laboratory techniques of producing cocaine, seasonably-variable coca crop yields, shifting levels of success in government-suppression and seizures, as well as different measurement methods on the part of scholars, are all sources of variation in estimates of cocaine revenues. In this section we will briefly present a sample of previous studies reporting Colombian cocaine revenues in US dollar figures. Figure 1 charts previous estimates of the value of the cocaine industry to Colombia in contemporary US dollars, not adjusted for inflation. The earliest figures we present are found in MacGregor represented by a thin solid line , who estimates export values of Colombian cocaine rising from around 1 billion USD in to about 3,5 billion USD annually in the mids, peaking at around 4,5 billion USD in after which point the series stops MacGregor, , pp. MacGregor's estimates are based on the production value of Colombian cocaine HCl including cocaine produced in Colombia with Peruvian and Bolivian coca paste, discounting for seizures by government forces. However, MacGregor does not name the source of his data whether it was gathered from newspaper accounts or provided by government agencies , nor does he mention whether he subtracted the value of imported Bolivian and Peruvian coca paste from the estimated value of Colombian cocaine exports. Steiner uses a complex mixture of methods to estimate the value of Colombian cocaine production by imputing from quantities of contraband seized by authorities, estimates of the extent of consumer use internationally, and the Colombian share of the value of wholesale distribution in the United States p. After a peak of about 4 billion USD in , the series spikes again in at 2,5 billion USD, before hovering around 1,5 billion USD annually until the series stops at In a study, Rocha provides a much more conservative minimum estimate of cocaine revenues at 2 billion USD in , which steadily diminished to around million USD by the early s. The maximum range drops below 3 billion USD after There is thus a great degree of variation in the existing estimates of the value of the cocaine industry to Colombia. In addition to methodological and technical explanations, another reason for such wide variations in estimates of revenues in Colombia's cocaine industry is the problem of estimating accurately how much of a share of the US wholesale market Colombians manage to appropriate. A substantial share of the US wholesale market would increase dramatically the share of global cocaine revenues appropriated by Colombian citizens - thereby increasing dramatically the size of Colombian cocaine revenues. And in another source, although he does not provide a time-series , Vellinga reports that in the s, the total wholesale value of Andean cocaine could have been as much as billion USD, with a street value of as much as 74 billion USD , p. He also suggests that as much as half of the export value of Andean cocaine made it back to the producer countries, although the growing participation of Mexican, Brazilian, Venezuelan, US American and European traffickers is substantially reducing the Andean share. Even if the lion's share of total cocaine revenues are generated, laundered and reinvested after further wholesaling, trafficking and retailing beyond Colombia's borders; Vellinga emphasizes that, consistent with Steiner's findings from the early s, 'still, income through the drug industry for Colombia alone has been estimated at an average of 2. Unfortunately, because of the differing methodologies of older studies and a lack of more recent scholarship, we do not have an up-to-date picture of the value of Colombian cocaine revenues and therefore the significance of the drug industry relative to the rest of the Colombian economy. Our estimates of cocaine revenues are based on the potential quantity of cocaine HCl produced in a given year imputed from estimates of the number of hectares dedicated to coca production and the potential yield per hectare of dry coca-leaf in the Andes. According to this source, between From around Since , between Despite government suppression through eradication efforts, due to improvements in crop rotation techniques, fertilizer use, improved refinement techniques and favourable growing conditions that make per hectare yields higher, total Colombian cocaine output has consistently increased since the early s and indeed remains around year 2. Figure 2 presents in graphic form the UN data on potential cocaine production, alongside which we have included data on government seizures. The chart demonstrates that while production levels are growing, so is the rate of success of international authorities' suppression of the cocaine trade. What potential cocaine output per Andean country provides us with is an estimate of the quantity of cocaine HCl that would be produced in each country if all of its coca products were to be refined there. However, we cannot determine exactly the share of cocaine revenues attributable to any given country due to transnationalized production and refinement of coca products. As Thoumi puts it, we cannot know precisely 'the share of the Bolivian and Peruvian paste and base that is controlled and internationally marketed by Bolivians, Colombians and Peruvians; and the share of each country's traffickers in the value added generated by smuggling drugs within the Andean countries and outside the region' , p. This problem is akin to trying to determine which share of revenues from one firm's automobile production and sales should be attributed to each country's GDP when the tires are produced in Japan, the electrical components in China, the parts in Canada and the body assembled in Detroit. Likewise, cocaine production involves transnational linkages. To calculate revenues from this business, then, we must have estimates for quantities and prices of coca products leaf, paste or base imported into Colombia to subtract from the export value of finished cocaine products leaving the country i. This means that 'two price series are required: that at which Colombians purchase base from Bolivia and Peru and the one Colombians obtain from their sales in consumer markets' Steiner, , p. We can impute revenues appropriated by producers and traffickers in particular regions if we make our assumptions clear about where particular stages in the production process occur and hence where value is added. While we have quantity of production estimates from onwards for Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, we only have complete factor-pricing and value-added estimates for all stages of the cocaine production process for Colombia, and only for the year UNODC, , p. Thus we will use these values as proxies in order to construct price series from which we can impute revenues from the Andean drugs business dating back to However, once those leaves are transformed into coca paste, the price rises to USD per kg. If 10,2 kg of coca paste are yielded per hectare of planted coca, the annual revenue per hectare planted generated from the sale of coca paste becomes 8. Combine this gain with the convenience of transporting a much lighter product, there is incentive for primary producers to grow and process coca leaves into paste at the site of production. Whether farmer or renegade chemist, based on data from Colombia, we can state that whoever can turn the coca leaf into pure crystal winds up with a product that is worth twice as much as a field of dry coca leaves However, due to the high costs and local scarcity of materials necessary for refinement such as acid or acetone , it is unlikely that small-scale farmers could afford to refine their dry-leaves beyond the paste-stage. Since they have access to the expertise and resources, large drug-cartels can make use of economies of scale to perform more cost-effectively the transformation of coca paste to cocaine base to cocaine HCl. Thus we will suppose that all of the world's finished cocaine HCl is produced in Colombia, but it is produced using a combination of Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian paste and not cocaine base. In any case, the available data makes our methodological choices for us: we do have a time series of Colombian wholesale prices in USD and COP for cocaine HCL for see Figure 3 ; and we do have wholesale prices for Bolivian and Peruvian coca leaf for Thus we calculated the value of coca paste imports into Colombia by multiplying by a factor of 1,44 the unit cost of dry coca leaves at Peruvian and Bolivian market prices. Finally, we calculated the value of Colombian cocaine revenues by multiplying the total potential Andean cocaine yield in tonnes by 1. This gave us an estimated total value of Andean cocaine production from in USD. We then subtracted the value of Peruvian and Bolivian coca paste imports price times quantity of coca leaf times 1, In addition to subtracting the price of Peruvian and Bolivian imports from Colombia's gross cocaine revenues, we also subtracted the value of government seizures of cocaine HCL. Cocaine revenues that can be attributed to Colombian producers and traffickers fluctuate between million USD to 1,2 billion USD, depending on annual yields, confiscations, factor prices including the cost of imported Andean coca products , and the success of eradication programs. In fact, revenues fluctuate so drastically from year to year that the industry can only be characterized as extremely volatile and risky as a business sector, even if one puts aside the additional risks posed by competitors with a penchant to use violence and state authorities looking to suppress the entire industry. We display our findings in Figure 4. In terms of the validity of our findings, we can see from Figure 1 that our findings fall within the general range of estimates on Colombian cocaine revenues. The early part of our series is consistent with Steiner's findings and falls midway between Rocha's minimum and maximum thresholds. However, since we calculated the revenues likely attributable to Colombian producers at Colombian wholesale prices not at US wholesale prices , our estimates of revenues from the cocaine industry can be considered low compared to some previous findings from the early s. However, if we were to take into account the share of profits accrued to Colombians involved in trafficking cocaine beyond Colombian territory, Colombians' cocaine revenues would increase since the action of transporting cocaine across international boundaries alone increases dramatically the value-added of cocaine HCl. But we can get an idea of the revenues up for grabs from cocaine trafficking beyond the Andean producer countries. We calculated global cocaine revenues broken down into shares accrued to producers, traffickers and retailers based on Colombian and US American wholesale prices, and US retail prices, subtracting of course the quantity of global seizures from data obtained from UNODC. Further, we calculated the additional value added of street level retail sales in USD per gram in order to estimate the global revenues of retailers street-level dealers. These estimates might be low-balled as the growing Eastern European market dictates that cocaine sells for more in Europe than in the United States, however we use the US retail prices as we have no way of dividing up the share of the global Cocaine product accurately by country or region. We present our findings in Figure 5. We can see from Figure 5 that the global revenues from the cocaine industry have been in decline for traffickers and retailers. With governments seizing an increasing share of the product at border stings or in raids, overall profits are diminishing and the industry would appear to be getting more dangerous for participants risking jail-time or violent death at the hands of competing firms. Further, as other drugs such as ecstasy, Crystal Meth, heroine, and marijuana become cheaper and more readily available, the American street value of cocaine HCl is in decline. While the gross retail value of cocaine still suggests massive global revenues, in the range of 20 to 40 billion USD annually, profits are widely distributed among a great number of street-level retailers and regional traffickers. And as we are going to see, since the control over cocaine production and export in Colombia is concentrated, far fewer players share in the revenue pie, making the potential for huge profits extremely high. And, if our findings are accurate, despite yearly fluctuations, the production value of Colombian cocaine has remained fairly constant on average since the early s. Our goal from the outset of this paper has been to provide some empirical grounding upon which to construct a theoretical framework that places the underground economy within the overall context of Colombian political economy. Because the cocaine industry is part of the underground economy, revenues from production are not directly accounted for in calculations of the country's gross domestic product. Nevertheless, since a portion of revenues are laundered, banked and either directly invested in other sectors such as construction or real-estate, or reinvested in the stock market, joining global financial circuits, cocaine revenues eventually show up in the national accounts, listed as other sources of revenue. Pin-pointing exactly where cocaine money turns up in the formal economy is perhaps impossible, and certainly we will not attempt it here. But we can use our findings from the previous sections to provide a sketch of the relative size, productivity, profitability, and level of concentration and power in the cocaine industry compared to the rest of the Colombian economy. By our calculations, cocaine revenues were worth between million USD and 1,2 billion USD to Colombia alone each year from the early s to In relative terms, how does this value compare to other sources of revenue for the Colombian economy? Since , there has been a gradual decline in the relative importance of the cocaine industry to the over-all economy as over-all growth intensified while cocaine revenues remained on the average stable if volatile. While in absolute terms, the cocaine industry amounts to only a small portion of Colombian productivity, considering it is concerned with the production of just one type of commodity and an illegal one at that , it is significant. Further, despite large yearly fluctuations, the value of cocaine production as a share of GDP has remained fairly constant on average since the early s while agriculture is in decline and industrial output prone to long cycles. While this is likely due to an overall intensification of economic growth due to a rise in productivity in the service sectors and in resource extraction more than an absolute decline in agricultural productivity, it does point to the consistency and resilience of the cocaine industry. Despite being illegal, facing the efforts of the international security system to suppress it, and taking place within the terrain of battle between armed factions, the cocaine industry continues to persevere and produce significant revenues. In Figure 7 we present the value of revenue in the cocaine industry as a percentage of revenue in both agriculture and industry. Further, in considering the productivity of the cocaine industry, it is important to sketch out employment patterns and wealth distribution within this sector of the shadow economy. Estimates of the numbers of people employed in the cocaine industry vary widely, on the one hand due to the insecure nature of working conditions in this illegal industry which employs many migrant and seasonal workers in precarious and often dangerous conditions, but also due to difficulties in accurately measuring illegal activity. These are what we typically call cartels, really crime syndicates that pool their resources in order to improve the efficiency of production, distribution and protection. Below these firms in the hierarchy are a number of smaller but more numerous around or so specialized firms providing transportation services, money laundering, protection and enforcement of contracts, and laboratory operations. Below these would be perhaps another 1. Below that would be another 1. Finally, there are the Further, within the industry wealth and power are highly concentrated. Consider that a handful of strong-men sit atop a rigid hierarchy of perhaps to 2. If the Even if there were 10 big cartels employing 2. This figure would likely be much larger considering the potential for a larger Colombian share in the overseas wholesale cocaine market than we are assuming here, not to mention further revenues from investments of laundered money in other sectors such as construction, real-estate, retail goods imports, and entertainment. In terms of productivity revenue generated per worker , then, the cocaine industry is highly profitable but also highly risky for producer and trafficker. Nevertheless, despite the risks, because of the exclusion of many rural workers from opportunities within the formal economy on the one hand, and the exploitation of cheap labour within the formal economy on the other, many peasants continue to be driven into coca production, and urban youth continue to seek employment with drug-cartels. What does it mean for the Colombian economy that there would be a highly profitable illegal industry overwhich control is highly concentrated in the hands of a small segment of the population. How does the quantity of wealth controlled by drug-firms compare to other large sums of money in the economy. How does this effect the economy at large? The answers to this question are suggested by another comparison. The cocaine industry is so big that in the early s it represented more than half of the value of net direct foreign investment in the country. As we can see in Figure 8 , while foreign investment rose substantially during the first years of Plan Colombia, and more recently as the government has continued to welcome investment by multinational corporations, if FDI is any benchmark, the cocaine industry still remains an important potential source of finance for economic development. So big perhaps is the cocaine industry, that it might actually boost over-all economic growth. Indeed, this is the point made by Camila Pardo in a article suggesting a positive relationship between growth in narcotics production and economic growth in the Colombian economy. The implications are rather astounding: indeed, while illicit drug trafficking is seen by most governments as a source of instability in the international system, the inconvenient reality is that a small but powerful elite manages to benefit from narco-capital accumulation both directly, as it provides a direct source of liquid investment to finance the business activities of domestic and multinational corporations in control of Colombian capital accumulation; and indirectly, as the continuation and persistence of narco-production and trafficking strengthens the resolve of international policy-makers particularly those in the United States and ensures that they provide a steady flow of international military aid into the coffers of the Colombian armed forces. We will finish off this paper by using our findings to speculate on the relative power of Colombian cocaine firms within the context of Colombian capitalism. Political economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have developed a measurable concept of political power within modern capitalist economies based largely on Israeli and US American data. The most powerful firms operating within the core sectors of the economy are those that consistently post profits better than the average of their competitors. The executives of dominant firms are able to exercise power in their societies not simply because of their net worth in absolute terms, but rather in their relative share of the economic pie within their sector and within their society. Nitzan and Bichler's concept of differential accumulation measures the growth rate of a particular firm within an industry, or a particular industry within the wider economy as a whole, in relation to the average growth rate of a firm or of the economy as a whole , pp. If a firm can grow outwards by expanding into green-field sectors of the economy or intensify production inwards by increasing productivity per employee at a faster rate relative to its competitors, it can be said to be more powerful and influential in the economy as a whole, enabling its executives to enhance their share of social power in society at large. We have already seen that the cocaine industry is productive in terms of output per worker, and is likely to be highly profitable for firms that survivie, creating the potential to accumulate huge sums of money that can be invested as financial capital within the banking system. If we consider, as Nitzan and Bichler put it, that 'modern capital is finance and only finance' , p. Thus, once drug firms manage to launder their money and convert it into bank holdings, they would be perfectly capable of controlling 'legitimate' investments within the wider economy worth a substantial portion of the country's bank holdings, or they would be capable of controlling investment funds as large as those of many institutional holdings or pension funds. The laundering and banking, that is, the financialization of accumulated drug profits then, would give drug barons great potential to take 'a share of control over the social process,' as Nitzan and Bichler put it , p. In other words, it would make them very powerful players in Colombian society. Financialization occurs either through the Colombian banking system or through foreign banks. Once legally banked, illegally accumulated financial capital could be invested anywhere in the world. Drug lords, insofar as they can launder and bank their money, are really narco-capitalists. As Thoumi remarks, 'Drug traffickers are good capitalists, and illicit drug capital flows behave in a way similar to any other international capital flow: they are influenced by macroeconomic conditions in the Andean countries, the United States, and other countries, as well as by fiscal and monetary policies' , pp. While we cannot measure directly the power in terms of capital holdings and differential accumulation of any particular drug cartel in Colombia, as we have no way of opening up the books and obtaining exact annual revenues per firm, nor estimating the total capital holdings of illegal firms, we can still apply Bichler and Nitzan's reasoning to roughly measure the potential power of Colombia's cocaine elite relative to the most powerful legal firms in Colombia's economy. This will involve a thumbnail sketch of the revenues of cocaine firms relative to the market value of large legal firms. Let us say, following Grosse , p. Even after paying half of these revenues to primary producers for production costs, that leaves over million USD in annual net revenue to be divided among them assuming that there are no further costs and having already subtracted government confiscations. Financial Times of London data reports that in , Ecopetrol's net income was 3' Bancolombia's net income was million USD , Feb. While Bavaria S. A beverage group had total revenues of over 2,2 billion USD, after taking into account operating expenses and taxes, net income was only 34,6 million USD , Feb. Considering that one of the core cocaine firms could potentially take in 40 million USD net income in a given year, cocaine firms would rank high among Colombia's most profitable corporations. And if a dedicated and prudent narco-capitalist could manage to clean and bank a good share of his fortune, he could translate illegally accumulated narco-wealth into a substantial sum of capital. Thus narco-capitalists, should they succeed in cleaning up their illegally accumulated fortunes, could potentially be among the most powerful members of Colombian society, if indeed, as Nitzan and Bichler put it, capital is finance and finance easily translates into social power. But what about the dynamics of narco-capital accumulation in relation to the wider Colombian economy; how does narco-capitalist accumulation perform relative to the rest of the Colombian economy over time? As noted above, Nitzan and Bichler's concept of differential accumulation could be used to measure the performance of a particular industry compared to some measure of the economy as a whole , pp. And so, we compared the growth-rate of the Cocaine industry expressed as an annual percentage change in total revenues with Colombian GDP annual percentage growth. While generally the cocaine industry has the potential to grow dramatically year by year, it also can shrink drastically, due to government seizures, crop failure, sabotage on the part of competitors, input shortages, labour shortages, etc. As we can see from Figure 9 , in the s, growth rates were dramatically higher in the cocaine industry than in the economy as a whole, except for the years , , and , when huge declines in output put growth in the cocaine industry well below that of the formal economy. After , growth in the cocaine industry fell far below growth in the formal economy in all but two years, and Once again, while cocaine can still be wildly profitable and empower a small group of people, as a productive sector it is prone to volatility and exposes narco-capitalists and workers to extremely high levels of risk. Even if narco-capitalists do not succeed in turning illegally accumulated drug profits into licit financial holdings, their power over the future of Colombian society can be exerted in other ways. As the political adventures of Pablo Escobar and his contemporaries, 19 as well as recent allegations of drug-money being used to fund political campaigns attest, drug revenue that does not get laundered and legitimized as financial capital still allows drug-lords to exert extraordinary influence over the formal political system and governmental institutions through cash payments of bribes to corrupt politicians, police, military officials and judges. Further, illegally accumulated drug revenue that it is not legitimized and reinvested in the formal sector can still be reinvested back in the cocaine industry itself, or in some other sector of the underground economy which operates on the basis of cash payments. Thus Drug-cash is used to open up further coca production and cocaine manufacturing which spins-off into investment in materials, workers, and armed protection. Drug money has provided the means through which various business interests can foot armies, either to protect the interests of landed capital as in the case of paramilitary armies, or to fund private mercenary armies for hire to domestic and foreign capitalist firms Melo, , pp. This creates insecurity, social instability and drives mass displacement out of the countryside into urban centres. According to Melo, drugs money has also been cited by many politicians and observers as the means through which the FARC and ELN continue to stage their existing political struggles through violent means, thus suggesting that drugs-money fuels armed conflict in the country on either sides of the political spectrum. We can conclude that while the cocaine industry is a risky business, it is also highly productive in terms of output per worker if agricultural output and industrial value-added serve as benchmarks. Nevertheless, the relative importance of the cocaine industry to the Colombian economy as a whole appears to be in decline, as GDP growth suggests productivity increases in manufacturing and industry particularly the extractive resource sectors and foreign investment is on the rise. However, this could change if the cocaine industry has a few more highly productive years, and given the volatility of the sector, this is possible. This illegal sector of the economy has the potential to be highly profitable for those willing to take the risk and success in this sector can endow narco-capitalists with extraordinary and extra-legal powers. As Steiner puts it: 'Even if the true economic dimension of drugs in Colombia is smaller than what is generally suggested both in the press and in political circles within the United States, it is still the case that the drug trade provides resources to a very small group of outlaws, with enormous power to corrupt the country's social and political fabric' , p. In this paper we have tried to put a dollar value on the capacity of powerful illegal capitalists to finance Colombian financial capital accumulation and corrupt the institutions of the state. Now that we have the empirical foundations for a framework in which to theorize the place of the cocaine industry within the wider context of Colombian capitalism, a number of lines of investigation open up. What remains to be done through further empirical work is to investigate in more detail the ways in which the highly profitable but highly dangerous cocaine industry interacts with Colombia's formal economy. For example, to what extent does expansion of illicit drug production use arable land that could otherwise be used for the production of legal crops? Who are the primary producers of coca crops? Are they predominantly displaced rural peasants colonizing new land, or are they small tenured land-holding peasants, or migrant workers contracted by narco-capitalist firms seasonally to pick leaves? To what extent is land seized by illegal armed groups turned over to coca cultivation? How does illegal drug production feed into the process of accumulation of land and property for the larger process of expansion of agro-capitalist production? From further empirical work on questions such as these we can begin to accurately theorize how the illicit economy creates opportunities for those marginalized by Colombian capitalism, how it allows criminals to compete with institutionalized power brokers, and how cooperation between illicit capital and some elements within the Colombian state corrupts both state and society at large. This will involve further quantitative work on differential accumulation within the Colombian economy to better tease out the net economic impacts of the cocaine industry on Colombian capitalism; however, it will also involve an historical sociological investigation into the social forces including a predatory global capitalism that drive Colombians into the cocaine industry in the first place. Steiner's highly detailed and extensively researched account of some older studies of cocaine revenue in Colombia, most notably a study by esteemed Colombian political economist Salomon Kalmanovitz, is a must-read, so we avoid a more detailed summary here. The original source is Rocha, R. In Thoumi, F. This suggests that virtually all of the world's cocaine HCL is indeed produced in the Andes where raw coca plants are harvested. The practice was apparently abandoned by Indigenous tribes in the s according to Leon While the total land use in the three countries for coca cultivation in hectares remained fairly constant between and , around ha per year there was a significant drop in production in Peru and Bolivia from to This is likely due to government repression of indigenous coca cultivators in Bolivia, a relative decline in the power of the Sendero Luminoso in Peru, as well as a blight that affected coca plants in that country Vellinga, , p. Furthermore, the interdiction of air traffic in Andean air space imposed by the US Airforce interfered with small plane transports of coca products, see Friesendorf , p. At the same time, the level of global coca production was maintained by increased coca cultivation in Colombia after When production dropped in the coca supply zones in the late s, Colombian cocaine manufacturers sourced domestic sources of raw coca leaf and base. However, an overall decline in world coca cultivation occurred between and , likely attributable to efforts to eradicate coca fields by the Uribe government as part of Plan Colombia. While the aerial bombardment of the countryside with thousands of tonnes of herbicide, along with forced manual eradication of coca crops by political prisoners, supported by US military aid, may be making a dent in global coca cultivation, the nefarious side effects include the eradication of subsistence food crops, livestock, and water supplies upon which rural peasants and indigenous Colombians rely. Despite such controversial actions, since , global and Colombian coca cultivation has remained constant with around hectares of land planted with coca often lying beyond the agricultural frontier, but also to be found in interstitial spaces between fields of legitimate crops well within the agricultural heartland of Colombia. The geographic and politicaleconomic dimensions of Andean coca cultivation are to be the subject of forthcoming work by the author, particularly the repercussions to Colombia's banking system following the shift of coca production toward Colombia from Peru and Bolivia in the late s. There is then, a great room for error in any estimate of coca yield extrapolated from hectare estimates of coca cultivation. See Melo This ratio may not apply to Bolivian and Peruvian paste due to regional differences in leaf opiate concentrations and differences in refinement techniques and materials. Further, using the data on leaf to paste value added is problematic due to the likelihood of yearly variations in production yields and local factor prices. As such, our estimates of Bolivian and Peruvian coca products imported to Colombia can only be a proxy. If these figures are accurate, the report goes on to estimate that the coca household share of cocaine revenues would be at around 12 USD and 10 USD respectively for and , putting the coca growing peasant substantially better off in purely economic terms than the average Colombian who could expect just over USD GDP per capita in This estimate puts the share of production given to primary producers close to our total estimate of Colombian cocaine revenue and suggests that the authors ignored concentration of control over trafficking and the use of power and coercion in the distribution of revenues. Simply calculating the value of the crop and dividing it by the estimated number of total producers does not necessarily give an accurate picture of average cocaine revenue earned by the producer; the UN estimate does not take into account class hierarchies based on the division of labour between producer and trafficker, nor the insecurity of person and property due to a concentration of power and control over the productive process by an armed and violent few. Thus, beyond bare-faced economic estimates of well-being based on income, the UN estimate ignores the reality of the coca producing peasant who, while waiting to sell the product of their labour to heavily armed and dangerous narco-trafficers, is at risk of expropriation and attack by government forces, of exploitation at the hands of armed paramilitaries and open to extortion from rent-seeking guerrillas. In Profil Thanks to Julian Germann for pointing out and translating this reference. Instead she measures narcotics production based on hectares of land used to cultivate illicit crops coca and marijuana and finds a positive relationship between this variable and GDP growth from In particular, see pp. Arango, C. Financial Times , Feb. Friesendorf, C. Squeezing the balloon? United States air interdiction and the restructuring of the south american drug industry in the s. Crime, Law and Social Change , 44, Grosse, R. Drugs and money: laundering Latin America's cocaine dollars. Westport, Conn. Hristov, J. Blood and capital: the paramilitarization of Colombia. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Kalmanovitz, S. Leon, L. The disappearance of cocaism in Ecuador. MacGregor, F. Coca and cocaine: an andean perspective. Underhay, Trans. Melo, J. The drug trade, politics and the economy: The colombian experience. Malamud Eds. Latin America and the multinational drug trade pp. New York: St. Martin's Press. Nitzan, J. The global political economy of Israel. London: Pluto Press. Pardo, C. Wurden banken mit drogengeld gerettet? Steiner, R. Colombia's income from the drug trade. World Development , 26 6 , 1. The Economist. The Americas: lording it over Colombia; Colombia's paramilitaries and drug lords. The Economist , 8. Thoumi, F. Illegal drugs in Colombia: from illegal economic boom to social crisis. Illegal drugs, economy and society in the Andes. Washington D. Vellinga, M. The political economy of the drug industry: Latin America and the international system. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. World drug report Colombia coca cultivation survey. Coca cultivation in the Andean Region. Vienna: Author. World Bank Data and research, Millenium development goals, World development indicators, and data. Retrieved on Feb. Services on Demand Journal. Key words plus Narcotic traffic - Socioeconomic aspects - Colombia, Coca industry, Colombia - Economic policy Introduction While relatively few Colombians are directly involved in narcotics production and trafficking, political-economic scholarship suggests that illegal drug-industry revenues seep into virtually all segments of the Colombian economy. Previous research on colombian cocaine revenues Varying laboratory techniques of producing cocaine, seasonably-variable coca crop yields, shifting levels of success in government-suppression and seizures, as well as different measurement methods on the part of scholars, are all sources of variation in estimates of cocaine revenues. Methodology and data Our estimates of cocaine revenues are based on the potential quantity of cocaine HCl produced in a given year imputed from estimates of the number of hectares dedicated to coca production and the potential yield per hectare of dry coca-leaf in the Andes. The resulting data-series is of the total value of annual revenues in Colombia's cocaine industry at Colombian wholesale prices industry from Results Cocaine revenues that can be attributed to Colombian producers and traffickers fluctuate between million USD to 1,2 billion USD, depending on annual yields, confiscations, factor prices including the cost of imported Andean coca products , and the success of eradication programs. Power and capital accumulation in the cocaine industry We will finish off this paper by using our findings to speculate on the relative power of Colombian cocaine firms within the context of Colombian capitalism. All the contents of this journal, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. How to cite this article.

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