ABSTRACT
The cultivation, processing, transport, and distribution of narcotics is probably the greatest single
generator of political violence and crime in the world. Its profits are used to finance and arm rural
guerrillas, urban terrorists, and criminal gangs and to facilitate the trade by intimidation and
corruption and by keeping the army and police away. In certain countries it is now a far more potent
motivator of terrorism than Marxist ideology or religious fundamentalism. In some of these it
dominates the national economy and governments govern by its leave. And almost all of this is
ultimately financed by the money extracted from drug addicts on the streets of the western world, so
this is where the problem must be tackled.
