ABSTRACT
In the 19th century, international trafficking in opium and cocaine was a legitimate, state sponsored enterprise for the British and the Dutch. The usual way of looking at today's patterns of trafficking assumes that drug producing countries are flooding western societies with dangerous drugs. As should be evident, drug trafficking through European territories is a cross-border crime par excellence, yet neither trafficking and smuggling nor cross-border crime generally, seem to have attracted much criminological attention. By the mid-late 1970s the trafficking of heroin and other drugs had become a major and organized international business. This chapter sketches some pertinent history and current issues that deserve consideration along side the central concerns. In Britain, possession of cannabis, and in some areas, of other drugs has effectively been decriminalized by police cautioning policies and referral schemes which refer drug users away from the criminal justice system and towards help and advice agencies.
