NCJ Number
117653
Date Published
1988
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This paper examines international drug trafficking from a national perspective (United States) and considers some of the ramifications of past and present policies and strategies at this level from the perspective of a police administrator in a major urban city.
Abstract
The creation of the National Drug Enforcement Policy Board in 1986 was a prerequisite for a coordinated approach to a nationwide problem. The board's national and international drug law enforcement strategy to reduce both drug supply and demand consists of five major components: intelligence, international drug control, interdiction and border control, investigation and prosecution, and diversion and controlled substance analogue regulation. The board and other Federal agencies have viewed the reduction of demand as primarily a local responsibility and have recently provided some resources to assist in this effort. There are not sufficient resources to attend appropriately to the demand for drugs, however. This inevitably means that the Federal effort to reduce supply will be ineffective and may even increase problems for local law enforcement as property crimes increase due to the need for abusers to acquire funds to pay higher drug prices occasioned by reduced supply. In addition to increasing resources to reduce drug demand, the enforcement effort must target entire illegal drug organizations and their total activities, since the survival of these organizations ensures that criminal enterprises will persist in the face of enforcement efforts that only target particular crimes.