Breathe
By Yuriria Rodríguez Castro
As a follow-up to my previous column, https://www.opinion51.com/yuriria-rodriguez-2411-ciego-fentanilo I propose the following scheme based on the concepts of sociologist Max Weber, about city-states and how they could be classified according to raw materials, production, distribution and consumption of narcotics in the face of our new great battle, fentanyl:
Geopolitics and drug market simplification
There is an organized crime policy that extends globally. This analysis shows the division of synthetic drug markets from a systemic approach where it is observed that there is a geopolitics of the drug market with increasingly specialized countries -although not exclusively-, which tend to dedicate themselves to supplying the raw material, others to production, distribution and, some more, to consumption.
In Economy and Society, Max Weber himself refers to associations as autonomous or heteronomous, autocephalous or heterocephalous, so we consider that criminal associations would not be the exception: "Autonomy means, as opposed to heteronomy, that the order of the association is not granted - imposed - by someone outside the association and external to it, but by its own members... (...)".
Thus, we could venture to think that perhaps no other legal institution of the Mexican State is as autonomous or as democratically open to the people as the drug traffickers; they have complete freedom to determine the degree of association they require from political and social actors.
Violence in organized crime is not the same as organized crime because crime is organized beyond crime, since it can operate legally and sustain itself without committing any crime while maintaining its behavior as a criminal organization, but when drug trafficking as an organization notices that it is about to lose its political control, as well as its cultural and social power, it resorts to terrorist behavior, something that has happened in Mexico.
The problem of drug trafficking is the economic management that - according to Weber - assumes a "peaceful" administration of the products, so that organized crime and its main market, drug trafficking, has the paradox of being an economy managed by violence, that is, a violent administration that sometimes occupies the place of the product in the different areas it dominates. Therefore, we could say that criminal geopolitics would have to be a functional division of the narcotics market, with nations dedicated more specifically to one type of participation, whether it is providing the raw materials for the drugs, intermediating -in the preparation or production-, distributing, renting or consuming the product.
The history of drugs shows us that every time a new narcotic is introduced to the market it generates a major global crisis and fentanyl is the most important challenge we have to face for now, but the first designer drugs inspired by synthetic pharmaceuticals that generated a methamphetamine market were those such as crack and crystal meth, because their introduction to consumption meant a more discreet production in clandestine laboratories but still required certain conditions of production more ostensible in criminal activity, although it still required more expensive and larger facilities than the reduced spaces where fentanyl is produced.
Crack and crystal meth were the first narcotics that allowed drug traffickers to save the investment of large and notorious crops, reduce the risk of losses due to spoiled drugs and seizures in the trafficking of tonnages to satisfy a proportional demand, as well as to increase mass industrial production and practically reduce dependence on the raw material supplier, So much so, that now with fentanyl, the farmers who used to grow opium poppy in Mexico, lost their livelihood with the arrival of the synthetic precursor brought from China, which is legal in its distribution as such, and also much more profitable and transportable than when the poppy is first trafficked and the powder for heroin is extracted after several cuts.
This is how the first experiment that manages to simplify the drug market has its antecedent in the crack or cooked cocaine that in the streets is called stone, because this simplification reduced expenses in the raw material cocaine to sell lower cost doses and a market less and less dependent on the primary sector and in this way placed it in the intermediary sector, with the distributors, who in turn, ended up producing a drug different from the original base extracted from the plant.
The crack and crystal left a lot of power in the distributors and in some consumers who learned to prepare them, as they were molecularly more stable products, which was not very optimal for the profits of the Mexican producer-distributor. Now, with the arrival of fentanyl, the market area has expanded considerably, restricting the functions and control of the legal precursor in China as supplier of the raw material, while Mexico assumes the illegal production and distribution, while the United States is the main consumer or rentier.
Since ancient times, first Great Britain, then the United States, saw in the drug market a convenient functional division between nations, so it was that since the opium wars in the nineteenth century, Britain, France and the US, were first investing in Asian drug markets and then, trying to curb its market through legal and economic sanctions, and then cool their political and economic relations with the Asian giant; something very similar happens now with Mexico since the twentieth century, only that our country is far from being a giant and is closer to the area of higher consumption.
The 21st century seems to be the era of synthetic opioids and drug market simplification led by Mexico, where bilateral trade will be more conditioned than ever by fentanyl trafficking, especially since wars and drugs, as well as wars over drugs, are practically inseparable.
Since those opium wars, the United States and the Western powers have been opting for a policy of investment disguised as political conflict in drug markets with the so-called Asian golden triangle of Laos, Myanmar and China, but since drugs implied a major boost to arms sales, the United States and Western powers have been opting for a policy of investment disguised as political conflict in drug markets with the so-called Asian golden triangle of Laos, Myanmar and China, but since drugs implied a major boost to arms sales, as well as other clandestine markets where even legalization scenarios are failed attempts to curb criminal violence, as drugs, weapons and people interacting in the same market, sometimes as consumers and sometimes as product, are not comparable even to the most prevalent legal product: the cell phone, where no matter how hard Steve Jobs has tried to generate an addiction to his devices, no cell phone of that brand expires faster than the time it takes for an addict to run out of drugs and demand more, nor does it even come close to the need of the violent person to use up ammunition or the pimp in his transactions and abuses.
Drug markets benefit from illegality because they know that practically no legalization scenario can prevent their excesses; let us imagine scenarios of partial legalization of some drugs in countries where respect for legality is fragile, where corruption and violence go beyond any regulatory limits. Where there is an attempt to create a space of exception as was experienced in the city of Amsterdam, it is the exception that proves the rule, because not even they, with their legislation, their State and their society, are exempt from criminal organization and violence, but even less so are other countries in the world such as Mexico, where the first legal drug business could be immediately harassed by the "cobro de piso", for example.
Capitalism reached its maximum ideal in the drug trafficker and the addict, because while the habit of consumption benefits any product to be placed in the market, drugs are pure consumerism, something stronger is always needed and the product is forced to be overcome, while the demand depends on a hasty anxiety that produces immediate physical effects that bring the addict to the street to find his or her satisfier. It is true that prohibition raises demand because it generates anxiety, but many other aspects also trigger the demand for drug use, that the market areas for narcotics are facilitated by violence, ignorance and unhealthiness. Where other products fail, drugs and their accompaniment always succeed.
Any other product is limited by a consumer who fears an excess that will result in death, but drugs do not have this problem, it is an accepted consequence.
In a training I gave, a disciple of the Anti-Drug area told me that it was the addicts who thought about how they were going to consume the drug, whether nasally, orally, intravenously or even through the eyes, that it was not the drug dealer's business. However, that day back home I began to think like the addict I was, sometimes I even think like a drug dealer, because I lived with many of them, then I concluded that the way to consume the drug not only worries the addict, but also the one who produces and distributes it. It is evident that drug traffickers do have a very clear idea that the drug will enter the addict through any orifice of the body, just look at the example of crack, one of the first experiments that worked thinking about how to earn more with less and much cheaper cocaine, something that fentanyl has surpassed by far.
Products tend to standardize, set quality limits to be preferred and distinguished by the consumer, such standardization tends to statism and homogeneity of its components, while narcotic products tend to evade quality standards, without losing the standards of identification with its consumer. Fentanyl successfully evades both; addicts have more difficulty in identifying the presence and quantity of the precursor, even some got hooked through addiction to controlled drugs such as Oxycodone pills, because the drug has been introduced by Mexican drug traffickers disguising it with the M-30 label; so some consumers think they are taking a less dangerous drug, while those who already know it, have little to identify it; perhaps the thickness of the label and the color of the tablet.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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