Samantha DePerno, Mattawan High School
United Kingdom
SPECPOL: International Drug Trade
There is an international epidemic currently happening. A global illicit trade involving cultivation, manufacture, and distribution of drugs, mainly heroin and cocaine. The UNODC has tried to put a stop to this drug trafficking, but has been unsuccessful. This global drug trade has only seemed to grow. World heroin consumption and seizure represent an annual flow of 430 – 450 tons of heroin into the global heroin market. However, the main problem seems to me in South-Eastern Europe and Asia. Around 380 tons of opium and morphine is produced in Afghan origin where five of those tons are consumed and seized in Afghanistan. The remaining 375 tons are then shipped on the main heroin trafficking routes, the Balkan and Northern routes. These link Afghanistan to the large markets of the world. The Balkan route has an annual market of $20 billion and the Northern route has a market of about $13 billion. This main path of supply needs to be cut off to prevent the drug trade from becoming even larger.
The United Kingdom desires the drug trade to cease. The UK government is aiming for a coherent and comprehensive strategy to tackle the problem from the source of supply through to the point of consumption. It allows enforcement agencies to target criminals and their organisational structures, their assets, the drugs themselves, and the precursor chemicals used in their manufacture. Also, the UK has multiple ways to deal with drug trafficking outside of it’s borders, such as, law enforcement activity in liaison with foreign counterparts, bilateral diplomatic activity, backed up by assistance to foreign governments, multilateral engagement, mainly in the United Nations, European Union, Financial Action Task Force and the G7 and G8, but also in less formal groupings such as the Dublin Group which brings together EU and other donor countries to coordinate policies and international assistance, and the international and frontier controls.
The Special Political Committee has been brought together to find a solution to stop the drug trade. The United Kingdom calls for the disruption of trafficking organizations to help decrease this number so there will be less places to trade to. Also to reduce the production at the source, so there is a smaller supply of these drugs, and most importantly to control the precursor chemicals essential to the manufacture of these illicit drugs, so they are more heavily secured and have less of a chance to be created illegally and sold. However, whatever the solution is, this committee needs to gather as one to create a safer place to live, due to the dangers caused by this drug trade.
- Samantha DePerno
