DRUGS: A GLOBAL BUSINESS

Cupping a match in his hands, Sergeant Joe Ferrera of the Trinidadian police
stoops to light the base of an unconventional bonfire.

The kindling takes, and after a few seconds he steps back - a broad grin on
his face - to admire his work.

With impressive nonchalance, he has just set alight about $1m worth of
finest Trinidadian marijiuana crop.

'Yes, it feels a little strange' he says, 'but at least this way the drug
dealers won't get the money'.

Ferrera and his team spend much of their week on eradication missions like
this.

Clad in US army fatigues and body armour, they hop between remote
plantations - sharpened machetes and kerosene cans in hand - doing their
best to stem a constant but illegal tide of drugs.

A darker shadow

For many in the Caribbean, drugs have become a way of life.

While a culture of relatively benign Rastafarianism has encouraged the local
growth and consumption of marijuana - something some in the region feel
should be tolerated - the drugs trade generally has in recent years started
to cast a darker shadow.

The Caribbean is one of the principal smuggling routes for cocaine from the
Andes region of South America towards North America and Europe.

Under the scrutiny of Colombian gangs, small-time Caribbean gangsters have
been moving large quantities of cocaine by boat, air and person through the
region.

The trade has a profoundly negative effect on the area.

Smugglers are paid in cocaine rather than cash and have created local
'addict' markets to offload their merchandise.

Gangsters have sought to influence local governments using dollars and
bullets.

Single mothers with hungry children to feed have been imprisoned for trying
to traffic drugs into Europe.

All because drug users in London or New York are prepared to pay so much for
their 'fix'.

A global business

Drugs are big business. The United Nations estimates there are more than 50
million regular users of heroin, cocaine and synthetic drugs like 'ecstasy'
world-wide.

The global illegal trade could be worth as much as $400 billion dollars a
year - almost as much as the international tourist trade - creating
employment for tens of thousands of people both legally and illegally.

Farmers, security guards, chemists, accountants, pilots, lawyers, bankers,
dealers, policemen and health-workers are all kept busy supporting or
combating the trade.

The economics of the drugs business function like any other industry.

If there's a shortage of raw material, be it coca leaf or opium, the price
of the drug goes up. If there's too much, the price goes down.

Just as any self-respecting multinational corporation has marketing
departments or strategic think-tanks to plan for the future, so
international drug gangs do too.

South American drug cartels have, for years, been using highly qualified
marketing and economic graduates to maximise their 'industrial output'.

European-educated whizzkids now sit in plush offices, scratching their heads
and wondering how best to 'market' their product internationally.

Market research

One of the most frightening 'marketing exercises' was that conducted in
Puerto Rico about a decade ago.

Keen to move into the lucrative US heroin supply business, which until the
late 1980s had been cornered by the Thais and Burmese, Colombian gangs began
producing high quality heroin on home soil.

Before moving into the US market they wanted a 'guinea pig' to test their
product - to make sure it would sell.

Using their established distribution network they started shipping heroin to
Puerto Rico, an island with heavy American cultural influence, which the
Colombian cartels felt provided a market representative of the US.

The idea was to 'test the water' - if Colombian heroin sold well in Puerto
Rico, the cartels would expand into the heroin business in North America.

Street dealers were given samples of heroin to give away whenever they sold
any cocaine. Free 'taster' packs for potential users - the ultimate
marketing ploy.

Very soon people who had until then only been using cocaine became regular
heroin users - and regular heroin buyers.

The ploy was a success, and the market evidently ripe. The gangs moved
quickly.

Today, Puerto Rico has a large population of heroin addicts - created from
scratch - and Colombian cartels are the largest single supplier of heroin to
the North American market. Business in action.

International network

Of course, the Colombian cartels are just one element in a huge
international network.

Drugs are produced, trafficked and consumed in most countries of the world -
by many different nationalities, and via many different places.

The end of the Cold War and consequent greater global economic freedom has
facilitated the traffic.

It is easier to move legal or illegal goods around the world now than ever
before.

Heroin and opium produced in war-weary Afghanistan flows west through Iran
or Central Asia into Turkey and Eastern Europe and on to markets in Britain,
Holland or Germany.

Cocaine produced in Peru moves east into Brazil, across the Atlantic to
Nigeria, down to South Africa and northwards to Europe.

Even laboratory-produced synthetic drugs like Ecstasy are being trafficked
out of Europe to parts of Africa and Middle East.

This last phenomenon is perhaps the most worrying.

A new challenge

For years, international governments and organisations have sought to
disrupt the movement of drugs between developing countries like Afghanistan
and the lucrative markets in the West.

The fact that drugs have had to travel so far means that it is harder for
them to reach their markets, and that they are relatively expensive.

The development of chemical drugs like ecstasy, which are easy and cheap to
produce and which can be produced very close to their markets, presents a
new and frightening challenge.

The international anti-drugs community can be forgiven for biting its nails.
They know their strategies will have to change.

In future, the old-fashioned toil of policemen like Joe Ferrera, machete in
hand, may become an embarrassing irrelevance.

Philip Fiske's series The Shadow Trade will be broadcast by BBC World
Service later this month