Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy
Abstract
The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing "cover" and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Different drugs, trafficking routes, and organizations have different relationships to terrorist threats. Therefore, it might be possible to improve domestic security by targeting drug law enforcement on those drugs, routes, and organizations with the strongest known links to terror. However, doing so would require new analytic and decision-making strategies for all the agencies involved in drug law enforcement, and there is no assurance that the policies that best implement the mission of protecting Americans from drug abuse will also perform best in protecting the country from terrorism. Indeed, the interests of ideology-driven terrorists and money-driven drug traders can sometimes diverge, as when increased resources deployed against terrorists adversely affect the activities of drug traders with no ties to terrorists. Any terrorist threats exacerbated by the illicit drug markets might be reduced by shrinking the markets themselves, both in volume and financial revenue. It is not clear that increased drug law enforcement alone can succeed in that respect; the cocaine and heroin markets have proven stubbornly resistant to vigorous enforcement efforts. Reducing demand for illicit drugs can also shrink the markets. The total number of users is much less important in determining drug volumes and revenues than the behavior of a relatively small number of chronic, high-dose drug-takers. Acting to reduce the population of hard-core users through treatment, drug courts, or testing-and-sanctions programs, may offer a better prospect for reducing the size of the drug markets, and thus potentially the contribution of drug trafficking to the terrorist threat.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 20, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA444837
Entities
People
- Mark A. Kleiman
Organizations
- Library of Congress