The drug laws
themselves, both in
South Africa and in many
other countries, have
allowed organised crime
structures (including
gangs) to access this
trillion dollar international
market. They now use
their massive economic
strength to control whole
communities and to
infiltrate, corrupt and
weaken those legal
structures that are
expected to contain the
illicit drug market.
food plant that is far safer than alcohol and tobacco.
The history of the criminalisation of cannabis, heroin,
cocaine and many other illicit drugs goes back 100 years
and is too big a topic to cover in this article. But, what is
now known as the (UN-sponsored) War on Drugs, is an ill
conceived and disastrous international campaign that has
not only failed to curtail the trade in illicit drugs, it has
done the exact opposite by gifting a burgeoning trillion
dollar industry to global crime syndicates.
The proponents and signatories of the 1961 UN Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs wilfully failed to consider
the lessons learned by the USA's disastrous decade-long
policy of alcohol prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. The
massive growth of crime during Prohibition was a result
of organised crime taking control of the liquor industry
in the USA and using the revenue to corrupt and control
law enforcement officers and politicians. The inception
of Prohibition also launched a wave of violence as crime
syndicates battled for control of liquor markets.
The drug laws themselves, both in South Africa
and in many other countries, have allowed organised
crime structures (including gangs) to access this trillion
dollar international market. They now use their massive
economic strength to control whole communities and to
infiltrate, corrupt