The strong presence of cocaine in Colombia dates back to the 1970s when participants in the industry started seeing the potentially enormous profits to be made with the drug. Within the next couple of years, the trafficking of the drug became highly profitable and was predominantly controlled by the Cartels. These cartel leaders, and other groups that profited from the cocaine industry like the Revolution Armed Forces of Colombia – Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionnarias de Colombia (FARC), were able to infiltrate many sectors of the country, economically, socially and politically, by buying power and leverage across the Andean country. The first origins of cocaine in Colombia date back to the 1950s when the drug was being produced in small amounts,…
Q: Describe who makes up the federal bureaucracies and their characteristics? A: A bureaucracy is any large, complex organization in which employees have specific responsibilities and work within a hierarchy. The executive branch of the government controls and produces bureaucracies As of 2009, 2.7 million non elected civilian federal employees working full and part time jobs. IN addition, there are over 16 million people who work for state and local governments.…
At one time, Venezuela was riding high because it was one of the richest countries in Latin America. However, today the country is going through an economic crisis that has affected medical treatment in the country. People in the country and the medical community are experiencing extreme hardships filling prescriptions. Many are life saving prescriptions that are desperately needed. According to reports, Venezuelan people are seeking the life saving drugs in the United States.…
The article explains how interconnected the drug cartels are to both America's and Mexico's economies. In fact, Mexican citizens prefer working drug-cartel jobs as informants or mules, rather than working legal jobs, because they make better money. On the higher end, businessmen and cartel bosses spend the illegal drug money on purchases in America. Thus, effectively pouring the money into the economies, despite the fact that the huge amounts of money profitted from selling illicit drugs is untaxed and unreported, which bypasses aiding some 80% of poverty-stricken citizens in America alone.…
Bolivia is the third largest producer of coca leaves, after Colombia and Peru. Coca leaves has been a part of the culture of Bolivian for long time. In Bolivia, derived from the Aymara Indians, they eat forest plant – which then they discovered the coca bush; use it for health remedies, etc. For the Bolivian, the coca leaf has not only been a staple crop but it also becomes a powerful symbol of cultural, religious, and medical identity.…
The war on drugs is a never ending war that has generated and continues to generate billions in profits for those powerful individuals. Within this paper the BBC film “Mexico’s Drug Wars” will be analyzed. Within the film Katya Adler takes us on a journey of the events that have been occurring throughout Mexico. Throughout the film she speaks to many locals and local law enforcement in order…
Michelle Alexander wrote an interesting article about how people in the U.S are ‘blind’ when it comes to racism called “Drug War Nightmare: How We Created a Massive Racial Caste System in America”. She says that the racial discrimination seems to be fading away but everybody is just ignoring it. She wrote this essay to make people realize that everybody needs to wake up and notice what is happening to the people who are part of the American society. Her essay is very effective and makes us realize what is happening but she has yet to provide a solution for this problem. Alexander uses several appeals to attract readers and her ethos and pathos appeals were the most effective to me.…
I understand how you felt when you tough that using drugs was something normal around you. When you grow up in a place that it is the norm for people to use licit drugs your, then your expectations for other places are the same. The same thing happened to me with alcohol. In the Mexican culture, it is normal for a male to start drinking at age 14 or 15. So when I find out that a 22 year old male has never drink alcohol before, I found it to be taboo.…
The original mission of the police was to maintain peace and harmony. However, this mission is lost, contaminated by the militarization explicit in the policies regarding Brazil’s “drug war” (Kucinski 105). By the 1980s, millions of workers were unemployed and this, in combination with an accelerating poverty rate, proved combustive for the Colombian drug cartels to expand their services into brazil (Hinton 96). Due to this influx of drugs in Brazil, the government has taken several steps in order to combat and curtail this problem. Thus, it is this “‘war on drugs’ [that] is the main driver of police operation in shantytowns, which often end in death” (Muñoz and Canineu).…
Every country in the world has problems, but not quite as large as Colombia. Their problem affects everyone living in the country and even tourists. Colombia is the biggest player in the trafficking of coca in the world. Their production has increased greatly, the FARC control almost all of the drug trade business, and the eradication program is failing. Colombia is the biggest cocaine producer in the world.…
While Portugal worked to improve and increase treatment options for drug users, the situation still became problematic. Nearly 1% of the population was already addicted to heroin by 1999 and HIV related deaths were some of the highest in the European Union (Azeem). One year earlier, the Commission for the Natioanl Strategy to Fight against Drugs was mandated by the government to create a report and guidelines to bolster the fight against drugs and drug addiction, primarily in the interests of prevention, treatment, social reinsertion, training, research, risk reduction and supply control. The commission consisted of nine members; five renowned drug experts and researchers, two ministers of health and justice, the Assistant Minister of the Prime Minister in charge of the drug policy, and an internationally recognized independent researcher with no previous experience in drug policy to chair the…
Like the war on terrorism, the fight to control these illicit markets pits governments against agile, stateless, and resourceful networks empowered by globalization”. Naím explains how drugs and the sale of drugs can not only affect the people but also the whole society and government. It’s hard to but borders on people that does not have any kind of boundaries. In the Cocaine Cowboys, it started off with two Latina men being shot dead in a liquor store due to cartel activities and everyone knew it was the cocaine boys. Drugs and crime goes hand in hand as explained by John Roberts in the documentary.…
As drug and arms trafficking are intertwined with each other it is expected that the increased amount of drugs flowing through the country would in turn increase the violence. “In Brazil, 4 men die per each woman, on average, but between the ages of 15 and 29, 8 men die per each woman. In some poorer municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, this rate reaches the amazing figure of 15 men per each woman” (Zaluar, 1995, pg 97). The criminal groups that police the parts of the country that has little-to-no state presence control the drug trade. These groups have a big footprint in the country because in addition to smuggling drugs, they operate a vast number of other illicit businesses to lauder their money through these channels.…
According to Weber (1946), the term bureaucracy is used to describe a hierarchical organizational structure where expert managers direct tasks assigned to qualified employees based on specific written rules and regulations (pp. 196-198). This describes are very rational and impersonal approach to management with clearly defined roles, formal record keeping, and one-size-fits-all rules (Daft 2013, p. 27). Weber identified the following dimensions as being necessary for a properly functioning organization: rules and procedures; specialization and division of labor; hierarchy of authority; technically qualified personnel; separate position from position holder; written communications and records (Daft, p.363). Although some people in modern…
Major companies in many different sectors all support, and spend money lobbying for, the continued criminalization of drugs. The continued criminalization of drugs is critical to the drug war, and includes strict punishments and sentences for those convicted of crimes involving drugs. It has been shown that groups such as private prisons, and prison guard unions lobby for strict punishments to increase incarceration, and reap the profits. These company’s contributions promote the war on drugs, by giving the state no incentive to scale back their policies. What many fail to realize, however, is the impact the war on drugs and subsequent policies has internationally.…