THE scourge of the global illegal drug trade is continuing to take its toll on the overwhelming majority of countries. While when it started a long time ago it was a relatively small problem, today it has become perhaps the largest enterprise in the world.
During the 19th century, the international drug trade sparked a conflict between Great Britain and China. This conflict was the Opium War, which ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.
While it is difficult to accurately determine in dollar terms the magnitude of the illegal drug trade,a UN report said: “The global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion in 2003. With a world GDP of US$36 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as slightly less than 1% (0.893%) of total global commerce.[citation needed] Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally.
Another United Nations publication of 1998, “Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking,” states that:

“With estimates of $100 billion to $110 billion for heroin, $110 billion to $130 billion for cocaine, $75 billion for cannabis and $60 billion for synthetic drugs, the probable global figure for the total illicit drug industry would be approximately $360 billion. Given the conservative bias in some of the estimates for individual substances, a turnover of around $400 billion per annum is considered realistic.”
The countries of drug production have been seen as the worst affected by prohibition.[citation needed] Even so, countries receiving the illegally-imported substances are also affected by problems stemming from drug prohibition. For example, Ecuador has allegedly absorbed up to 300,000 refugees from Colombia who are running from guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug lords, says Linda Helfrich. While some applied for asylum, others are still illegal, and the drugs that pass from Colombia through Ecuador to other parts of South America create economic and social problems.[9]
In many countries worldwide, the illegal drug trade is thought to be directly linked to violent crimes such as murder; this is especially true in third world countries, but is also an issue for many developed countries worldwide.[10]
In the late 1990s in the United States the Federal Bureau of Investigation estimated that 5% of murders were drug-related. After a crackdown by U.S. and Mexican authorities in the first decade of the 21st century as part of tightened border security in the wake of the September 11 attacks, border violence inside Mexico surged. The Mexican government estimates that 90% of the killings were drug-related.[
A report by the UK government’s drug strategy unit that was subsequently leaked to the press, stated that due to the expensive price of highly addictive drugs, heroin and cocaine, that drug use was responsible for the great majority of crime, including 85% for shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries and 54% of robberies. “The cost of crime committed to support illegal cocaine and heroin habits amounts to £16 billion a year in the UK” (note: this is more than the entire annual UK Home Office budget).
 What is clear is that the drug cartels are not afraid of the law, and in fact in many countries such as Mexico many members of this particular cartel are former Mexican law enforcement and military personnel.
 Our country has now become a major trans-shipment point for illegal drugs and our porous borders which are difficult to patrol and monitor are making it easy for the drug lords to move their “merchandise” across our borders.
 But recently, through the collective efforts of CANU and GRA some big drug  busts have been made and the personnel from these agencies must be highly commended,  although there is much more work to be done to break the back of the backs of the local  drug pushers.
 The latest bust is indeed a huge one, worth some US$50M, and again it has resulted from good collaborative work by CANU/GRA/GFC.
 However, even with the best efforts, the war against the illegal drug trade is not making any big dent and it would appear that the only way this scourge could come to an end is by not having a market for illegal drugs.
The U.S. likes to lecture countries such as ours that they are not doing enough to curb the illegal drugs business, but the reality is  that it is propelled mainly by the huge American market
According to experts, billions of dollars are being spent on fighting illegal drug trafficking and use. So far it amounts to using a garden hose to put out a forest fire.  In the U.S., the once drug sub-culture is now a mainstream culture; therefore the U.S. needs to look within its own house. Without the huge appetite for illegal drugs in the USA, there would be no market for the drug cartels. It’s going to get worse unless the U.S. ‘fixes’ its own drug problem.