IV. A Comprehensive Approach
8. International Drug Control Cooperation
Our efforts to reduce drug availability, abuse, and adverse consequences within the United States are supported by extensive international activities. Indeed, only the federal government can undertake international supply reduction. This specific function is reflected in this Strategy, the accompanying Classified Annex, and the programs and budgets that implement it. International programs confront illegal drug cultivation, production, trafficking, abuse, diversion of precursor chemicals, and the corrosive effects of the illegal drug trade, including corruption, violence, environmental degradation, undermining of democratic institutions, and economic distortion.
A series of bilateral, multilateral, sub-regional, regional, and global accords create a strong backdrop for effective anti-drug measures. The international community's maturing understanding of the scope of the global problem is helping to dissolve the myth that the United States' market is the engine that drives the global drug trade. Indeed, the United States comprises just 2 percent of the world's consumers. Even with the relatively high price Americans are willing to pay for illegal drugs, they still account for only 10 to 15 percent of more than four hundred billion dollars spent globally on drugs every year.31
The legislatively mandated annual certification process is an important instrument in our international narcotics control policy. Under this law, the President is required annually to identify the major illicit drug producing and transit countries and then "certify" whether they have cooperated fully with the United States or taken adequate steps on their own to implement the 1988 U.N. Drug Convention. The President must impose certain economic sanctions on countries that do not meet these requirements unless the President certifies that the vital interests of the United States require that sanctions not be imposed. The sanctions include cutting off our foreign assistance, other than our humanitarian and counternarcotics foreign assistance, to countries denied certification and voting against their requests for loans from certain multilateral lending institutions. The annual certification process has helped to underscore the importance the United States attaches to international narcotics control and has encouraged some countriesto take narcotics control steps they might not otherwise have taken. At the same time, however, the unilateral certification process is contentious in many countries.
The International Anti-Drug Consensus
The United States seeks to improve international cooperation to strengthen regional enforcement efforts and deny sanctuary to international criminal organizations. Because traffickers do not respect national borders, no country can be effective unilaterally in tackling this global problem. Multinational coordination is necessary when dealing with an operation this widespread. In June 1998, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly underscored the need for international opposition to the illegal drug trade. As a result, the world community adopted the proposal made in the 1998 United States Drug Control Strategy for a ten-year conceptual framework to counter the drug problem and set five and ten-year target dates for reducing supply and demand for illicit drugs.
The political declaration on global drug control adopted during the session represents a forceful, high-level commitment to addressing all elements of the drug problem at both the national and international levels. It emphasized the importance of a balanced approach to reduce drug abuse, eliminate illicit supply, and counter drug trafficking. It also set clear target dates for member states to take action required in specified areas. A target date of 2003 was established for national action to stem the tide of abuse and trafficking in amphetamine-type stimulants, national legislation on money laundering, promotion of judicial cooperation, and implementing demand- reduction strategies. The year 2008 is the target date for achieving significant results in demand reduction; eliminating or reducing illicit drug cultivation; and reducing the manufacture and trafficking in psychotropic substances, including synthetic designer drugs and precursor chemicals.
The accompanying "Guiding Principles on Drug Demand Reduction" makes clear that demand reduction is an indispensable pillar of the global response to the drug problem. The declaration is the closest the global community has come so far to an international treaty in this area. The balanced approach being pursued by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme will help improve the illegal drug problem in the United States.
Promoting International Demand Reduction
The problem of increasing drug abuse is shared by many nations. In the United Kingdom (UK), for example, 48 percent of sixteen to twenty four year-olds questioned in 1996 said they had used illegal drugs in their lifetime, and 18 percent were past-month users. The number of offenders dealt with under the UK Misuse of Drug Act of 1971 increased from 86,000 in 1994 to 95,000 in 1996. The number of UK drug users in treatment was 24,879 in the six-month period ending September 1996, 48 percent higher than the equivalent period three years earlier. The number of deaths in the UK attributable to the misuse of drugs rose from 1,399 in 1993 to 1,805 in 1995.32 In Mexico, the government is responding to increasing drug abuse by increasing funding for treatment, conducting a "Live Without Drugs" public service campaign, and providing educational programs in schools and on the Internet.33 In Brazil, cocaine abuse has become more prevalent. In the capital of Brasilia, 50 percent of drug abusers smoke cocaine in either crack or "merla" form. Nationally, injecting drug users most frequently inject cocaine. Drug injection is associated with more than 50 percent of new HIV infections in major cities and 21 percent of all cases in the country. In 1998, the federal government launched a five-point national drug-control strategy to reduce drug abuse, availability, and its consequences by 50 percent in the next ten years.34
Recognizing that no government can reduce drug use and its consequences by itself, the United States encourages and supports private-sector initiatives in drug prevention education. Examples include the Consejo Publicitario Argentino, the Parceria Contra Drogas in Brazil, and the Alianza para una Venezuela sin drogas. The 120,000 U.S. tax-payer dollars that helped establish these national organizations contributed to the generation of more than $120 million in anti-drug media messages in these three countries. The U.S. is helping to launch a similar organization in Uruguay in the spring of 1999. The United States Information Agency supports public diplomacy campaigns that publicize the threat drug abuse and trafficking poses to societies in source and transit nations.
Supporting Democracy and Human Rights
Experience teaches that countries which enjoy political, economic, and social stability derived from effective democratic institutions are most capable of mounting coherent policies to reduce drug cultivation, production, trafficking and money laundering. Accordingly, all U.S. international counter-drug assistance is carefully coordinated by our ambassadors to ensure that drug-policy objectives support U.S. foreign policy goals of promoting democracy and protecting human rights. In nations with the political will to fight drug-trafficking, the United States provides training and resources so that these countries can reduce narcotics cultivation, production, trafficking, and consumption. In many instances,such assistance takes the form of building social and political institutions that further democratic governance while confronting the drug trade.
Drug Control in the Western Hemisphere
The era in which hemispheric anti-drug efforts were characterized by bilateral initiatives between the United States and selected Latin American and Caribbean nations is giving way to growing multilateral initiatives. Nations in the Americas have recognized that the lines demarcating source, transit, and consuming nations have become blurred as drug abuse and drug-related social harms become a shared problem. The growing trend toward greater cooperation in the Western Hemisphere is creating unprecedented drug-control opportunities.
The institutions required for successful hemispheric cooperation are firmly established. Many of the requisite mechanisms and processes are also in place or under development. The anti-drug action agenda signed during the 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas is being implemented. All members of the Organization of American States endorsed the 1995 Buenos Aires Communique on Money Laundering and the 1996 Hemispheric Anti-Drug Strategy. The hemisphere's thirty-four democratically elected heads of states agreed during the 1998 Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile to a Hemispheric Alliance Against Drugs. All nations agreed to broaden drug prevention efforts; cooperate in data collection and analysis, prosecutions, and extradition; establish or strengthen anti-money laundering units; and prevent the illicit diversion of chemical precursors. The centerpiece of the agreement is a commitment to create a multilateral evaluation mechanism -- essentially, a hemispheric system of performance measurement. Substantial progress was made by the Organization of American States' Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission this past year in developing this evaluation system. Specific performance indicators have been accepted, including requirements for comprehensive national strategies; national laws to combat illegal chemicals, money laundering, and firearms; central coordination government bodies; development of drug-use prevalence surveys; and inventories of prevention and treatment programs.
Bilateral Cooperation with Mexico
The complex and highly interdependent relationship between Mexico and the U.S. is of major importance to the United States. Economics, history, culture, and geography closely link our two countries. Cooperation with Mexican authorities is essential for progress against Mexico-based major drug-trafficking organizations. Most of the cocaine and much of the marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine consumed in the U.S. comes through Mexico. Mexican drug-trafficking networks control a substantial portion of the illicit drugs distributed in the United States. Conversely, cash and firearms derived from illegal drug trafficking move south from the U.S. into Mexico.
These criminal activities generate violence; feed corruption; inspire fear; divert scarce resources; and undermine legitimate trade, commerce, and investment. Mexico's economic stability and political transition are particularly threatened by the crime, violence, and social decay engendered by illegal drug trafficking.
Strong political will at the senior levels of the Mexican government confronts the serious national security threat posed by drug trafficking and drug-related corruption and violence. Mexico is challenged, however, by corruption, weak counter-drug institutions, and a legal system that can be exploited by well-funded drug traffickers. A long-term commitment by Mexico's government to achieve concrete results will be needed to disrupt major trafficking organizations and to reduce the amount of drugs that enter Mexico and the United States.
In the last three years, Mexico has investigated and prosecuted high-ranking public officials for corruption. It has enacted anti-crime laws that strengthen law enforcement institutions and provide the basis for more effective prosecution. We have improved cooperation in the past three years in information sharing, air and maritime interdiction, cooperative investigations, extraditions, and military counterdrug coordination. Major traffickers like Juan Garcia Abrego and (for now) the Amezcua brothers have been taken out of circulation.
Last year, the United States and Mexico developed a comprehensive U.S.-Mexico Binational Drug Strategy. The strategy builds upon the Binational Drug Threat Assessment and the U.S.-Mexico Alliance Against Drugs signed by Presidents Clinton and Zedillo in 1997. The agreement demonstrates our shared commitment to address drug challenges forthrightly while upholding the principles of sovereignty, mutual respect, territorial integrity, and nonintervention. An agreed set of measures of effectiveness for the Binational Drug Strategy will be completed in early 1999. Public-health officials will also conduct a second binational demand-reduction conference in Mexico City in the summer of 1999.35
Over the long term, we need to preserve institutions of cooperation such as the US-Mexico High-Level Contact Group (HLCG) for Drug Control and the Senior Law Enforcement Plenary and help strengthen Mexicanlaw-enforcement institutions and anti-corruption efforts. With healthy binational ties, we can establish the conditions under which the United States and Mexico can work effectively through small, special counter-drug units that target trafficking organizations and are reasonably secure from corruption. The success of such specialized units and continued strengthening of law enforcement institutions can increase Mexico's counter-drug capacity enough to reduce the flow of drugs through that country and into the United States.
Mexico/Central American Initiative
This initiative supports programs designed to reduce drug trafficking through Central America and Mexico and targets trafficking organizations operating in that region. Components of the initiative include training for law enforcement agencies, treatment providers, and judiciaries; illicit crop eradication; military-to-military cooperation; joint investigations; and assignment of additional U.S. law enforcement officials.
Caribbean Violent Crime and Regional Interdiction Initiative
Drug smuggling in the Caribbean is increasing as traffickers respond to successful interdiction efforts along the Southwest border. To counter this increase, this initiative will expand counterdrug operations targeting drug trafficking-related criminal activities and violence in the Caribbean region including South Florida, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the independent states and territories of the eastern Caribbean. This initiative will: implement mutual cooperative security agreements between the United States and Caribbean nations; implement commitments made by the U.S. President during the Caribbean Summit held in Barbados in May 1997; develop regional maritime law enforcement capabilities; increase the capability of Caribbean nations to intercept, apprehend, and prosecute drug traffickers through modest expansion of training, equipment upgrades and maintenance support; institutionalize the Americas Counter Smuggling Initiative (ACSI) to provide at-risk commercial carriers, industry, and government offices with training to prevent goods and conveyances from being used to smuggle illegal drugs; and, increase interdiction capabilities and support law enforcement activities in the Caribbean.
Targeting International Drug Trafficking Organizations
The malevolence and unbounded greed of the criminal organizations trafficking in drugs cannot be ignored or understated. These organizations are frequently characterized by centralized control at senior levels and compartmentalization at lower levels. International criminal organizations appear to have no problems recruiting couriers, enforcers, and farmers. U.S.-supported programs help disrupt and dismantle international drug organizations, attacking their leadership, trafficking, production, and distribution infrastructure, as well as their financial underpinnings. The objectives of these programs are to break the power of drug organizations, reduce the threat they pose to democratic institutions, and reinforce the political will of our allies to confront traffickers. Going after top-level leadership is the most effective way to break these organizations. In addition, domestic trafficking organizations are often inextricably linked with foreign traffickers. To be successful in controlling the drug problem in the U.S., we must target both foreign and domestic trafficking organizations.
The success of international operations targeting trafficking organizations has changed the face of the cocaine industry. Large international cocaine cartels have been injured or destroyed. A looser confederacy of smaller, more specialized trafficking groups have replaced them. The United States and allied nations in the transit and source zones will identify and target these emerging criminal organizations.
Following the Money
The drug trade generates billions of dollars in profits. In most cases, traffickers seek to disguise drug profits by converting ("laundering") them into legitimate holdings. Trafficking organizations are vulnerable to enforcement actions because of the volume of money that must be processed. Americans spend fifty-seven billion dollars a year on illegal drugs (thirty-eight billion on cocaine, 9.8 billion on heroin). Drug dealers seek to place these funds in the financial system as close as possible to drug-dealing locations for eventual investment within the United States or repatriation in other countries. In recent years, money laundering has become an increasingly professional undertaking. At the same time, it has become much more international as a result of the integration of markets and traffickers routing profits to countries whose financial systems lack adequate enforcement mechanisms.
Illegal-drug profits are laundered via traditional bank or non-bank financial institutions. However, a significant amount of illicit funds are laundered via non-traditional financial systems or methods. The black market peso exchange is one of the most popular mechanisms used to repatriated drug proceeds to Colombia. In this laundering method, Colombian drug organizations sell drug-related U.S. currency to Colombian black market peso exchangers who, in turn, place the currency into U.S. bank accounts. The"hawala" or "hundi" remittance systems, which operate parallel to "western" banking systems, are prevalent in Pakistan, India, and South Asia. As with the black market peso exchange, the value of the money is transferred without the currency itself ever being moved. The system operates on trust and functions using a network of hawala brokers around the world. Hawala has been seen as a component of various money laundering schemes associated with a variety of predicate offenses in U.S. cases.
The Department of Treasury works extensively with U.S. banks, wire remitters, vendors of money orders and travelers' checks, and other money service businesses to combat placement of drug proceeds. The federal government uses the provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act to detect suspicious transactions and prevent money laundering. Federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies also target individuals, trafficking organizations, businesses, and financial institutions suspected of money laundering. The Geographical Targeting Order issued by the Department of Treasury in 1996 to prevent drug-related wire transfers from the New York City area and DOJ's prosecution of such cases are examples of effective interagency counter-measures. Private-sector support for anti-laundering measures is critical. Compliance with money-laundering regulations is essential for the credibility of financial institutions competing in a global economy.
A multi-agency assistance and training program is helping central banks and law enforcement agencies in emerging democracies develop capabilities to deter and detect money laundering. The United States also supports global efforts to disrupt the flow of illicit capital, track criminal sources of funds, forfeit ill-gained assets, and prosecute offenders. For example, with the assistance of Colombian law enforcement and private sector organizations, the United States has imposed economic sanctions pursuant to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act against more than four hundred businesses affiliated with Colombian criminal drug organizations. Elsewhere, U.S. experts have helped draft regulations to protect foreign financial sectors. Twenty-six nations are members of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which develops international anti-money-laundering standards and helps member nations develop regulations to protect their financial sectors. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has been working with FATF member countries to develop Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) which are central units that receive, analyze, and, where appropriate, refer suspicious or unusual financial transactions reported by financial institutions. In 1991, there were only four FIUs in the world. Today there are thirty-eight, with more under development. The goal of FIU development is to promote greater international cooperation through information sharing, using technology, training, and technical assistance.
Drug profits can also be attacked by seizing and forfeiting illegally gained assets. The Department of Justice consulted and assisted in the drafting of asset-forfeiture legislation in Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, and Uruguay. The Department of Justice also coordinates international forfeiture cases in Austria, Britain, Luxembourg, Mexico, Switzerland, and other countries. The department's Criminal Division, for example, secured a commitment from the Swiss government to seize two hundred million dollars deposited in Swiss banks by a major cocaine trafficker.
Controlling Precursor Chemicals
The twenty-two chemicals used most commonly in the production of cocaine also have extensive commercial and industrial applications. Nevertheless, we can disrupt illegal drug production if essential chemicals are difficult to obtain. The bulk of chemicals seized globally are intended for the clandestine manufacture of cocaine. Between 1990 and 1994, approximately four billion "potential dosage units" of precursors -- or the amount of precursors needed to produce as many doses -- were seized annually.36 The importance of controlling precursor chemicals has been established in international treaties and laws. For example, article 12 of the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances establishes the obligation of parties to the treaty to institute controls to prevent the diversion of chemicals from legitimate commerce to illicit drug manufacture.
The tracking of international shipments and the investigation of potentially illegal diversions are demanding tasks, yet major strides have been made in international efforts to prevent the illegal diversion of chemicals. In 1997, the United States and the European Union signed an agreement to enhance cooperation in chemical diversion control. In Brazil, the government regulates the sale of gasoline, which can be used as a precursor chemical and to fuel trafficker aircraft and boats in the Amazon region. The United States continues to urge the adoption and enforcement of chemical-control regimes by governments that do not have them or fail to enforce them. The goal is to prevent diversion of chemicals without hindering legitimate commerce.
Reducing Corruption
Corruption is a serious impediment to expanded bilateral and multilateral cooperation. The widespread existence of corruption engenders a lack of confidence among law enforcement agencies in various countriesthat might otherwise be able to attack drug-trafficking organizations by sharing information and coordinating operations. Ruthless trafficking organizations, with deep pockets for bribes and a demonstrated readiness to use violence, have penetrated the highest reaches of government in some nations. Corruption weakens the rule of law, erodes democratic institutions, and sometimes threatens the lives of officials. A decade ago, corruption was all-too-often ignored or tolerated. Today, the world's democracies are taking steps to confront the problem. The United States will continue supporting multilateral efforts to fight corruption such as the OAS Hemispheric Convention against Corruption, which was signed in 1998 by all the organization's members. At the same time, we will remain vigilant against corruption within our own institutions. Adequate resources and investigative efforts will be dedicated to ensuring full compliance with the rule of law in all counter-drug efforts. In 1999, the U.S. vice president will host a conference on corruption that will bring global focus on the serious challenge corruption poses to democratic values.
