Introduction

Throughout the eighties, the traffic of illegal drugs has emerged as a an important issue of international economics and politics, while the specialized literature and the media have devoted more and more attention to the problem.

Why?

There seem to be two main reasons for this: an actual increase in the production and trade of narcotics on a global scale; the political resolve of the Reagan and Bush administrations to oppose the phenomenon with greater determination (1).

Consistently with their previous initiatives on the subject, the United States has immediately tried to mobilize the international community, using pressure on the countries of origin of the raw materials so as to make them discontinue or reduce the production; stimulating the consuming countries to enact a common action to ban the traffic and curb consumption. As of the Paris summit in 1989, the drug issue has thus become an important subject of discussion in the G-7, which has in particular dealt with a number of financial aspects, such as money laundering, and commercial aspects, such as the control of the transfers of chemical agents used to process opium derivatives and coca leaf. Specific research groups have been formed also in the European Community (Pompidou Group) and at the level of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). The U.N. agencies on drugs have been reorganized, while a new International Convention was added in 1988, to the two previous ones in the field of narc

otics.

As with similar wide-ranging terms, the drug trade also includes a variety of problems. Problems pertaining to their definition: understanding what should be meant by drugs. Medical and pharmacological problems: unlike what we are lead to believe, there are very few certainties as to the individual and social effects of narcotics. Normative problems, or paradigmatic ones: is it fair, appropriate and feasible to ban the production, trade and consumption of certain psychoactive substances? Problems of contiguity or confusion with other major political and economic issues: debt, underdevelopment and democracy in the Third World; drug dependency, crime and personal liberties in the developed countries. Problems of measurement: are the estimates on the drug traffickers' turnover, or the ones on the consumers and their behaviour toward drugs, plausible?

As far as possible, this list of problems represents the basis for this paper's structure. The first and second chapter mean to afford a definition of drugs and to describe the international regime regulating them. The third chapter, which accounts for most of the paper, analyses the phenomenon from the point of view of the producing countries. The fourth chapter essentially consists in a critical review of the estimates on the drug trade's global turnover and on the Italian one. Italy appears so to say as a study of the case, for the sole reason that the author is Italian and currently lives in Rome. The conclusions suggests further possible fields of investigation. Not incidentally, these concern precisely an aspect neglected by this paper: the domestic policies of the consuming countries.

Lastly, the acknowledgments: to the Green Group of the European Parliament, for having financed the research; to the staff of the USIS American Library, Rome, and to the library of the CeSPI for their kind and efficient co-operation.

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(1) Expenses for the U.S. anti-drug policy have increased from $1,7 billion in 1981 to $11,7 billion in 1992. Cf. National Drug Control Strategy, The White House, February 1991, pages 133-5.