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InvisibleBridgeburner
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How much do drug pushers make?
    #8069021 - 02/25/08 04:00 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

http://www.newsday.co.tt/commentary/0,73896.html

Over the past few weeks “criminals” have grabbed headlines in a number of countries. There has been the two massacres in Guyana underlining the vulnerability of villages. The public disclosure around the Guyana massacres illustrates how “race” becomes the No 1 suspect, once there is anti social behaviour in a society fractured along lines of “race.” But it also illustrates that capturing guns from police and army need not be the act of modern Robin Hoods, nor yet the political acts of revolution.

It can be simply criminal. It is for this reason that the demand that the police in Trinidad and Tobago be granted revolvers even when off duty, will not necessarily protect them from gun attacks. On the contrary it will increase the number of guns in circulation and therefore their availability. The Cosa Nostra has re-emerged in New York posing questions about the long-term efficiency of the policing of the 1990's. It also suggests that the family loyalty necessary for gangs which are family based – as is the Cosa Nostra – to survive, has not always been affected by today’s individualism.

This in turn puts in question the suggestion that gang criminality here follows from the supposed breakdown of the family. This should in any case have been questioned given the number of family members known to have been in the same gang here in Trinidad and Tobago – the Sandy brothers being a good example.

This is not to say that the studies done by Professor Deosoran are wrong. These studies revealed that the majority of teenagers in prison, were from one parent homes of African descent – Catholic and only partly literate. The problem is that these findings confirmed what our Victorian morality teaches us to suspect.



Drug Lord and Drug Peddler

Concerns over drugs and crime became concerns over the family, the absence of the father and over that lack of values often associated with the poor. It was assumed that drug trafficking was always highly lucrative and that the drug peddler was wasting his money on expensive clothes and sneakers.

Little difference was made between what was called the “Drug Lords” and the little pusher. Both were supposed to be making enormous fortunes. Sale of drugs was also supposed to be the same as consumption of drugs. Since it was in working class areas that the sale of drugs was most visible, interest in drugs became interest in crime in working class areas. While the supposition that all who sold drugs were wealthy, eliminated poverty from the drug-crime scenario.

Well just about a fortnight ago, the results of French studies done by L’Observatoire Francaise des Drogues et des toxicomanies were published. The results of these studies put in question much of our “knowledge” about drugs, crime and profits.



Who consumes marijuana?

The French studies found that taking one month in 2005 in the age group 18 to 64, 92.6 percent of French men and French women drank alcohol; 79 percent smoked; 30.7 percent took marijuana; 2.8 percent took cocaine; 2.0 percent took ecstasy and 1.6 percent took LSD. Almost half of the French adult population therefore had consumed marijuana during one month in 2005. Where, however, the age-group was taken as 15 years to 64 years, the national average falls to 8.6 percent. If only the youth of 17 years of age is taken, the national average jumps to 41.3 percent if that is measured as having consumed marijuana at least once in the month, 10.8 percent regularly (more than ten times in a month) and daily 5.2 percent.

Between 15 and 17 years old there is therefore a major increase in the numbers consuming marijuana. In the case of men, the percentage taking marijuana continues to increase until 30 years old, where it reaches 59 percent. It declines to 53 percent between 30 and 34 years old, to 48 percent between 35 and 39 years old, to 17 between 50 and 54 years old and drops to 6 percent of Frenchmen over 64 years old. In the case of women, 24 percent are using marijuana between 15 and 19 years old and 30 percent between 20 and 24 years old.

This is the peak of feminine use. Use declines to 21 percent between 25 years and 29 years old, 7 percent between 40 and 44 years old, and 1 percent between 50 and 54 years old and none over 64 years old. Marijuana consumption then is mainly a young people’s occupation.

In the case of Europe, seventy million Europeans admit to “trying” marijuana at least once in their life time.

How do these figures and particularly the figures in for France, compare with use in Trinidad and Tobago? We do not know. Observation however suggests that the profile of marijuana consumption in Trinidad and Tobago shares a number of characteristics with Europe. (a) Marijuana is the drug of choice for most Trinis. (b) Drug users are recruited first and largely from teenagers. (c) It remains a “youth” drug with consumption falling with age. (d) Fewer females “smoke” than do males, (e) Use is across the board of class or of race.



Dissuading sellers?

What does this consumption mean in monetary terms? According to the branch of the French people charged with the repression of the traffic of illegal drugs and substances, the yearly demand in France for marijuana is 208 tons. It is calculated that the sale of marijuana amounts to between 746 and 832 million Euros a year. How efficient is the policy of seizure and destruction? Well in 2006 the French police seized the equivalent of 1.9 million Euros of marijuana – about 2 percent of the supposed value of the drug market. This percentage is hardly likely to dissuade the sellers of marijuana.

France in this is not different to other European countries. In spite of highly mediatised confiscation of this or that major drug haul, in spite of raids, mainly in slum or ghetto areas, only a small percentage of drugs are confiscated in any country. We can assume that the same is true here.

It should be noted that France is not a major transit country. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago the percentage needed to dissuade sellers of marijuana or cocaine must be calculated according to the total needed for both internal consumption and for export. My guess is that we are nowhere near to that.



Who gets the money?

This drug trafficking is profitable – very profitable. We would be wrong, however, to see anyone selling marijuana – and the same is true of cocaine – as making a lot of money. The French economist, Ben Lakhdar, estimates that the number of semi-wholesalers of marijuana in France is 689 to 1,504. These can hope to make between 253,000 Euros or two million and twenty-four thousand TT dollars to 552,000 Euros or four million four hundred and sixteen TT dollars a year for 138 to 302 kilos per year. What Ben Lakhdar calls the “first intermediary” – between 6,000 and 13,000 persons – also makes a tidy profit. This may be as much as 77,000 Euros or about TT$616,000 a year for between 16 and 35 kilos.

The “dealer” on the road, or the fourth intermediary, however, makes very little – approximately the minimum wage in France per month, ie between 4,500 Euros or TT$35,000 a year and 10,000 Euros or TT$80,000 per year. Translate this into a TT monthly wage, the ordinary “dealer” is making less than TT$3,000 – TT$6,300 per month in France. It may well be less here. It has been known that the drug mule or the little pusher makes little money. This confirms it.

It is the little dealer who is likely to be arrested by the police in France or here. He or she is more likely to be harassed and more likely to be subject to gang wars and to be part of turf protection.

Ben Lakhdar writes that this finding goes against popular prejudices “against the youth of the City, sometimes associated to the major deals and seen as rolling in money.” Professor Kipp, economist specialising in drugs adds that drug areas do not benefit from the trade. They are increasingly impoverished! “The benefits of this criminal economy is inferior to its social costs.” It is not surprising that drug crime is associated not only with poverty, but with marginalisation.


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OfflinementalIMAGE
21st Century Schizoid Man
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Registered: 04/29/06
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Re: How much do drug pushers make? [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #8069524 - 02/25/08 06:21 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

It's articles like these that make me avoid Shroomery News sometimes.


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We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we're in the present, but we aren't. The present we know is only a movie of the past.
Ken Kesey


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Offlinebiggysmall
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Registered: 04/27/07
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Re: How much do drug pushers make? [Re: mentalIMAGE]
    #8069944 - 02/25/08 08:10 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

this is one of the many reasons marijuana should be legal..... money is diverted from the criminals and into the countries economy(in the case of the U.S, the money is used to kill peasants in foreign countries) but thats besides the point.


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