ATS3462 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Arms Trafficking, Risk Society, Durable Good
28 May 2018
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Week 2 -Drugs and firearms (lecture and readings)
• Transnational Firearms trafficking
o Two primary markets:
▪ Those who need weapons for criminal purposes
- Favour handguns
▪ Those who need them for political purposes (insurgents, sanctioned states,
terrorism)
- Favour military weapons
o Both soures do’t eessarily eed to e traffiked otiuously, like drugs do
▪ Considered durable goods (will last a while)
▪ Therefore, arms trafficking is exceptional to organised crime
o Blurred borders between crime, war, and war crimes
o What happens when the war ends?
▪ More guns than soldiers cause vulnerability to future trafficking
▪ “urplus arkets
• Drugs as a global crime problem
o Globalisation: travelling across borders more commonly than they used to
o Obstructing the supply of drugs: International collaborative efforts
o Control demand for drugs: National governments
o Very high profits drug traffickers can find a way to meet demand for drugs.
o To ponder: what if drugs were decriminalized, e.g. the profits were no longer there?
• Threat to public health, safety and security
o Developing countries becoming transit points for international trafficking
o Traffickers develop a market in these transit points
• Drug traffickers
o Opportunistic
o Market new drugs
o Seek new routes to smuggle drugs
o Seek new partners -among organized crime groups in different countries
o Exploit new manufacturing and communication technologies
o Recruit vulnerable individuals into the work of trafficking
o Find ways to launder the proceedings
Prevention?????
• The war on drugs
o No evidence that the global drug problem was reduced (1998-2007)
o Successful crackdowns on street-level markets, but not higher-level markets
o But if interdiction efforts were not in place, drug supply and use may have increased
o Not the best idea
▪ Globalisation:
▪ Neoliberalism:
▪ The risk society:
o Genius of drug cartels
▪
o As long as there is demand, and the reward for supply is great, there will be people
willing to supply
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Document Summary
Week 2 -drugs and firearms (lecture and readings: transnational firearms trafficking, two primary markets, those who need weapons for criminal purposes. Favour handguns: those who need them for political purposes (insurgents, sanctioned states, terrorism) How do we stop the illegal drug trade: make private jets also go through customs, reduce demand, threat for drug use, education, corporation between international communities, neoliberism -encouraging the user than the supplier. International corporation that controls the war on drugs: taking it as a health care issue instead of requiring a punitive response. And why can the demand from these sources often be met without international trafficking: criminal, political, cause guns can be brought in legally, cause guns are durable goods. What happens to the weapons after a war is over: surplus weapons more likely to create a market, they can be taken and not accounted for.
