Cocaine
The topic for my research is the production and distribution of cocaine in South America. South America and especially in the areas of Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia are dominated by cartels that rule the drug trade, and are responsible for over 80% of the production and distribution of cocaine in the world. I choose this topic because I felt it was appropriate to talk about because cocaine dominates the South American economy and "The international illicit drug business generates as much as $400 billion in trade annually in according to the United Nations International Drug Control Program. That amounts to 8% of all international trade,"(according to United Nations Office for Drug Abuse and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking). The question that I am going to focus on is, "Is it possible to stop the production of cocaine and the trafficking of this illicit drug out of South America and into United States?" For someone who is not familiar with what cocaine is, it is simple the most potent natural stimulant which stems from the Andes Mountain area. There are three stages for the production of cocaine. The first stage for production is extracting coca paste from the plant; these areas for extracting the pa
ste normally are located close to where the coca plant is grown. The second stage is "Refining that coca paste into cocaine hydrochloride a lethal concentrate that is diluted with substances such as sugar, or flour before being sold on the street,"(Geography Realms, Regions, and concepts,) according to our text book. The final stage is simply trying to get a way for the cocaine to enter areas for distribution and trafficking it onto the streets, wherever that may be. Usually this is a multi step process of delivering the cocaine in large quantities to areas closer to its destination and then broken down into smaller amounts to make easier for it entering the areas for distribution. This three-step process is highly illegal and highly complex. As I have mentioned before the areas of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are the world leaders in the production and distribution of cocaine. The coca plant derives from South America and these areas in my map fig. 1-1; the green areas are the heavy growing areas, along the Andes Mountains and river valleys. In these countries they are dominated by "bribery of politicians, threats of terrorism, and alliances with guerrilla groups outlying zones beyond governmental control," according to the textbook for our class. All of these areas are controlled by guerrilla terrorists, and are sponsored by the billion dollar a year leaders in the drug trade, which makes it very difficult to overrun in these areas since their governing bodies are weak along with very weak economies that are dominated by agricultural societies. The production of cocaine is estimated to be over 600 million tons in these areas shown in my map fig. 1-1. Once the cocaine is produced its faces a very complex way of getting into the United States, which is its biggest market. These cartels will prepare the shipments of cocaine to go through several multi-step routes involving staging
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1282
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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