235. United States v. Abbell, 271 F.3d at 1294. The Harvard-educated Michael Abbell, former prosecutor for the Department of Justice, was eventually convicted of money laundering for major Cali traffickers. See Chepesiuk, Drug Lords, 163.
236. The U.S. government was not alone in publicly condemning lackluster performance. In 2001 the Grupo de Acción Financiera Internacional (GAFI) blacklisted Panama for failing to cooperate against laundering, and in 2007 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development greylisted Panama for withholding financial information. “Gobierno panameño se reúne hoy con funcionarios antinarcóticos de EU,” LP (PA), 4 January 2001, 2A; “Panamá y EU firman acuerdo,” LP (PA), 1 December 2010, 1A.
237. See Lee, White Labyrinth, xiv.
238. For discussions of the certification process, see Crandall, Driven by Drugs, 38–40, and “The Process Has Become an Annual Charade,” WP (US), 21 March 1999, B3.
239. See Thoumi, “Illegal Drug Industry.”
240. For the alleged terms of one DEA deal with a British confidential informant in the ship-repair business, see Daly v. Hubner, 2001 Ch.D. 1, although note that the court merely assumed that Terence Daly was accurately testifying to his DEA arrangement.
241. Although in a single week in 1989 U.S. authorities seized fully 30 tons of cocaine, higher street prices of cocaine did not follow. Thoumi, Political Economy, 195. U.S. cocaine prices did temporarily spike after the major Tranquilandia seizure. They also rose 19 percent between February and September 2005, and wholesale prices climbed again in 2007–8. See Strong, Whitewash, 142; INCSR (2006), 104–5; and Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 315.
242. INCSR (1997), 9.
243. See INCSR (1997), 125, and INCSR (2003), 5:10. Note, however, that in supplying Canadian drug users, heroin typically arrived in Canada from Asia and cocaine via the Caribbean, not Central America, and much marijuana was produced domestically. For Medellín’s difficulties in opening a Canadian cocaine market, see Escobar, Accountant’s Story, 74.
244. “Mexico Eases Ban on Drug Possession,” WSJ (US), 22–23 August 2009, 1. In 2004 Mexico’s National Council Against Addictions reported that 1.3 million Mexicans were addicted to some illegal drug, and in 2005 that 1.68 percent of the population between twelve and sixty-five had admitted using illegal drugs in the past year, which would amount to 911,000 users. For statistics on earlier Mexican drug use, see Toro, Mexico’s “War,” 47–49.
245. Lee, “Transnational Organized Crime,” 3.
246. See Reuter, Crawford, and Cave, Sealing the Borders, v.
247. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that 8 percent of Americans twelve and over had used illegal drugs in 2009, as opposed to 8.7 percent in 2010. INCSR (2011), 13.
248. Eddy, Sabogal, and Walden, Cocaine Wars, 100, and Andreas, Border Games, 4n3. See also “The New Frontier in the War on Drugs,” U.S. News and World Report 109, 3 December 1990, 22. For U.S. transportation methods of Medellín traffickers, see United States v. Mendoza, 78 F.3d 460.
249. Shannon, Desperados, 477n15. For DEA and Customs Service estimates, see Eddy, Sabogal, and Walden, Cocaine Wars, 100. See also “Mexico Connection,” 1.
250. See Gross, Drug Smuggling, 45. A smuggler who had conducted extensive maritime operations declared, “They haven’t invented the radar yet that can tell the difference between a boat that is carrying dope and one that isn’t; they’re all blips on a screen.” Eddy, Sabogal, and Walden, Cocaine Wars, 100.
251. See the Hoglund Statement in U.S. Senate, Drug Cartels, 57.
252. While use surveys are perhaps the best data available, their utility may be questioned. Apart from the accuracy of answers, as Francisco E. Thoumi has pointed out, “Typical questions asked in those surveys are: Have you ever consumed a particular drug? Have you consumed it within the last year? Within the last month? These questions do not provide good data about frequency, patterns, and amounts consumed each time.” “Illegal Drug Industry,” 137n8.
253. INCSR (1997), 12.
254. INCSR (2000), 45.
255. “Heroin: A Growing Threat,” 1; “Heroin Seizures Have Nearly Doubled,” TT (CR), 31 October 2003, 3; INCSR (1997), 12.
256. Although quite significant in the United States, Latin American producers held only a small portion of the global heroin trade. Given enormous crops in South and Southeast Asia, the cultivation of opium poppies by Colombian and Mexican producers combined amounted in 1997 to less than 4 percent of the world’s total estimated opium-poppy production. INCSR (1998), 1–2. As detailed in the Guatemalan case study, Guatemalan production was a fraction of Mexican and Colombian.
257. INCSR (2000), 46; INCSR (1997), 3; INCSR (1999), 15; and Chappell, “Colombian Heroin Threat.”
258. For an estimate that the United States absorbed roughly two-thirds of the world’s cocaine, see United States v. Klimavicius-Viloria, 144 F.3d at 1249.
259. Zabludoff, “Colombian Narcotics Organizations,” 24.
260. Chepesiuk, Drug Lords, 64. For early activities of Colombian drug entrepreneurs in Europe, see Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 78–79. Roberto Escobar alleged that, during Colombia’s violent struggles in 1987, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela asked a Basque terrorist he had met in a Spanish prison to train Cali associates to manufacture the large bomb used to destroy Escobar’s Bogotá residence. Escobar then hired the same individual to train Medellín’s bomb makers and later trafficked cocaine into Spain using the Basque’s network. Escobar, Accountant’s Story, 164–67.
261. Mazur, Infiltrator, 77, and “Narcotráfico apunta ahora hacia Europa,” LN (CR), 12 November 1987, 28A.
262. See Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 4. For Sicilian-Colombian links, see Jordan, Drug Politics, 77–78. For a comprehensive overview of trafficking methods into the Netherlands, see Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine, 138–42. While European criminal syndicates tended to engage in numerous illegal activities, including stealing cars and running prostitution rings, Mexican and Colombian networks tended to focus on drug trafficking alone. Williams, “Transnational Criminal Networks,” 70–71.
263. See generally Zaitch, Trafficking Cocaine.
264.