The key to the horror of drug trafficking can be found in the following figures, as they were given out by the former Colombian Fiscal Gustavo de Greiff: a kilo of processed cocaine fetches about $2,000 in Colombia whilst in the US it sells for $60,000.
From $2,000 to $60,000 is an incredible profit margin, but between these two figures is hidden the biggest surprise: how is this windfall shared? Crossing the US border, bribing customs, sea and airport, and other officials costs $3500 per kilo of cocaine -- cocaine recently arrived in the US costs some $5500 per kilo.
You have noticed that the North American authorities denounce as forcefully as they can the numerous sorties of small planes which leave from the clandestine airports in San Andres, Mexico, Panama, etc. What they don't--or at least badly--detect are the landings made by these same planes inside the U.S. borders.
A part of this $3500 transportation cost is obviously used to blind radar systems and to get information about U.S. spy plane movement and to pay customs people on the US border to see, hear and say nothing. So let's say we now have our $5500 kilo of cocaine in the US. This same kilo will fetch usually $20,000 in the U.S. Such a splendid profit margin we can suppose, in many cases, ends up in the pockets of Colombian, Mexican or other foreign drug traffickers.
Up to this point the DEA has got things right: the big Colombian drug barons, and others, are doing big business producing and transporting white powder from the impoverished South of the continent to the rich paradise in the North.
But the next stage in the deal is so surprising that it should lead the DEA and other anti-Colombian hawks to hold their tongues in check. This stage is where the North Americans, having bought their $20,000 kilo of cocaine, set in train the business of selling it via a chain of intermediaries for the phenomenal sum of $60,000.
A kilo of cocaine leaves $40,000 in the pockets of the North American dealers and only $20,000 go to those abominable Latin drug barons. What a surprise. These figures, which are only statistical approximations and cannot be applied to each and every transaction reveal the horror of it all: the big share of drug trafficking is North American and by extension, for sure, the big drug barons are North American.
And where are they? You may ask yourself if there have been any stories of any big North American drug traffickers being arrested. Where are the Al Capones of the New York, Chicago and Bronx drug scenes? Where are today's incorruptibles? Silence.
The U.S. prisons are seething with hundreds of thousands of blacks,latinos and other rejects, arrested for selling a few grams in bars and alleyways. But the gringo barons: where are they?
If these statistics come near the reality--and they do--in the U.S. they have their own Escobares and Orejueleas -- and they go unpunished. And as you know impunity costs money (remember Al Capone) and this impunity is bought with some of the $40,000 per kilo profit which the North Americans get. That is to say hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars must, in the U.S., end up in the pockets of a multitude of officials on the dole who are paid to shut up. Al Capone multiplied by a thousand.
So, when we are castigated with the news that some small amounts of drugs have found their way to one or another political candidate, we can sleep easy.
If we have a few skeletons in our closets to be aware of, our neighbor in the North, the big Colombia-badmouther, is up to his eyeballs in it. Hypocrisy. And a hypocrisy which we pay for in blood whilst they pick up the dollars.