France Info public radio reviewed a new book by Matthieu Verboud and Christophe Bouquet titled Narcotrafic, le poison de l’Europe, or Narcotraffic, the Poison in Europe.
While youngsters hooked into drug trafficking increasingly kill each other in most French cities, the book “reminds us what we sometimes forget: drug trafficking did not develop in Europe, despite individual states; it was established by a state, in this case, the Netherlands,” writes France Info.
Hence, “to understand the dynamics of this traffic today, we must go back four centuries, when the Netherlands was still called the Republic of the United Provinces. It was a trading empire, the world’s leading economic power at that time, with colonies all over the world and a strategy: to import a continuous flow of goods into Europe for resale.”
That ostensibly “laid the foundations of modern capitalism. It could apply to any commodity, as long as it made money.” Amidst sugar, tobacco, cocoa, and tulips, the Dutch “first took over the opium trade in the 17th century, then moved on to cocaine.” It should be remembered “that in the 19th century, cocaine consumption was legal in Europe. The Netherlands took advantage of this to sell dozens of tons of it to the English and German armies during the First World War.
“But after the war, everything changed: International regulations banned the free sale of narcotics. The effect was immediate: Legally created markets became illegal. This marked the emergence of drug trafficking as we know it today. A traffic that still passes largely through the Netherlands. Ultimately, the economic model has remained the same, from the merchants who made the fortune of the Netherlands to the mafia groups now based in Dubai: A continuous flow of goods must be brought in to constantly meet demand, especially for the goods that bring in the most money—today, cocaine.”
Conclusion: “This is capitalist logic taken to its extreme, with a market that knows no regulation. Faced with this … states can, for example, attempt to reinstate some regulation, as Germany and Canada have done with the legalization of cannabis. But above all, they must seriously tackle money laundering, which, as the authors say, is a ‘pillar of globalized capitalism.’”
