Business Ethics

Business Ethics

Introduction

The trade of drugs has existed for as long as the drugs themselves have existed. However, the trade of drugs was fully legal until the introduction of drug prohibition. The history of the illegal drug trade is thus closely tied to the history of drug prohibition.

In the First Opium War, Great Britain attempted to force China to allow British merchants to trade in opium with the general population of China. Although illegal by imperial decree, smoking opium was common in the 1800s and was believed to cure many health problems.

Legal drugs can be the subject of smuggling and illegal trading if the price difference between the origin and the destination are high enough to make it profitable, due to high taxes or other restrictions in the destination locale. If a large price difference exists without legal restrictions, then legal trade of drugs can take place between the two markets.

The U.S. government's most recent 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12-17 sold illegal drugs during the 12 months preceding the survey. The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.7% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).

Discussion

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally-funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana “easy to obtain.” That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.

Some prescription drugs are also available by illegal means, eliminating the need to manufacture and process the drugs. For example, prescription opioids such as the group of the fentanyl analogues are much stronger than heroin found on the street. They are sourced either from stolen or partly divided prescriptions sold by medical practices and occasionally from Internet sale. Benzodiazepines, in particular temazepam and flunitrazepam, are also frequently diverted to the black market through forged prescriptions, pharmacy robberies and doctor shopping. In Malaysia and Singapore, there occurs similar diversion of nimetazepam. However, it is much easier to control traffic in prescription drugs than in banned drugs because the manufacturer is usually an originally legal enterprise and thus the leak can often be readily found and countered.

There might also be an advantage in reduced risk of contaminated or poor to outright toxic produce common with illegal clandestine laboratory production.

"No Prescription Websites" (NPWs) offer to sell controlled substances without a valid prescription. NPWs were first recognized by the U.S. Justice Department in 1999, indicating that such sites had been operating at least through the late ...