IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v582y2002i1p102-116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Illegal Drugs in Colombia: From Illegal Economic Boom to Social Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco E. Thoumi

    (Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University)

Abstract

During the past thirty years, the illegal drug industry has marked Colombia's development. In no other country has the illegal drug industry had such dramatic social, political, and economic effects. This short article provides a synthesis of the development of the marijuana, coca-cocaine, and poppy-opium-heroin illegal industries. It studies the development of the drug cartels and marketing networks and the participation of guerrillas and paramilitary forces in the industry. The size of the illegal industry and its economic effects are also surveyed and its effects on the political system analyzed. The article ends with a discussion of the evolution of government policies and social attitudes toward the industry. The article shows that in the early years, the illegal industry was perceived by many as positive, how it evolved so that today it provides substantial funding for the country's ambiguous war, and that it is one of the main obstacles to peace.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco E. Thoumi, 2002. "Illegal Drugs in Colombia: From Illegal Economic Boom to Social Crisis," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 582(1), pages 102-116, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:582:y:2002:i:1:p:102-116
    DOI: 10.1177/000271620258200108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271620258200108
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/000271620258200108?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert MacCoun & Peter Reuter, 2002. "PREFACE The Varieties of Drug Control at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 582(1), pages 7-19, July.
    2. Nicole Stoelinga, 2024. "Cultivation and competition in Colombia: Disentangling the effects of coca price changes on violence," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(2), pages 1007-1042, March.
    3. Valentina Duque, 2024. "Violence and Children’s Education: Evidence From Administrative Data," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 68(5), pages 903-937, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:582:y:2002:i:1:p:102-116. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.