How Do Illicit Drugs Move Across Countries? A Network Analysis of the Heroin Supply to Europe

Abstract

Illicit drugs are trafficked across manifold borders before ultimately reaching consumers. Consequently, interdiction of cross-border drug trafficking forms a critical component of the European Union's initiative to reduce drug supplies. However, there is contradictory evidence about its effectiveness, which is due, in part, to a paucity of information about how drugs flow across borders. This study uses a network approach to analyze international drug trafficking both to and within Europe, drawing on several perspectives to delineate the factors that affect how drug shipments move across borders. The analysis explicates how drug trafficking is concentrated along specific routes; moreover, we demonstrate that its structure is not random but, rather, driven by specific factors. In particular, corruption and social and geographical proximity are key factors explaining the configuration of heroin supply to European countries. This study also provides essential insights into the disruption of traffickers' illicit activities.

The Global Waste Trafficking and Its Correlates

“…5 Yet, plausible differences between countries’ interception capacities and quality of statistical reporting call for prudence in the use of these data for econometric analyses. In consideration of this, following the examples set by other scholars who faced similar challenges (Boivin, 2013; Giommoni et al, 2017), we exclusively focus on the presence or absence of a connection. In other words, information is used solely for the purposes of identifying the pairs of countries exporting and importing illicit waste with each other and, in turn, to establish the position of each country in the global IWT network.…”

“…Based on the previous studies that have investigated transnational and international crimes at the macrolevel, we selected variables capable of representing the insecure political and socioeconomic status of importing countries (operationalization of factors related to Hypothesis 1) (e.g., Aziani, 2020;Goel & Saunoris, 2019), the presence of a prior colonial relationship between countries (Hypothesis 3) (e.g., Berlusconi et al, 2017;Giommoni et al, 2017), geographical distance between countries (Hypothesis 4) (e.g., Aziani et al, 2019;Boivin, 2014), and a synthetic index-that is, KOF Trade Globalization (de facto) Index-of the relevance and heterogeneity of the international trade in goods and services (Hypothesis 5) (e.g., Landman & Silverman, 2020). Hypotheses 2 and 6 concern the production and recycling of waste and the regulation and judiciary system that provides oversight over the waste industry, respectively; their testing relies on the use of information emerging from the web portal of the Basel Convention (UNEP & Basel Convention, 2019), from the What a Waste project by the World Bank (2019b), on a report carried out by the Environmental Law Institute (2019) on behalf of the UN Environment Programme, and on more classical structural variables-that is, population density, population size, control of corruption, and rule of law-whose data come from the World Bank (2019a).…”

“…The present study aims to empirically identify the sociodemographic, economic, geographical, and regulatory factors that influence the connections between those countries in the transnational IWT network. Building upon the work of recent studies that have utilized advances in statistical modeling of social networks to identify the factors that influence the structure of the illicit trafficking networks for goods, such as drugs (e.g., Berlusconi et al, 2017; Boivin, 2014; Giommoni et al, 2017), or radiological and nuclear material (e.g., Sin & Boyd, 2016), the main research question underpinning this study is: What are the main correlates of the transnational IWT network at a global level?…”

“…Migration, common language, and past colonial relationships have all been noted as social factors that enhance legal trade (Prashantham et al, 2015; Rauch, 1999; Sgrignoli et al, 2015). Giommoni and colleagues (2017) found that social proximity is also of critical importance in the illegal trade of heroin. The results of their study showed that both migration flows and common language affect the way that heroin moves between countries.…”

“…Indeed, studies have highlighted the negative effect of geographical distance on the legal trade of goods (Disdier & Head, 2008). With all else held equal, heroin and marijuana trafficking have also been shown to experience the same negative effect, insofar as traffickers operating in the illegal economy face a far higher exposure to risk of interception and arrest over long distances (Caulkins & Bond, 2012; Giommoni et al, 2017). In the case of transnational IWT, we thus expect a negative correlation between geographical distance and the trade of illicit waste.…”