| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
GLOBALIZATION AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION help to erase economic distinctions between nations and continents, eliminate trade barriers and offer broad opportunities for further progress. It is unfortunate, however, that these changes in international relations and state systems are being skillfully used in drug trafficking, which has taken on transnational proportions. As a reflection of these opportunities, it is to a certain extent both a cause and an effect of important changes in global politics and economics.
A number of experts in Russia and elsewhere see many factors that help transnational drug trafficking to have such great influence on today's world.
The first factor is the political and economic instability in some countries. The organized drug-related crime weakens the protective functions of systems that form the state and government institutions and worsens the crisis in these countries through the use of considerable sums from drug trafficking for attaining political and economic objectives and through instigating and maintaining ethnic conflicts.
Furthermore, there are either no laws or there are flawed laws, or the observance of laws is not monitored while the socioeconomic problems worsen and there are corrupt officials accepting kickbacks from drug traffickers. In their attempts to keep their business and evade punishment, drug dealers stoke up corruption by funneling a large proportion of their proceeds into bribing officials, obtaining the necessary information and creating conditions for laundering the money made through drug trafficking.
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