How much money is trafficked in cocaine in Argentina?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – An official study estimated the volume of trafficking of this drug and marijuana; the direction of spending on prevention and the fight against drug trafficking in the country.

As with all business that takes place outside the legality, the figures are not entirely accurate, but rather estimates.

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However, there are national and international studies that allow an approximation of this phenomenon, which has become topical again after the death of 20 people due to the consumption of adulterated cocaine in Greater Buenos Aires.

The former Undersecretary for Combating Drug Trafficking, Martín Verrier, indicated to Infobae that the last study on the subject dates back to 2017 and states that approximately US$1.1 billion was turned over; of the total, marijuana business accounted for US$500 million and cocaine business for US$218 million.

Globally, drug trafficking generates about US$400 billion to US$600 billion per year, or 10% of world trade, according to the United Nations.

The study was conducted to learn how high the demand is and what percentage of the total volume is seized by security forces. In 2021, it should have been repeated, but it did not materialize.

“At that time, it was estimated that an average user consumes 8.4 grams of cocaine per month, which is equivalent to 100 grams per year. To this must be added what Argentina sends to other countries, although it has been clear for several years that Argentina is a target country, one of the most important in the region,” the expert explained.

In addition, the report noted that between 2016 and 2018, the value of cocaine increased by 300%, which “has a relatively stable purity level and moves on the street.”

However, he clarified that “out of 2842 samples, the cocaine content could only be detected in 107 cases, because the rest were so bad that we could not do it” due to the presence of other substances such as painkillers, which were used to “lower the cocaine content.”

The former official explained, “It was not common for them to be adulterated with substances like those mentioned in yesterday’s case, because the drug trafficker, even if he wants to attack a rival gang, doesn’t do that because it affects the whole market.”

In 2017, there were 132 thousand users of cocaine per month and more than one million of marijuana.

“Since 2019, with the economic crisis and capital restrictions, there is a greater restriction on the quality of cocaine,” he elaborated. Considering that inflation has increased 54% in 2019, 36% in 2020, and 51% in 2021, this problem has certainly worsened.

Regarding the eternal economic debate about whether it is better to leave the drug business in total illegality or to partially legalize it to improve prevention and make better use of public resources – which has even been discussed by several Nobel Prize winners in economics – the expert said that “it is an endless debate, but control strategies can improve the situation of addicts if states have the capacity to accompany them, as is the case in some European countries.”

NARCO-ECONOMY

Meanwhile, UBA economist Andrés López pointed out in his study, “Narcoeconomics,” that the last global estimate was from 2003 and “yielded a figure of US$320 billion (total retail sales), or about 0.8% of global GDP.”

“Subsequent estimates, which focused on the United States and the European Union, suggest that this figure was probably exaggerated, because while illicit drug spending in the United States represents about 0.7% of GDP, in the European Union it is just 0.2%. In Argentina, there are official estimates for marijuana and cocaine that suggest retail sales of 11 billion pesos in 2017 (0.1% of GDP), although they may suffer from certain methodological problems, including the fact that they do not control for under-reporting,” said the Ph.D. in Economics and BA in Economics from FCE-UBA, who heads the Transformation Research Center (CENIT).