History
Addictive drugs were first prohibited in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An Illegal Drug Trade emerged during the 19th century; China retaliated with imports of opium, and two Opium Wars broke out. In the First Opium War, the Chinese authorities had banned opium, but the United Kingdom forced China to allow British merchants to trade opium with the general population. Smoking opium had become common in the 19th century, and British merchants increased their trade with the Chinese. Trading in opium was (as it is today in the heroin trade) extremely lucrative. As a result of this illegal trade, an estimated two million Chinese people became addicted to the drug. The British Crown (via the treaties of Nanking and Tianjin) took vast sums of money from the Chinese government through this illegal trade, which they referred to as "reparations".
Because drugs traded on the black market can provide a secretive source of money, they have long been used by organizations such as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to fund covert operations and proxy wars. CIA involvement in heroin trafficking began with the French Connection in Marseille and continued with anti-Communist operations in Southeast Asia. More recently, the CIA has used cocaine as a medium to launder money in Central America (allegedly as part of the Iran–Contra affair).
Read more about this topic: Drug Traffickers
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