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Narco-state (also narco-capitalism or narco-economy) is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions State capture by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade. The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers.
The term is often seen as ambiguous because of the differentiation between narco-states. The overall description would consist of illegal organisations that either produce, ship or sell drugs and hold a grip on the legitimate institutions through force, bribery or blackmail. This situation can arise in different forms. For instance, Colombia, where drug lord Pablo Escobar ran the Medellín Cartel (named after his birthplace) during most of the 1970s and 1980s, producing and trafficking cocaine to the United States of America. Escobar managed to take over control of most of the police forces in Medellín and surrounding areas through bribery and coercion, allowing him to expand his drug trafficking business.
Currently, scholars argue that the term "narco-state" is oversimplified because of the underlying networks running the drug trafficking organisations. For example, the Guadalajara Cartel in Mexico, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, who managed to combine several small drug trafficking families into one overarching cartel controlling the marijuana production in the rural areas of Mexico while trafficking Colombian cocaine to the US at the same time.
Over time, the cocaine market expanded to Europe, leading to new routes being discovered from Colombia through Brazil or Venezuela and Western Africa. These new routes proved to be more profitable and successful than shipping from North America and turned African states such as Nigeria, Ghana, and (later on) Guinea-Bissau into actual narco-states. While cocaine was transported through Western Africa, the Taliban produced opium in the rural areas of Afghanistan using the revenues to fund their guerrilla war. Despite American and NATO efforts to impose laws on the Afghan opium production, the early 2000s incumbent Afghan governments shielded the opium trade from foreign policies as much as possible. As of 2024, Syria's Assad regime was regarded as the world's largest narco-state, with an estimated global Captagon export worth 30-57 billion dollars annually. Revenue from the illicit drug exports accounted for around 90% of the revenue of the Assad regime.
Ongoing discussions divide scholars into separate groups either claiming or disclaiming the resemblance between narco-states and failed states. Depending on which properties are assigned to the definition of a failed state, the definition is in accordance with the narco-state. While most narco-states show signs of high rates of corruption, violence and murder, properties that are also assigned to failed states, it is not always clear if violence can be traced back to drug trafficking.
However, recent use of the term narco-state has been questioned by some for being too widely and uncritically applied, particularly following the widespread media attention given to Guinea-Bissau as "the world's first narco-state" in 2008, and should instead refer only to those countries in which the narcotics trade is state-sponsored and constitutes the majority of a country's overall GDP.
Johnny Briceño, elected prime minister of Belize in 2020, is the son of Elijio "Don Joe" Briceño, who in 1985 was convicted of trafficking marijuana and cocaine into the United States. Two others members of the Briceño family were also indicted, with prosecutors describing the clan as operating a "family marijuana business".
In 1980, General Luis García Meza overthrew President Lidia Gueiler Tejada in a bloody coup d'état allegedly aided by drug cartels. The dictatorship of García Meza was very well known for its state sponsored drug trafficking activities. García Meza's regime oversaw Bolivia's 13-month period of isolation. The Reagan administration distanced themselves from García Meza's regime and halted some aid to Bolivia due to the regime's relationship with drug cartels. García Meza's time in office was short-lived as he was overthrown and replaced by General Celso Torrelio. García Meza was convicted in absentia for his human rights violations in Bolivia, and he was later extradited from Brazil in 1995 and sentenced to serve 30 years in a Bolivian prison. His collaborator, Colonel Luis Arce Gómez, was extradited to the United States to serve his sentence for drug trafficking in a United States federal prison.
The 1980s coup was said to have been financed by Bolivia's most notorious drug baron, Roberto Suárez Gómez. Suárez Gómez was the founder of La Corporación, a Bolivian drug cartel tied to Pablo Escobar's Medellín Cartel. The organization was founded in the 1970s and mainly focused in Santa Cruz de la Sierra; it amassed $400 million annually. The cocaine shipped from the Bolivian Amazon to Colombia was valued at $9,000 per kilogram. In 1988, Suárez Gómez was arrested by the Bolivian National Police and sentenced to 15 years in prison; his nephew Jorge Roca Suárez continued his business until his arrest in 1990.
Former president Jair Bolsonaro's family has been linked to so called "milícias", composed of police officers and other government officials engaged in narcotrafic. One of aides, who has been charged a 2 million euro fine over cocaine transportation, is being investigated for using an official airplane and the president's credit card for drug-trafficking. During the presidential election of 2022, Bolsonaro supporters made claims regarding Lula's alleged links to criminal factions.
Other politicians, such as former president Fernando Collor de Mello, have been investigated for mobster relations.
The Medellin Cartel was once the largest drug cartel operating in Colombia, led by Pablo Escobar which focused its operations in the city of Medellin. Most of the imported drugs are originated from countries like Bolivia and Peru which were later processed in Colombia. The Medellín Cartel gained prominence in the 1980s when the cartel amassed $60 million worth of fortune from drug trade to the United States, mainly focused on Florida, New York, and California. This caused the United States government to sign an extradition treaty with Colombia. Escobar's business empire was known for its "reign of terror" as the cartel staged numerous kidnappings, assassinations and bombings around Colombia to ensure its business continuity. Pablo Escobar was shot to death by police in 1993; after the death of Pablo Escobar, the Medellín Cartel began to decline which eventually led to its disbandment. The disbandment of the Medellín Cartel has led to the other three major cartels, especially the Cali Cartel, to seize the opportunity to expand their trade routes.
During the drug war, major Colombian cartels were known to be influencing Colombian politicians and warlords alike. In order to flex his muscle, Escobar went to politics and ran as candidate for the Chamber of Representatives under the banner of the Liberal Alternative. However Escobar's ambition in politics was later thwarted after knowledge of his criminal activity was exposed to the representatives, which forced him to resign. This event become the root cause of the assassination of justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. In contrast to the Medellín Cartel, the Cali Cartel adopted a more subtle approach on influencing local politicians. In 1994, the outgoing president Ernesto Samper was involved in the Proceso 8000 scandal in which he was accused of being funded by drug money, allegedly from the Cali Cartel for his campaign in the 1994 Colombian presidential election. The scandal caused then US president Bill Clinton to cut Colombian aid and later revoke Samper's visa.
In 2023, Nicolas Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro was arrested for a money laundering case. Petro was accused of taking money from drug traffickers to fund his peace effort and presidential campaign which he would later deny. Nicolas Petro would later be told Semana that he and his father were not aware about the money he received was coming from drug traffickers.
In April 2021, Greek authorities seized four tonnes of cannabis hidden in dessert-making machinery at Piraeus, which was en route from Lebanon to Slovakia. In the same month, 5.3 million Captagon pills hidden in fruits imported from Lebanon were seized by authorities in Saudi Arabia. In May 2021, Lebanese authorities confiscated cocaine hidden in Makdous, destined for Australia. In the same month, Lebanese customs at Beirut Airport seized 60 tonnes of hashish, intended to be exported to the Netherlands.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the drug trade in Mexico accelerated. Before the 1980s most of Mexico produced marijuana and a small amount of heroin. Cocaine mostly reached the US through the Bahamas and the Caribbean. After the US shut down the routes that entered the state of Florida, Colombian drug cartels established a partnership with Mexican traffickers, finding new routes by which to smuggle cocaine over land into North America. A few small Mexican cartels merged into the Guadalajara cartel, led by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. The Guadalajara cartel trafficked the cocaine produced by the Colombian Calí cartel, while expanding marijuana production in rural areas of Mexico.
The US established a special force, named the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to fight a war on drugs within their own borders and beyond. The DEA office in Mexico received extra resources to investigate the murder of one of their own agents, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, who was abducted, tortured and murdered by a state police officer paid by members of the cartel. Their investigation confirmed the corruption that gripped Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. However, not only police officers on the payroll obeyed Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and his cartel. Investigations show transactions to high officers in the federal government, such as the Federal Directorate of Security and the Mexican Federal Judicial Police.
The Mexican Drug War in 2006, initiated by Mexico's newly elected president, Felipe Calderón, began a government armed effort to fight the drug cartels in Mexico. Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox, elected in 2000, had been the first Mexican president from outside the PRI. However, despite Calderón's efforts, the PRI was returned to power in 2012 with the election of Enrique Peña Nieto.
During the court hearing for the most wanted cartel leader, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, it was alleged that former president Enrique Peña Nieto had accepted a $100 million bribe from the drug kingpin.
In aftermath of the Chinese civil war, some Kuomintang loyalists became involved in the opium trade in Burma. Most of the opium produced by the former Kuomintang soldiers was shipped south to Thailand. One of the most notorious figures in Myanmar drug business was Khun Sa, who was also trained by Burmese Army and the Kuomintang. Khun Sa's operations were said to have dominated the drug trade network in the Golden Triangle area, earning him the title "Opium King". Khun Sa's influence began to decline in 1990's, and he surrendered himself to the authorities in 1996.
During its occupation of Lebanon between 1976–2005, the Assad regime used its proxies in Lebanon for establishing its multi-billion dollar drug industry. Syria was labeled as a narco-state by the United States for nearly a decade until 1997. Throughout the Syrian occupation of Lebanon when they controlled the cannabis cultivation in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, the Assad regime was the Middle East's main source of hashish.
During the Syrian Civil War, the Assad regime began mass production of drugs within Syria, and officers fed their men fenethylline, which they called "Captain Courage." Several shipments containing tonnes of amphetamines were seized in different countries smuggled from Syria, those shipments had sometimes millions of pills of fenethylline, produced in the country since at least 2006. After 2013, captogen production and export in Syria skyrocketed, with the direct support of the Assad regime, and its multi-billion dollar profits exceeded the total GDP. By 2020, Syria had become the world's biggest centre of captogen production, sales and exports.
In November 2020, two drug shipments of hashish coming from Syria were seized by Egyptian Police, the first shipment which arrived to Alexandria, included 2 tonnes of hashish, while the second shipment had 6 tonnes and was found at the Damietta port. The port of Latakia became under scrutiny of Europol and American police, as being favored by smugglers. In May 2021, Turkish security forces used to stop 1.5 tonnes of marijuana being smuggled out of Syria. According to the Centre for Operational Analysis and Research (COAR), Syrian seized drugs in 2020 had the value of no less than $3.4bn.
In late November 2024, Syrian opposition rebels took control of much of Syria, causing Bashar al-Assad and his family to flee the country to Russia, a longtime ally. The Syrian transitional government ordered the cessation of the drug trade.
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