Chapter Three introduced some of the key themes and issues surrounding corporate crime, organised crime and their crossfertilisation with state crime and immorality. We demonstrated how the construction of organised crime and, by association, drug prohibition has facilitated opportunities for state crimes through the enforcement of legislation.

In this chapter we develop this idea in two main ways:

• • First, via a closer examination of international drug control legislation and the way that this has been selectively enforced over time. This often means that states have been in breach of human rights legislation or have perpetrated (to use Kauzlarich et al’s (2001) terminology) international to domestic governmental crimes, whereby criminality takes place beyond the geographic confines of a state, but entails actions in contravention of international criminal, regulatory or procedural laws or codes. We also consider the role of the state in facilitating drug trafficking, drawing on evidence from broad case studies on US foreign policy. In particular, the activities of the US government and its agencies in Central America in the 1980s will be discussed. Government collusion at worst or government toleration at best (from the perspective of prominent politicians and government officials) will also be highlighted.

• • Second, we discuss the limitations of the state in controlling elite crimes. This is demonstrated in a discussion of the extent of international drug trade and trafficking, before we consider the response to the issue in the form of ‘narco-terror’. This is where the ‘war on drugs’ meets the ‘war on terror’, and where the former has been fought sporadically to accommodate the goals of the latter, often to the detriment of both, and has created a situation where state criminality is justified on the grounds of exceptionalism.

The selective enforcement of international drug legislation: state collusion, inactivity or ineptitude?

Three main conventions govern UN drugs policy:

• • the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs

• • the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Drugs

• • the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (the Vienna Convention).

The 1961 Convention attempted to standardise the control of narcotics across nations, so that certain drugs could be used only for scientific, medical and, in some cases, industrial purposes. This was achieved by arranging drugs into schedules and applying appropriate controls based on notions of harm and toxicity.