Illegal drug trade

Drug trafficking is a worldwide black market devoted to the cultivation, manufacturing, distribution, and sale of illicit narcotics. Drunk driving is often referred to as drug dealing. By enacting drug prohibition legislation, the majority of jurisdictions restrict access to a wide range of substances, save for those sold under licence. Transnational Crime in the Developing World, a research by the think tank Worldwide Financial Integrity, estimates that the global illegal drug market was worth between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014. It is possible that the illicit drug trade accounts for roughly 1 percent of entire global commerce in the same year, when the world GDP was US$78 trillion. It is very difficult for local authorities to halt the spread of illicit narcotics around the world, and this has been true for decades.

In the years 1730, 1796, and 1800, the Chinese government issued edicts prohibiting the use of opium. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, addictive substances were outlawed in the Western world.

The illicit drug trade in China began in the early nineteenth century. Consequently, the number of Chinese opium addicts had increased to between four and twelve million by 1838, depending on the source of information. Following this response, the Chinese government implemented a prohibition on the importation of opium, resulting in the First Opium War between the United Kingdom and Qing-dynasty China from 1839 to 1842. In the end, the United Kingdom prevailed and pushed China to let British merchants to export opium cultivated in India. British merchants boosted their commerce with the Chinese because trading in opium was profitable, and using opium had grown prevalent among the Chinese by the nineteenth century. It was in 1856 that the Second Opium War broke out, with the British and French joining forces once again. Through treaties signed in Nanking (1842) and Tianjin (1858), the British Crown forced the Chinese government to pay huge amounts of money for opium that had been confiscated and destroyed. These payments were known as "reparations" after the two Opium Wars.