Between Local and Global: the ‘Ndrangheta’s Drug Trafficking Route

Abstract

AbstractAccording to the last United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report (2016), 247 million people aged between 15 and 64 years used drugs at least once in the past year, with cocaine being the best-selling of the goods from the ‘Ndrangheta. In this case, the drugs trade is 60% of the systemic gain due to illicit trafficking that allowed the spreading of the Calabrian criminal organization across five continents. Nevertheless, this sometimes little-known apparently harmless organization, which comes from the Aspromonte heartland in Calabria, was included by the United States in the blacklist of the 75 most dangerous drug-trafficking organizations only in 2008. Therefore, this investigative study, based on reference literature, aims to analyse what are the aspects that make the Calabrian criminal organization “local” and “global” at the same time as well as the strengths and weaknesses in combating ‘Ndrangheta’s drug trafficking.