Introduction: The drug regulatory regime vs. criminal anarchy

Despite more than a century of increasing state regulation on a global scale, drug trafficking today is the most profitable illegal trade in the world. A conservative estimate valued the illicit drug retail market in Europe (including the UK) alone in 2013 at 24 billion euros. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), illegal drugs account for 17 to 25 per cent of all proceeds of global crime, and for between 0.1 and 0.6 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in member states of the European Union (including the UK).¹ In the Netherlands the