Congo

Congo is a nation on the West African coast. It borders Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although not central in the world's illicit-drug distribution system, the lack of governmental monitoring of its borders, coupled with the trend of increasing trafficking activity in West Africa, makes it vulnerable for drug trafficking in the future. Although reliable estimates of drug consumption are unavailable, it is recognized that marijuana is widely consumed throughout the region.

The Republic of the Congo is a former French colony in central Africa, not to be confused with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (until 1997 known as Zaire). Most of its gross domestic product and nearly all of its exports come from the local oil industry. Oil revenues resulted in one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa in the 1980s, but inflation, unstable oil prices, and periodic unrest have made real prosperity difficult to attain. The bureaucracy of the federal government was at one point so unwieldy that it was the country's largest employer, but reforms urged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have improved that somewhat. Today the Congo is a country of widespread poverty and political unrest, with a poor human rights record, in which both drug use and drug trafficking have become major problems.

African drug trafficking has become rampant in the 21st century, and now that inflation has subsided, the Congo is one of many countries used to launder money for heroin traffickers. It's also a major transit point for both Asian and South American drugs being trafficked to industrialized nations.

Domestic marijuana production in the Congo is motivated by simple economic issues. Though oil accounts for most of the country's revenue, most of the workers who do not work for the government work in agriculture. When there is little risk of arrest, growing marijuana is a much more profitable choice than cocoa or coffee, which are harder to commercialize. The rewards of drug sales are high; the risks for growers are low, as the Congolese law enforcement lacks the resources to pursue most of them. Risks for dealers are higher because of the competition with other gangs and cartels, territorial disputes, and dealing with potentially violent addicts—but the rewards are significantly higher as well, especially for a country that offers so few options. Widespread unemployment motivates [Page 161]unemployed men and young people to work with drug traffickers when the opportunity presents itself, while the recurring civil unrest and civil wars in the Congo have increased drug use not only by increasing the chaos of the nation, but because of the number of child soldiers who were given narcotics in order to make them more loyal and less fearful in battle.

Drug use has grown more severe recently. While marijuana has been a problem for decades, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines gained a foothold primarily in the last two decades. Until 2004 the Congo had only two laws pertaining to narcotics, both inherited from its days as a French colony: a 1929 law banning the use or growing of marijuana; and a 1932 law regulating the possession of poisons, which had been used to make non-marijuana drug arrests in the past.

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