The inhabitants of the earth spend more money on illegal drugs than they spend on food. More than they spend on housing, clothes, education, medical care, or any other product or service. The international narcotics industry is the largest growth industry in the world. Its annual revenues exceed half a trillion dollars – three times the value of all United States currency in circulation, more than the gross national products of all but a half dozen of the major industrialized nations. To imagine the immensity of such wealth consider this: A million dollars in gold would weigh as much as a large man. A half-trillion dollars would weigh more than the entire population of Washington, D.C.
Narcotics industry profits, secretly stockpiled in countries competing for the business, draw interest exceeding $3 million per hour. To what use will this money eventually be put? What will be its ultimate effect?
Though everyone knows narcotics is big business, its truly staggering dimensions have never been fully publicized. The statistics on which the above statements are based appear in classified documents prepared with the participation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. These studies are circulated in numbered copies with warnings of "criminal sanctions" for unauthorized disclosure. Why is this information withheld from public view?
The international narcotics industry is, in fact, not an industry at all, but an empire. Sovereign, proud, expansionist, this Underground Empire, though frequently torn by internal struggle, never fails to present a solid front to the world at large It has become today as ruthlessly acquisitive and exploitative as any nineteenth-century imperial kingdom, as far-reaching as the British Empire, as determinedly cohesive as the states of the American republic. Aggressive and violent by nature, the Underground Empire maintains its own armies, diplomats, intelligence services, banks, merchant fleets, and air lines. It seeks to extend its dominance by any means, from clandestine subversion to open warfare. Legitimate nations combat its agents within their own borders, but effectively ignore its power internationally. The United States government, while launching cosmetic "wars" on drugs and crime, has rarely attacked the Empire abroad, has never substantially diminished its international power, and does not today seriously challenge its growing threat to world stability.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/869740.The_Underground_Empire