Title: Drug cartel | Britannica
Headings: Drug cartel
Drug cartel
Colombian drug cartels
Mexican drug cartels
Other cartels
Narco-terrorists
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Drug cartel

Content: Israeli, Russian, and west European drug traffickers are primarily responsible for the sale and distribution of Ecstasy. Criminal groups in Southeast and Southwestern Asia use New York City as a hub to move heroin into the United States. The sale and distribution of marijuana from Southeast Asia is generally limited to the West Coast, but marijuana also enters the United States from Canada. Narco-terrorists
The end of the Cold War and a new focus on terrorism altered the terminology of the drug war. The narco-terrorist organization emerged as a new threat, defined as an organized group that participated in drug trafficking in order to fund politically motivated terrorist activities. The DEA claimed that Afghanistan under Taliban rule was a preeminent example of a state funded by the illicit production of opium. However, regional experts argued that opium production was essentially wiped out by the Taliban’s strict Islamic rule. Following the U.S. invasion in late 2001 and the overthrow of the Taliban regime, production of Afghan opium rose steadily. Leaders of drug cartels have been retroactively defined by the DEA as having been narco-terrorists. For example, Escobar of the Medellín cartel is now described as having committed “ terrorist activities ,” such as the bombing of a commercial airliner in 1989.