Conference on Drugs and Violence: When war is too expensive even for drug lords

Where do drug gangs organize themselves most successfully? In prison. Where does the offspring for the criminal militias come from? From the state police apparatus. How does the situation in countries like Brazil fundamentally differ from that in the EU? 35 percent of the population are illiterate.

What one might have expected to be a socially critical statement from a street worker came out of the mouth of a Brazilian prosecutor at a conference at the State University of Milan on developments in the international drug markets last week.

Because things are never black and white, in the same breath she complained vehemently about how the actions of her officials in the favelas regularly led to international criticism and condemnation. What would you do, asked Corina Rodrigues de Senna from the Rio public prosecutor's office, if there was a man standing in front of the university here in the heart of the Lombard metropolis with an assault rifle, of which your officers confiscated 85 last year alone?

If you have suicidal thoughts, talk about it with someone. You can contact the telephone counseling service around the clock (08 00/111 0 111 or 08 00/111 0 222) or visit www.telefonseelsorge.de

It was probably clear from the faces in the auditorium that we would still not carry out an action that ended with 132 deaths, like the “Operação Contenção” in October 2025 in two favelas in Rio. But do you know? If South America accounts for a third of all murders globally, with a population of 8 percent, knowing-it-alls are definitely not an option.

The fact remains that at a drug conference with the subtitle “News, Perspectives, Reflections, Suggestions” no one actually thought that the “war on drugs” once invented by US President Nixon should be continued.

Rather, there was a consensus that this strategy not only didn't make the situation better, but made it worse. The more politicians and the police, society and the media point the finger at the mafias and cartels, the more invariably four fingers point back at themselves. Sociologist Robert Feustel put it less allegorically: “The repressive prohibition policy in particular systematically creates the problems that are then supposed to be solved by different institutions.” (The Forbidden Intoxication, Kolhammer, 2026).

But how does the supply side, i.e. the drug traffickers themselves, actually deal with this “repressive prohibition policy”? The pope of the field of “social scientific research into organized crime”, Federico Varese from the University of Oxford, explained in an astonishingly civilized manner.

Violence is less than the last resort if there are discrepancies in the deals. It is rarely threatened and has NEVER been used in the cases examined. The spoken word applies, “words are not cheap”; Apologies would be accepted to resolve conflicts, debts resulting from confiscations would - at least in big business - be settled differently than with the always very costly use of force.

Why? Because any act of revenge leads to at least a temporary halt in business, which is always more costly than writing off the losses.

And what is the profitable substance that must not run dry? Still cocaine, it was said from various quarters - but not only. Because Coca definitely has a weakness. It is a natural product, a plant that can spoil. We can do that much better in the laboratory.

But anyone looking for synthetic substances on the street is always too late, explained Alessandro Vento from the “Osservatorio sulle dipendenze” (Observatory for Addictions) in Rome. On a slide he showed a pretty crystal iceberg that broke down the Internet source according to the keywords normal search, deep web and dark web.

Result: Buying drugs online is much easier than you think. This is like other status symbols in youth culture, or in the words of the protagonist of Leif Randt's current novel "Let's talk about feelings": "Oh wow, I'm rarely offered 2c-b. I'm actually a fan. But sometimes it makes me a little sick..."

On the second day of the conference you felt really sick. A message burst into the panels that lies beyond the question of supply and demand about escapism, a final message.

Denise Cosco, daughter of key witness Lea Garofalo, who was murdered by the 'Ndrangheta, committed suicide. This was not only a hard blow for Nando dalla Chiesa, professor emeritus of the sociology of organized crime at the University of Milan, organizer of the conference and son of Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, who was murdered by the Cosa Nostra in Palermo in 1982. Don Luigi Ciotti, president of the anti-mafia organization Libera, was also visibly shaken.

Denise's mother, Lea Garofalo, was murdered in 2009 by her ex-husband, a mafioso, and her body was dissolved in hydrochloric acid. She met him because she didn't want to keep her father from her daughter. Both women represented the courage not only to break away from a family mafia environment, but also to testify against the system behind it.

In 2011, at the age of 19, Denise testified against her father. She said at the time: "It's not easy to testify as a civil plaintiff against your own father. But I have decided for my inner freedom and don't want to continue living my life any other way."

This life is now over. Whether and who shares responsibility for this is being investigated. Denise Cosco had received a new identity, the program to protect her had expired in 2018, she had gotten a job in a ministry in Rome, lived with her partner and was the mother of a son.

The violence of the international drug markets is not always as far away as a favela in Rio or as it might seem when partying.

Transparency note: The author of this article also gave a talk at the conference "I MERCATI INTERNAZIONALI DELLE DROGHE. Novità, prospettive, riflessioni, proposte". Travel and hotel costs were borne by the Università degli Studi di Milano.