Kevin International Drug Trade The international drug trade is a global societal issue that impacts every country. As such, researching the way it operates is extraordinarily relevant, especially as it relates to finding ways to stop it. Along these lines, one should not see the international drug trade as monolithic in nature. Different drugs are produced, distributed, and sold by various stakeholders and in different ways. The solution to efficaciously mitigating the international drug trade will depend on recognition of this fact and targeting the production, distribution, and sale of each drug rather than taking the same approach to all drugs. The international drug trade has expanded in nature. In fact, “from the mid 1970s through the early 2000s, a few large-scale and hierarchically organized cartels dominated the market. Since 2006, dozens of smaller and more-specialized units have emerged” (Golz & D’Amico, 2018, p. 28). In this vein, the international drug trade has become a highly “competitive illicit market” (Golz & D’Amico, 2018, p. 28). As such, various stakeholders all over the world are competing to produce and sale different types of drugs. A recent study found that drugs are being produced and sold in very specific ways. It looked at available information from the Tor web browser, which is commonly used as part of the so-called dark web, and “employed geovisualization and exploratory spatial data analysis to examine drug distributions of heroin, cocaine, new psychoactive substances” (Dolliver, Ericson, & Love, 2018, p. 45). Perhaps surprisingly, the study found that “globally, heroin and cocaine markets were found to be almost exclusively retail based, while new psychoactive substances and prescription drugs were sold from countries with established pharmaceutical and chemical industries” (Dolliver et al., 2018, p. 45). Clearly, stopping the international drug trade depends on the acknowledgment of these types of differences. When one considers a specific population, such as cocaine users, it becomes evident that helping this population requires addressing the cocaine trade as different from that of psychoactive substances, for example. Gathering information about the specific of how each drug is produced and sold represents the best means to stop the various, different components of a robust international drug trade. References Dolliver, D. S., Ericson, S. P., & Love, K. L. (2018). A geographic analysis of drug trafficking patterns on the tor network. Geographical Review, 108(1), 45-68. Golz, M., & D'Amico, D. J. (2018). Market concentration in the international drug trade. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 150, 28-42. Chris Identify the global societal issue you have chosen to research for your Final Argumentative Essay and explain why further research on this topic is important. The issue I picked for my argumentative essay is the topic of Women’s rights. I decided to choose this topic because I have ...