Business and customs must join forces against drug smuggling
By Fermin Cuza (as published in the International Herald Tribune 16 July 1997)
Paris 16 July 1997 - Business and customs services worldwide should join forces to stop narcotics traffickers from using legitimate commercial shipments to smuggle illicit drugs. In this alliance, companies would enforce their own voluntary standards governing packing and shipping practices, always in close collaboration with customs.
That way, the expertise, technical knowledge and management skills of business can be brought into a battle governments have to win for the sake of the people who put them in office.
The idea is not as revolutionary as it sounds. In an era of economic liberalization, governments rely increasingly on business self-regulation instead of imposing standards and requirements themselves.
For example, in the United States, a Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition is already running prototype schemes at the ports of San Diego, Miami and Laredo. This public-private sector partnership will soon extend to the entire country. Companies in the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America are active participants in this coalition.
In addition, more than 3,000 U.S. air, sea and land carriers have signed up for a US Customs "Carrier Initiative" program to share the burden of stopping the inward flow of drugs.
My own company, Mattel, was the first to take part in the anti-smuggling coalition and is leading the prototype operation in San Diego. We have established partnership agreements with our manufacturing plants, customs brokers, carriers and vendors.
Partnerships on these lines between business and customs should be applied internationally without delay, building on the American experience. Given the huge social costs of drug trafficking and addiction throughout the industrialized world, business and governments should move fast.
The mechanism is already there in the cooperation agreement concluded last year between the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), representing business throughout the world, and the World Customs Organization (WCO). Under that agreement, business and customs administrations plan to work together to promote and support efficiency in customs control and facilitation.
Certainly one urgent task for the ICC and the WCO is to devise a burden-sharing programme in the fight against narcotics smuggling. Customs administrations worldwide need all the help they can get in coping with increasingly complex international trade patterns which make smuggling much harder to detect. The ICC and WCO should encourage companies to implement progams within their organizations and build partnerships with customs.
The chain from raw materials to finished products is lengthening and many products contain components of widely different origins. Hence the increased opportunities for smugglers to infiltrate their contraband into legitimate commercial consignments.
As tariff barriers come down, customs' revenue-raising function diminishes in relative importance. The priorities now are interdiction of drugs, suppression of environmental hazards, monitoring of dangerous goods, and protection of intellectual property. All these customs objectives have the full support of world business.
Business and governments have a specially clear convergence of interest in the fight against narcotics smuggling. After all, companies are part of the communities whose stability is affected by the spread of drug addiction. The presence of illicit drugs in legitimate shipments hinders trade and can cause irreparable damage to a company's reputation.
Good corporate citizens must be willing to take responsibility for securing their factories and shipments to keep them free from drugs.
The "them and us" relationship between business and customs is - or should be - a thing of the past. We are all in this together.
The writer is Vice President, International Trade and Government Affairs of Mattel Inc, and heads the International Chamber of Commerce Committee on Customs and Trade Regulations.