Beneficiary Actors and the Mechanism of Profiting from the Global Illegal Drug Trends

Current Geographical spaces, from local to global scales, are affected by global drug trade. Cultivation, production, transit, distribution and consumption trends have dynamic and complex features. Actors of drug's geopolitics plan their strategies based on the geopolitical features of the geographical space under their control. The purpose of this research is to categorize the actors who benefit from the global drug trade, in order to strengthen scientific resources in the field of this trade and to create a scientific background for future studies when dealing with active actors in the global drug trade and also to determine the group that includes these actors, by examining the mechanism and level of their benefit. Since, according to neo-realists, non-state actors are effective components of global systems, the classification of actors benefiting from illegal trade can be effective in determining new coping strategies. In the current research, by using experimental assumptions and classification of scientific findings, we have tried to classify and explain geopolitical drug actors as influential components of a global system. Therefore, within the framework of the theory of structural realism, with the method of documentary and library research of Persian and non-Persian first-hand resources, activists who benefit from the geopolitics of global drug trends were categorized in six groups including: individual actors, criminal organizations, armed movements, Narco-states, hostile states and the hidden actors. Also, in terms of purpose and benefit mechanism, they have been analyzed in two groups: 1- actors with geopolitical goals and 2- actors with geo-economic goals.