A
drug cartel is any
criminal organization with the intention of supplying
drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized
commercial enterprises. The term was applied when the largest trafficking organizations reached an agreement to coordinate the production and distribution of cocaine. Since that agreement was broken up, drug cartels are no longer actually
cartels, but the term stuck and it is now popularly used to refer to any criminal narcotics related organization, such as those in
Afghanistan,
Argentina,
Bolivia,
Brazil,
Burma,
China,
Colombia,
Dominican Republic,
El Salvador,
France,
Guatemala,
Haiti,
Honduras,
Israel,
Italy,
Jamaica,
Japan,
Laos,
Mexico, the
Netherlands,
Pakistan,
Paraguay,
Peru,
Puerto Rico,
Russia,
Thailand,
Trinidad and Tobago, the
United Kingdom, and the
United States.