Short answers, pulled from the story.
Global Financial Integrity estimated the illegal drug trade at between US$426 billion and US$652 billion in 2014. That year, world GDP was US$78 trillion, making the illicit drug market roughly 1 percent of total global commerce.
Honduras had the highest murder rate in the world as of 2011, a period when an estimated 79 percent of cocaine headed to the United States passed through the country. The International Crisis Group linked the most violent regions of Central America to areas of heaviest drug trafficking activity.
As of 2022, the Syrian government was estimated to earn $57 billion annually from Captagon smuggling alone, roughly three times the total trade of all Mexican cartels. General Maher al-Assad, commander of the Fourth Armoured Division and younger brother of Bashar al-Assad, directly supervised the operation, which accounted for more than 90 percent of the regime's total revenue.
The Eighteenth Amendment banned alcohol in the United States between 1920 and roughly 1933. Prohibition proved almost impossible to enforce and gave rise to organized crime, including the modern American Mafia, which built its power on manufacturing, smuggling, and selling illicit liquor.
Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh found in a 1990s study of a Chicago crack-dealing gang that foot soldiers earned just $3.30 per hour, and many lived with their mothers by financial necessity. Despite these wages, the gang had four times as many unpaid members hoping to become foot soldiers.
Synthetic opioid deaths in the US rose from 2,600 per year in 2011 to 70,601 in 2021. Since 2018, fentanyl and its analogues have caused the majority of drug overdose deaths in the country, with over 71,238 deaths recorded in 2021 alone.