Many imports and exports are staples in the everyday lives of many people. Typically, resources are extracted from markets in the global south and sent to the north. In 2017, the United States imported 1.25 billion dollar’s worth of coffee from Colombia. One commodity that is overlooked and rather unconventional is the trafficking of drugs. Trafficking cocaine, though illegal, accrues billions of dollars, similar to the legal industries of healthcare or any of the sporting industries. My research focuses on how media represents the similarities between both legal and illegal trading of commodities, which are often overlooked. Using both cultural studies methods and theory of rational choices, I observe here how drug trafficking as a business is represented, and how from rational choice theory we can see how it is a criminal rational decision that operates just as any legal corporation that supplies a commodity from the south to northern markets
