system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does the drug trade particularly thrive in Latin America?
gpt
There's a few reasons:

1) Drugs grow there easily. The climate and soil makes it incredibly easy to grow illicit drugs like marijuana and cocaine.

2) Legal system. It sucks. They don't have the manpower to regulate the underground drug industry, to find all of the grow operations, or to stop the refining/trafficking. Further, corruption is rampant in many of these countries (low wages means that bribes are even more enticing) so many times the law looks the other way.

3) Desperate workers. People don't resort to growing drugs unless they have to. Due to the economic climate, there are more than enough farmers and laborers willing to accept higher-than-average wages for working in illicit drug operations (while more than average, they still live in poverty).

4) Distribution. Main buyer is the US, and Latin America has easy access to get drugs to the US. Production almost exclusively goes north to the US, a very small amount goes overseas to Europe or Asia.

TL;DR: Many reasons come together to make it particularly enticing to produce and distribute drugs from Latin America.