I'd say the strict definition is at least two people coordinating themselves to break the law in order to profit. But that also opens the door to considering all sorts of businesses and conglomerates as organised crime, something I'm quite content to leave standing as such in my worldview
... Leads to all sorts of "based" analysis lol.
What I'm trying to take a stand against: since the substances are illegal isn't any plurality handling them "organised crime" by definition, no matter the intent? Sure sure we all know the mafia "when we see it", and nobody likes that stuff, no argument there. But you see where I'm getting at? because I'm having troubles putting it into words like... all the horifying abscesses of drug cartels etc are and extension and manifestation of capitalistic logic, and not of the drug. It's when a real demand, people willing to enrich themselves, and a legal barrier meet, that knees are gonna broken at 2am in the open street, else it's just a product in a shelf. But those "horifying abscesses" I mentionned, they all get projected onto the substances, and by transitive property to anybody handling them, and I think that's sillysauce.
Whatever I.. Those few rambling lines took me too long. I'm sad to notice I jumped at this discussion again, because I was at work. Like I was really mad about it, that's sillysauce too.