Another Pyrrhic Victory in the Pointless "War on Drugs"
James S. Henry
Forbes 2/28/2014
Mexico’s ruling elite, the US Government, and the dwindling band of hardy drug war aficionados in the global law enforcement community all noted with great satisfaction last week’s re-arrest, after 13 years on the lam, of Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka “El Chapo,” purportedly that country’s leading illegal drug trafficker.
Interestingly, the arrest is not quite so popular with ordinary Mexicans, many of whom view “El Chapo” as a kind of Robin Hood figure, far more generous, talented, and simpatico, and also not necessarily any more corrupt or ruthless than the run-of-the mill political vermin, police thugs, and corrupt Army generals they have to put up with. At least he does not require huge protection bribes and wasteful tax subsidies.
From the perspective of investigative economics, of course we relish the drama of a J. Dillinger-type “most wanted” track down as much as the next fella. But the notion that this single arrest, or in fact any number of such arrests, will put even the slightest crimp in the global business of international drug trafficking is ludicrous.
By now we’ve had decades of cartel busting by law enforcement, from General Noriega and Pablo Escobar and the “Cali cartel” and the conviction of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s brother Raul, down to Felipe Calderon’s mindless, bloodthirsty six year crackdown on Mexican drug gangs from 2006 to 2012. This last fiasco cost nearly 100,000 mainly Mexican lives — the equivalent of an Iraq War right on our border.
The bottom line? None of this has made one bit of measurable difference whatsoever to the overall long-run global supply or consumption of illegal drugs. Indeed, if anything, the real street prices of so-called “dangerous drugs” like cocaine, crack, heroin, and meth are much lower today than they were in the early 1980s, before the drug war escalated.
Meanwhile, the demand for legal by-prescription drugs has gone through the roof. According to a recent Mayo Clinic survey, an estimated 70 percent of Americans now use them regularly, including about 13 percent who regularly use anti-depressants and another 13 percent on opiates and other pain killers.
According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2010, a modest 5,430 Americans died from “mental and behavioral disorders due to cocaine use,” 2,896 died from “mental and behavioral disorders due to opiods,” including heroin, 15,839 died from such disorders associated with “multiple drug use,” legal and illegal, and a whopping 33 died from disorders associated with marijuana.
By comparison, 21,392 died that year because of mental and behavioral disorders due to alcohol, 6651 died from disorders due to tobacco (in addition to the 1.88 mm claimed by lung cancer), 857 died from disorders due to caffeine, 264,129 died because of accidental poisoning by drugs or alcohol, and 51,318 died because of intentional self-poisoning by drugs or alcohol — mostly due to overdoses with prescription drugs.
So do we have a drug problem in the US? Indeed we do. But it is not one that has anything whatsoever to do with Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, or Afghanistan. Nor is it one that ”breaking up cartels” — and thereby necessarily (uh, duh) increasing competition and supply from illicit traffickers – is ever going to solve.
Can someone please explain to US and Mexican law enforcement — as well as to New York Times journalists — the basic laws of Microeconomics 101? When you “break up a cartel,” you increase competition, boost supply, lower market price, and increase the number of traffickers involved in the business.
Indeed, that’s what has happened after each and every one of the law enforcement “victories” noted above. The recent re-arrest of “El Chapo” Guzman, as good as it may be for the professional careers of a few police, federal agents, and politicians — as well as rival cartel leaders — will prove to be no exception.
Of course the illegal drug business is profitable for dealers and their families — both in and out of prison. But it is also lucrative and power-enhancing for the law enforcement establishment and the politicians that support it. To explain the persistence of our market-defying, counterproductive drug laws, despite decades of clear evidence that they simply don’t work and create lots of collateral damage, we have to start with this perverse co-dependency.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jameshe...yrrhic-victory-in-the-pointless-war-on-drugs/
