The War On Drugs

The role of government in regulating the lives of the citizens it serves should be limited, seeking mainly to protect people violence, and property against damage and theft. The war on drugs presents a difficult problem in maintaining a small role for the state while protecting citizens from the actions of drug users.

The demand for drugs is probably inelastic, meaning that prices must increase a lot to reduce the quantity that people wish to consume a little. The supply of illegal drugs is probably elastic, meaning a small increase in price results in a large increase in supply. Small increases in demand or decreases in supply tend to dramatically drive up prices. Currently, the United States and Europe import drugs and Latin and South America produce them.

Hernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria a former president of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo, a former president of Mexico delivered a unified message to the American public in a Wall Street Journal opinion article titled, "The War on Drugs Is a Failure."[1]

The war on drugs has failed. And it's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies. This is the central message of the report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy we presented to the public recently in Rio de Janeiro.

They conclude that the war on drugs has failed because of maintained demand in the United States and Europe, and supply the growing destabilizing influence that drug cartels exercise in Latin America. Many Americans seem to believe that Latin American countries have not made an effort to combat drug traffickers, but this belief is tragically false. Chris Hawley, writing for USA Today, describes the violent chaos caused by drug cartels battling each other and the Mexican government for control of routes into the United States.[2] Hawley notes that

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has credited his actions with a steep reduction of cocaine supply in many U.S. cities. Calderon says the vast majority of those killed have been drug gang members, and his approval rating remains high at about 60% — a broad enough mandate to keep pursuing the cartels for now, Shifter says.

The battle is far from won. Hawley describes the difficulty of the battle.

The story is similar across much of Mexico's 2,000-mile-long northern border: a wave of beheadings, grenade attacks and shootouts as drug cartels battle each other for supremacy and lash out against Mexican President Felipe Calderon's drive to destroy their smuggling operations. The death toll from drug-related violence in Mexico last year surpassed 6,000, more than double the previous year, raising questions about whether Calderon's government can prevail against a brutal and often better-armed enemy without additional help from the U.S. government.

The three former presidents paint a similar picture of efforts and results in Columbia.

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country's achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico -- another epicenter of drug trafficking -- narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone...

The alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.

The cartels are growing despite intense efforts to eradicate them.

They propose a different strategy to lower the cost of drug use in countries that demand drugs and well as those that supply them.

In this spirit, we propose a paradigm shift in drug policies based on three guiding principles: Reduce the harm caused by drugs, decrease drug consumption through education, and aggressively combat organized crime.

More drug users could maintain employment if drug use were simply stupid, and not illegal too, reducing users' need to resort to crime to support dependency. Treatment and education would reduce demand, but by how much. Demand would shift inward, the equilibrium price and quantity purchased would fall, but again, by how much. Fighting organized crime, if successful, would decrease supply, increasing price but yet again decreasing the quantity consumed, but the cartels would resist and violence from this source would remain. Given the complexity of the problem, the lack of success of the current policy, I believe that their proposals deserve consideration.

[1] The article is based on the "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift," produced by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.

[2] Hawley, Chris. "Mexican drug gangs wage war," USA Today, February 24, 2009.