DRUG WAR STATISTICS
Sunday, February 12th, 2006
From link. They ran Gary S Becker’s* piece about the War on Drugs from an economist’s point of view. The English version is available link. It is based on his paper The Economics Theory of Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs, with Michael Grossman and Kevin M. Murphy.
“When the demand for drugs is elastic, more vigorous efforts to fight the war will reduce the total resources spent by drug traffickers to bring drugs to market. In contrast, and paradoxically, when demand for drugs is inelastic, total resources spent by drug traffickers will increase as the war increases in severity, and consumption falls. With inelastic demand, resources are actually drawn into the drug business as enforcement reduces drug consumption.” (page
“The optimum in this case is to go to one of the corners, and either do nothing and remain with the free market output, or fight the war hard enough to eliminate consumption.” (page 18)
You can make a case for Singapore-style prohibition, or for complete legalisation. It is being located half-way along the graph that is destroying Colombia and Afghanistan.
For the prohibitionist case see link, by Theodore Dalrymple.
*link 1992.
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