Does tougher enforcement make drugs more expensive?

Abstract

Given the high human and economic costs of stringent enforcement measures, particularly incarceration, the lack of evidence that tougher enforcement raises prices call into question the value, at the margin, of stringent supply-side enforcement policies in high-enforcement nations.

Diminishing returns and great potential: a comment on Pollack's & Reuter's review on tougher drug enforcement and prices

“…Pollack & Reuter make a valuable contribution by synthesizing the literature assessing the relationship between drug enforcement intensity and prices. They find that, while prohibition itself—backed by enough enforcement to make the prohibition meaningful—may push prices up far above the levels we would expect to see under legalization, there is little evidence that further expansions in enforcement achieve much more, at least for established (as opposed to emerging) drugs.…”

Calibrating law enforcement and its purpose

“…Jon Caulkins' prior research, particularly in cocaine policy, anticipates many of the insights we sought to offer in our brief essay [1,2]. As Caulkins notes, enforcement is a multi-dimensional and varied collection of activities [3].…”

“…', Harold Pollack and Peter Reuter review existing studies of the effects of enforcement on the price of drugs from supply countries to demand markets [1]. While acknowledging the limitations of the studies, in the cumulative evidence they find little support for, and even some weak evidence against, the basic premise of current counternarcotics policies that law enforcement against drug sellers from production through retail increases price.…”

Commentary on Unick et al. (2014): Policy, price and purity

“…Of course, the imperfections of harm reduction do not provide license for heavy‐handed law‐enforcement tactics. It is unclear that stringent enforcement measures can reliably increase street heroin prices . Even if they do, aggressive use reduction brings its own social and human costs.…”