The War on Illegal Drugs in Producer and Consumer Countries: A Simple Analytical Framework

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This paper develops a model of the war against illegal drugs in both producer and consumer countries. The paper studies the trade-off faced by the government of the drug consumer country between prevention policies (aimed at reducing the demand for drugs) and enforcement policies (aimed at reducing the production and trafficking of drugs), and shows how the optimal allocation of resources between these two alternatives depends on the key parameters of the model. We use available data for the war on drugs in Colombia, and against consumption in the U.S., to calibrate the unobservable parameters of the model, such as the price elasticity of demand for cocaine; the effectiveness of prevention and treatment policies; and the relative effectiveness of interdiction efforts. Terms of use: Documents inJEL Code: D74, K42.

Counteracting Cocaine Production an Analysis Based on a Novel Dataset

“…In spite of these limitations, interesting models, focused on both demand and supply, have been produced to describe the likely behavior of this market, to quantitatively evaluate some important demand variables, such as price elasticity (e.g. Mejia, 2008), the data on production and trafficking (e.g. Mejia and Posada, 2008) and the impact of globalization on cocaine market (e.g.…”

“…The reduction in supply is therefore seen as the appropriate answer to fight against drugs and drug-related offenses. The emphasis on repression and punishment is witnessed by increasing budgets for counteracting forces, by heightening incarceration, by new measures to counteract drug trafficking, etc (see, for instance, Mejia, 2008). Yet, in spite of this acute interest, data produced are so poor to render the attempts at understanding these phenomena meaningless in many cases, and at least questionable in the vast majority.…”

The U.S. Drug Policy Landscape: Insights and Opportunities for Improving the View

“…Most U.S. money has been spent in Colombia, where Plan Colombia (approximately $1 billion for per year from 2000 to 2008) was instrumental in helping strengthen the Colombian government but appears to have had little effect on the production and exports of cocaine from the Andean region as a whole (Mejia and Restrepo, 2011). Despite rhetorical enthusiasm for eradication activities in Afghanistan, in recent years the United States and NATO-occupying forces have made little effort to control poppy-growing in that country, reckoning that doing so runs too high a risk of alienating the rural population and thereby undermining support for an already fragile government (Caulkins, Kulick, and Kleiman, 2011).…”

The Rise and Persistence of Illegal Crops: Evidence from a Naive Policy Announcement

“…This includes contributions that rely on the calibration of theoretical models of the "war on drugs" using aggregate data and that account for general equilibrium effects (e.g. Chumacero, 2010;Grossman and Mejía, 2008;andRestrepo, 2011, 2016), 4 as well as empirical papers that use fine-grained data to evaluate different policies aimed at reducing illicit drugs production. 5 Our paper places in the second set of contributions and it is the first one to explore the unintended negative anticipation effects of a naive policy announcement and that at the same time has a causal interpretation.…”

“…Becker et al (2006) estimate the price elasticity of the demand for drugs to be around 0.5 Mejía and Restrepo (2016). show that an inelastic demand for drugs in the U.S. is one key reason why Plan Colombia was so ineffective in controlling coca production -the main input in the production of cocaine-in Colombia during the 2000s.…”