Compiled by Anonymous, Drug Policy Alliance. 2002.
Are interdiction and eradication efforts a success?
No. U.S. taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars on intense eradication and interdiction efforts, yet the prices of cocaine and heroin are the lowest they have been in 20 years and their street-level purity is at all time highs.(1)
- Eradication and interdiction efforts have not reduced youth access to illegal drugs. The proportion of 12th graders reporting that it would be "fairly easy" or "very easy" for them to get cocaine if they wanted some rose from 33 percent in 1975 to about 50 percent in 1999. The percentage of 12th graders reporting heroin "fairly" or "very" easy to obtain rose from 20 percent to about 35 percent. Every year from 1975 to 1999, over 80% of high school seniors reported that marijuana was "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain.(2) More than 54% of high school seniors have tried illicit drugs - up from 44% a decade earlier.(3)
- Eradication and interdiction efforts have not stopped the drug trade from expanding. The global illegal drug trade is now a $400 billion a year industry.(4) At eight percent of the global economy, the illegal drug trade is larger than the international trade in iron, steel, and motor vehicles.(5) In contrast, the entire U.S. defense budget was only $276 billion in 1999.(6)
- While coca production in Bolivia and Peru fell by more than 50 percent from 1987 to 1999, production in Colombia increased over 1,140 percent.(7) Despite our best efforts, the combined cocaine production capacity for Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia grew from 355 metric tons in 1987 to 765 metric tons in 1999.(8) Today, as the U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars on attempts to reduce drug production in Colombia, traffickers are shifting their operations back into Bolivia and Peru, as well as into Ecuador and other countries in the region.(9)
Why do supply side efforts fail?
Supply side efforts fail because they ignore the laws of supply and demand. As long as a demand exists for illegal drugs, a supply will exist to meet it. The enormous profits that can be reaped through drug trafficking, the ability for drugs to be produced almost anywhere in the world, and the fact that three billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day, all make interdiction and eradication a Sisyphean effort.
- Supply reduction efforts fail to reduce drug abuse because "suppliers simply produce for the market what they would have produced anyway, plus enough extra to cover anticipated government seizures."(11) Interdiction efforts are estimated to only intercept 10-15% of heroin(12) and 30% of cocaine.(13) The U.N. estimates that at least 75% of international drug shipments would have to be intercepted to substantially reduce the profitability of drug trafficking.(14)
- Supply reduction efforts also fail to reduce drug abuse because of what experts call the "balloon effect" - squeeze drug production in one area of the world, and price incentives cause it to pop up somewhere else. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently told Members of Congress that the United States would be better off reducing demand at home rather than chasing drug production around the globe. "If demand persists, it's going to find ways to get what it wants," Rumsfeld told members, "And if it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."(15)
- Stopping drugs from entering the country is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Thirteen truckloads of cocaine are enough to satisfy U.S. demand for one year.(16) All the heroin the U.S. consumes each year can be fit in one cargo plane.(17) The United States has 19,924 kilometers of shoreline, 300 points of entry and more than 7,500 miles of border with Mexico and Canada.(18)
What is the best way to reduce drug abuse?
By providing treatment to all Americans that are trying to end their drug habits, the U.S. can simultaneously reduce domestic demand for illegal drugs and the foreign supply that exists to meet it. The Drug Czar's office reports that, "studies and statistics indicate that the fastest and most cost effective way to reduce the demand for illicit drugs is to treat chronic hard core drug users."(19)
- A landmark study of cocaine markets by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Army and the Drug Czar's office found that, dollar for dollar, providing treatment to cocaine users is 10 times more effective at reducing drug abuse than drug interdiction schemes and 23 times more effective than trying to eradicate coca at its source. To achieve a one percent reduction in U.S. cocaine consumption, the United States could spend an additional $34 million on drug treatment programs, or 20 times more, $783 million, on efforts to eradicate the supply at the source.
- Every dollar invested in drug treatment saves taxpayers $7.46 in societal costs. In contrast, taxpayers lose 85 cents for every dollar spent on source-country control and 68 cents for every dollar spent on interdiction.(20)
- California's CALDATA study found that among previous criminal offenders, 72 percent stopped committing crimes after receiving treatment.(21) Hospitalization also fell by one-third after treatment. California's treatment expenditures of $209 million between October 1991 and September 1992 saved taxpayers an estimated $1.5 billion.(22)
NOTES:
1. System to Retrieve Information From Drug Evidence (STRIDE), Drug Enforcement Administration, 1981-97.
2. Ibid.
3. Monitoring the Future, National Results on Adolescent Drug Abuse, Overview of key Findings 1999, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Page 6.
4. United Nations, World Drug Report, (New York: Oxford University Press. 1997)
5. United Nations, World Drug Report, (New York: Oxford University Press. 1997)
6. CIA Fact Book: 2000
7. United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Global Illicit Drug Trends 1999 (New York, NY: UNODCCP, 1999)
8. Ibid.
9. "Cocaine Cultivation Increasing in Colombia," Philadelphia Daily News, March 3, 2001; "State Department Calls for More Military Assistance in South America", Inside the Army, March 19, 2001; "With no other livelihood, South American peasants defy U.S. anti-drug effort", Associated Press, March 15, 2001; "In the War on Coca, Colombian Growers Simply Move Along", The New York Times, March 17, 2001.
10. G8 Kyushu-Okinawa Summit Meeting 2000, Global Poverty Report
11. Rydell & Evering, Controlling Cocaine, Prepared for the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the United States Army (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1994.)
12. Ibid., World Drug Report,
13. Associated Press, "U.N. Estimates Drug Business Equal to 8 percent of World Trade," (1997, June 26.)
14. Ibid., "U.N. Estimates Drug Business Equal to 8 percent of World Trade,"
15. Rumsfeld Tells Senators His Views on Drug War," The Los Angeles Times, January 12, 2001.
16. Frankel, G., "Federal Agencies Duplicate Efforts, Wage Costly Turf Battles," The Washington Post (June 8, 1997), p.A1.
17. Walter Cronkite, The Cronkite Report - The Drug Dilemma: War or Peace (1995).
18. Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 1998, 1998.
19. National Drug Control Policy Strategy Report 1995, Office of National Drug Control Policy
20. Ibid., RAND
21. Ibid.
22. Evaluating Recovery Services: The California Drug and Alcohol Treatment Assessment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center.
|
