The global trade in illegal drugs is a vast enterprise, estimated at more than $300 billion a year, with the United States as the largest single retail market. It would be a mistake, though, to assume that the only relevant demand factor is U.S. demand. The American market is actually a relatively mature one with overall consumption not substantially different from what it was a decade or two ago. The main areas of demand growth are in eastern Europe, the successor states of the former Soviet Union, and some portions of Latin America. The bottom line is that demand for illegal drugs on a global basis is robust and will likely remain so. That sobering reality has ominous implications for the strategy that advocates of a "war" on drugs continue to push. In the The International War On Drugs chapter of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, Ted Galen Carpenter explains why policymakers should:
- Greatly de-emphasize counternarcotics activities in Afghanistan, since they undermine America’s much more important struggle against al Qaeda and the Taliban;
- Stop pressuring the government of Mexico to escalate the war on drugs, since that policy is leading to a dangerous upsurge in violence that threatens to destabilize the country;
- Recognize that the "supply-side" campaign against cocaine and other drugs from the Andean region has produced few lasting gains, an inevitable outcome since global demand for such drugs continues to grow;
- Accept the decriminalization and harm-reduction strategies adopted by the Netherlands, Portugal, and other countries as a better model for dealing with the problem of drug abuse; and
- Move toward abandoning entirely the failed prohibitionist model regarding drugs.

 

Ashley March
Director of Foundation Relations
Cato Institute
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Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt