Article from Reason by J.D. Tuccille.
Tough drug laws and brutal enforcement haven’t done much to stifle the market for illegal intoxicants, as drug-enforcement agencies around the world readily admit. But they do make the black-market production of concentrated-value products like cocaine a profitable undertaking. That’s good news for prohibitionists who need something to justify their paychecks and see a growth industry in fanning new fears.
“Current data on cocaine show that both the number of seizures and the volumes seized are at an all-time high,” the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) warns in its 2019 report.Â
Not to be outdone, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) cautions that “opium production and cocaine manufacture remain at record levels. The amounts intercepted are also higher than ever, with the amount of cocaine seized up 74 per cent over the past decade, compared with a 50 per cent rise in manufacture during the same period.”
Wow! That sounds like a soaring market. And yet: “In 2017, an estimated 18 million worldwide, or nearly 0.4 per cent of the adult population aged 15–64, had used cocaine in the past year,” according to the UNODC.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit:Â By Jamelle Bouie [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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When, if ever, will this War On Drugs be declared over?
Take away the demand and there is no drug war .There is no real drug war on a way to justify control and of course make a profit .How many cartels have congress in their pockets on both sides of the isle.?