Winning the Drug War: Disruptive Ideas to Control the Drug Trade
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Mexico lost another battle in the war against the cartels this week with asylum-request of the youngest female police chief in the history of Mexico. Twenty-one year old Marisol Valles Garcia took the job in the border town of Praxedis G. Guerrero fresh out of school after no one else signed up – the previous chief was abducted and decapitated. Despite her promise to focus on social issues, one she backed up by not having body guards and hiring female police officers who didn’t have guns, the harassments by the cartels did not stop. The reported death toll is almost 35,000 in the last five years.
That’s almost one killing per hour, day in and day out.
How to Disrupt the Drug Trade:
1) Increase supply
2) Exploit pricing and revenue
3) Redirect funding
4) Create new markets
This war is about the drugs that American citizens consume. It is about the border we try to make impermeable but let people, guns and drugs through like a sieve with a gaping hole in it. Marisol’s bravery is without reproach as best I can tell – she thought outside the box for solutions and did what she thought was best for her townspeople. It’s time we started doing that with the drug war.
Let’s be honest for a moment. We will never rid the world of drugs. We will never rid the world of drug-related crime. There have been, are, and always will be people who would rather waste the entirety of their existence in a opiate-tinged stupor. Billions of dollars and thousands of lives make it pretty clear these are the wrong goals. We need more people like Marisol to think outside the box. We should be open to outlandish ideas, mine for data that allows us to exploit pricing and availability in more savvy ways than seize-and-destroy.
Here’s some radical (and probably terrible) ideas for how to end the violence in Mexico and alter the tide of the drug trade:
1) Allow more product in. Legalize cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana use in the United States and charge a heavy import duty for foreign product (10% of gross product weight) that is still less than current product loss by seizure (typically 15-50%, depending on the substance). The goal is to drive down prices and let usage reach a new equilibrium at a higher supply/demand intersect, which could reduce access-related crime.
2) Exploit pricing advantages. Sell currently seized or tariff-based product inventory in quality-controlled distribution centers. Offer high-quality product at marginally higher prices to starve demand for low-quality product. Tax registered dealers at competitive rates to incentivize creation of efficient distribution networks or co-opt existing cartel based networks. (Yes, that’s right, I said the government should sell drugs.)
3) Redirect funding. Direct sales and tax revenues to education and incentive programs. Target evidence-based remedies that lower use frequency and increase time-t0-first-use. These increase an individual’s productivity in the years most commonly robbed by drug use (18-35). Create an education guarantee: Don’t use drugs at all, and the government will pay for college at a 4-year public institution in your state.
4) Alter market fundamentals by creating drug-user communities in abandoned ghost towns where high-quality product is available for cut-rate prices to individuals engaging in community upkeeps/public works services. These towns will receive Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status, and production facilities in this town (manufacturing, assembly, etc.) will receive export tax benefits and the employees can receive trade-able credits for free product.
There is no doubt these ideas are probably grossly flawed. In fact, I can think of a few problems already. But the truth is we need to be honest about what is and isn’t working in this war. Maybe we should stop treating it as a war, accept that drugs are here to stay, and make the most of it.