What would happen to the world economy if the illegal international drug trade was brought to an end?
U.N. research suggests that the world wide drug trade is worth over $400 billion per year.
Do our governments have any real interest in ending the illegal drug industry?
Sure they do. If drugs became legal, I think that $400 billion figure would become even higher. The drugs could be taxed and there would be fierce competition among the drug industries.
Many governments, on the other hand, base much of their GNP on illegal drug trade and would only be hurt by legalization. For one thing there are no tariffs this way, and the governments are able to skim millions (billions) off the top while at the same time accepting even more millions from the United States to pretend their trying to supress the trade. Everybody raise your hands if you think the leaders of Mexico and Columbia and the rest are really trying to solve our nations drug lust. I don’t see any hands.
Well, it’s probably another poor vs. rich country problem.
Rich countries- like the U.S.- spend billions of dollars trying to clean up after the drug trade, that is, money spent on rehab, money spent in trying to improve neighborhoods ravaged by drug dealers; this doesn’t include the billions spent on money to stop the drug trade in the first place. In addition, most of the money spent is outgoing- the U.S. part of the drug trade is consumption, so the money goes from users to dealers who buy from distributors that send it out of the country. So if the U.S. could snap its’ fingers and simply have drugs and the methods for making them completely eliminated, it would do it in a heart-beat.
On the other hand, for poor countries, the idea of trying to fight rich drug lords who have more money than the government can spend is foolhardy; so the government makes money off the drug lords, through bribes and taxes. They have no interest in destroying the drug lords; not only do they fear for their own lives, they fear for their economies.
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
Is this a Debate yet?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Before this mutates into a Great Debate, you should check out the book The Underground Empire. It’s huge, and the fact that it was written in 1986 means some of the information is out-of-date, but it is absolutely the last word on the narcotics economy. Authoritative, informative, and scarier than shit.
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