The drug policies of wealthy consuming countries emphasize
criminalization, interdiction, and eradication. Such extreme responses
to social challenges risk unintended, costly consequences. The evidence
presented in this volume is that these consequences are high in the
case of current drug policies, particularly for poor transit and
producer countries. These costs include the deaths of thousands in the
conflict between drug cartels and security forces, political
instability, and the infiltration of criminal elements into
governments, on the one hand; and increased narcotics use in countries
that would not otherwise have been targeted by drug suppliers.
Despite such costs, extreme policies could be worthwhile if their
benefits were significantly higher than those of more moderate, less
costly policies. The authors review the evidence on the benefits of
current policies and find that they are clouded in uncertainty:
eradication appears to have no permanent effect on supply; the evidence
on criminalization does not exclude either the possibility that its
effects on drug consumption are low, or that they are high. Uncertainty
over benefits and the high costs of current policies relative to
alternatives justifies greater emphasis on lower cost policies and more
conscientious and better-funded efforts to assess the benefits of all
policies.
"Some years ago, I wrote an op-ed where I concluded
"our drug policy is a mess, seriously in need of a basic
reorientation." The policy has not improved, but at least Philip
Keefer and Norman Loayza have now written an excellent book on the
international consequences of alternative drug policies. The worst
policy--pursued by the United States and many other rich countries--is
lenient on users and tough on suppliers. Since demand typically has low
price sensitivity, the main effect of harsh supply-side interventions
is to drive up prices and amounts spent and thereby impose costs such
as high criminal activity in developing countries. Better outcomes may
emerge from harsh punishments on users (as in Singapore and Saudi
Arabia). However, these policies are politically infeasible in rich
countries (because the demanders are basically nice people). Thus, the
plausible alternative to existing policy is complete or partial drug
legalization, focused on suppliers, who could be converted into legal,
tax-paying enterprises. Fortunately, this book provides a sound
conceptual framework and empirical evidence to evaluate these and other
policies."
- Robert Barr Paul M. Warburg Professor of
Economics at Harvard University, senior fellow of the Hoover
Institution of Stanford University, author of Nothing Is Sacred:
Economic Ideas for the New Millennium
Source and transit countries, most of them poor, bear much of the
cost of the drug-hunger of distant populations, and of the worldwide
effort to fight the drug traffic. Innocent Bystanders documents the
damage. It's not a pretty picture. The analysis is solid, the tone
is sober, and the case for doing something to protect Mexicans,
Colombians, Afghans, and others is overwhelming.
- Mark Kleim an Professor of Public Policy,
University of California, Los Angeles, author of Against Excess: Drug
Policy for Results
For too long the debate about drug trafficking has been dominated
by lawyers, generals, diplomats, law enforcement agents, and
ideologues. Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on
Drugs adds a rigorous and long missing perspective to the debate: that
of development economists. Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza have made an
outstanding contribution to our understanding of the economics of the
drug trade and its consequences for poor countries. Hopefully, this
book will also help move the politics and the policy making process
away from the intellectual stagnation that has plagued them for
decades.
- Moises Naim, Editor in Chief, Foreign Policy
magazine, author of Illicit: How Smugglers Traffickers and Copycats are
Hijacking the Global Economy
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