An article in the current issue of Mother Jones magazine makes the interesting connection between the declining value of the U.S. dollar, and the 44 percent increase in the street price of pure cocaine in the U.S. during the first 3 quarters of 2007 (“Paying Through the Nose” at Mother Jones).
As you can imagine, the DEA (and the pro-drug war PR machine) are quick to take credit for the increase in price, as they assume it points to a major downturn in availability of the drug courtesy of their efforts.
The problem with that logic is that it leaves out the declining value of the U.S. dollar (and the present economic recession in the U.S.), and the effect that this decline has on the drug trade.
Just as with any other commodity, supply goes where the money flows. If one country can’t buy a commodity, it gets sold to a country that can. The same applies to the drug trade, only without the tariffs, trade restrictions and pesky legislation that govern all of the legal substances (grain, oil, etc.).
Additionally, the drug trade is not intrinsically linked to any one form of currency as the oil trade is (the Petrodollar being the sole monetary unit of measure for oil currently). So, if Euros are worth more than Dollars, the drug traffickers, growers and manufacturers will choose to be paid for their product in Euros rather than Dollars, as illustrated by the massive increase in Euros currently in circulation in Latin American countries. Gone (for now) are the cinematically glorified days of briefcases filled with crisp, green $50 and $100 bills, steadily being replaced with Euros.
This is an obviously unintended consequence of the devaluing of the U.S. dollar, but it serves to further illustrate the somewhat dire straits that our economy currently finds itself in.
A further point of the article is the growth in cocaine usage in Europe, which has been likened by some to the coke frenzy of the U.S. in the ‘80s. For reasons unknown, the party scene has taken to coke in recent years in Europe, which could be explained by a number of factors. I would, however, place my bet on the prevalence of expendable income in that part of the world as European economies find themselves rebounding, while the States brace for a deep recession.
All of this serves to further demonstrate to me that our “drug war” in this country is not only fruitless (considering these market factors are doing a better job of curbing drug use than our legal efforts ever could), but is also a further strain on our economy and resources that produces virtually no results. I won’t go into the specifics here of which drugs I believe should be decriminalized and why, but suffice it to say that if even some of them were, we could easily save billions of tax dollars each and every year that could be diverted to more beneficial purposes.
