Last February, Jonathan Last wrote a badly misinformed, straight-from-ONDCP-talking-points piece arguing that America is “winning” the Drug War (thoroughly dismantled by Jacob Sullum here, and Jacob Hornberger here). One of Last’s key arguments was the alleged decline in worldwide coca production, an assertion that came from ONDCP figures, and that’s at odds with the fact that cocaine is, still, readily available for just about anyone who wants it.

In any case, a new report lays waste to Last’s piece, pointing out that even as the U.S. continues to poison the land in South America with herbicides, Columbian farmers are simply growing the crop in new places. Expand the amount of land surveyed for drug statistics, and, suprise!, you inevitably find more places where they’re growing cocaine. The trade is also now speading to Bolivia and Peru.

Of course, none of this addresses the costs of the Drug War, also curiously absent in Last’s article. It merely shows that even given the tremendous costs, the drug trade isn’t going away. Prohibition makes the stuff too lucrative. It just adapts, evolves, and finds new ways to thrive.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 11:41 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.