Have We Lost The War On Drugs Summary

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James O’Donnell Econ 306 Illegal Drugs and the Economics Article: “Have We Lost the War on Drugs?” Unfortunately for some young Americans their first lesson in economics is never learned in a classroom but is taught on the street corners, school yards and suburban neighborhoods in a form of “higher” learning. Drugs are not new to the United States and neither is the war on drugs. It has drained the American taxpayer’s hard earned dollars for over four decades. The result is much a larger abundance of more high-tech, lucrative and brutal drug cartels dotted throughout the Americas and most recently notable in Mexico and the widespread killings along the Mexico-US border. The war on drugs and drug use itself is an unfortunate and dreary…show more content…
The result in this should end with a lower quantity demanded. As the price of drugs increase the quantity that a consumer is willing to buy should decrease. Barring the ability of accurate studies intuition and real world scenarios suggest that this is not the case. Some would even argue that media attention the war on drugs has demanded appeals to the rebellious streak of many young youths thus making the war on drugs a proponent of drug use. Surveys suggest that it is likely that drug use in youths has grown substantially since 1971. Though some may argue media attention and rebellious streaks have ramped up drugs use the main culprit that wreaks havoc in this economic parody is…show more content…
Price elasticity is inelastic if it is greater than negative one. A perfectly inelastic demand has a value of zero and means that the price can change infinitely without experiencing a change in quantity demanded. Though drugs are not perfectly inelastic the value would be greater than negative one and probably closer to zero than most other goods. Once again due to the drug markets illegal aspect there is no reliable numbers to actually find the price elasticity. The proposed inelasticity of demand for drugs is illustrated graphically in the available appendix. In our hypothetical market at a price point of $100 we have a demand of 10 grams of heroin. Even with a 50% reduction in price the quantity only increases by 20%. Clearly this is an illustrative and hypothetical graph but the concept is solid and can be applied to illegal drugs in the U.S. The inelasticity of drugs creates a steep negative slope. This means that the price can experience great changes and the quantity demanded will change at a much smaller rate. This is further seen in the article in reference to Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs dating back to 2001. A study by the British Journal of Criminology found that the increase in users has increased only marginally if at all. The deregulation of government involvement has decreased the price of drugs but the demand has not greatly increased in response.
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