OOPS… the drug war and economics
I once read that every Latin American nation headed by a Harvard graduate experienced huge economic dislocations (of course, I’m guessing the article was written by a Yalie). Fred Rosen wrote in last Sunday’s Mexico City Herald about the “success” of the much ballyhooed Calderón anti-narco battle:
El Universal´s always-perceptive columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio reports that aside from the extradition of a half dozen drug barons, the cartels have not taken such a hard hit. “The cost of a joint of marijuana on the streets of Mexico City,” he reports, “is 15 pesos, compared to 25 pesos in December, while Ecstasy tabs, whose producers were also supposedly targets of the crackdowns, have fallen to half of the 50 pesos they cost at the end of the year.”
If the operations had been a success, reasons Riva Palacio, the logic of supply and demand would have produced a reverse effect. The low price suggests there are more drugs on the street than before the anti-drug operations began.
mexfiles.net 