Free Traders and Drug Smugglers

Free Traders and Drug Smugglers

This article examines the impact of trade openness of illicit drug production, trafficking and consumption, as well as the factors contributing to the global drug problem on the ability of state to combat. In the light of this analysis, it considers the potential and limitations of the various possible policy responses - both those strategies already attempted and those that have as yet only been proposed.

People engage in drug production largely in response to economic incentives, which legal sanctions have been unable to counteract effectively. Peasant growers of drug crops can make ...