Before the “War on Drugs” the cartels essentially used an anti-competitive business model. They kept competition low by literally killing people who went into business in “their” marketplace. The entire import business had shaken out to just two or three major players and almost no minor players. Somebody who rented a plane and flew down to Columbia thinking they’d pick up a load of Cocaine or Marihuana was reported by the suppliers to the cartel they dealt with and the cartel dealt with the entrepreneurs. Pretty much everybody knew the dangers and steered clear. As a consequence of having the market sewed up there was an incentive to maximize profits by limiting supplies. Keeping the quantity low for a given amount of money had a number of advantage to the cartels and even if they’d wanted to increase supplies the two or three cartels only had the capability of sending in x tons per year.
Enter the US War on Drugs. The US was amazingly efficient at wiping out the cartels. When the cartels were gone their brutal enforcement was also gone. Now, a tourist could buy a pound of whatever and smuggle it back. The drug business moved from a Marxist controlled economy model to a free market economy. This is the perfect example of why the free market economy is superior to all other models. The price of drugs started to drop precipitously as soon as the cartels were wiped out.
The fact that drugs are dirt cheap now is because of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Our own government made them cheap by wiping out the mechanism that kept them expensive. Every government program you can think of runs afoul of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
interesting