What’s not cool: The UNODC’s demand-side denialism on cocaine
A very quick reaction post this one. I just read through the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime’s World Drug Report 2014… and I’m unsure whether the writers are being disingenuous or intellectually dishonest, or how many revisions and blue-pencillings it went through on its way to publication.
Consider this tweet.
2014 #WorldDrugReport: Global #cocaine availability dropped between 2007 & 2012 due to declining production http://t.co/m1jVbIRbN8
— UNODC (@UNODC) June 26, 2014
Now, there’s nothing there that’s untrue, as far as it goes. But let’s look at the graph around use and seizures in the US over that period – a pretty good index of availability, right?
So OK, we can see that the US seems to bear that story out as far as it goes. Availability looks like it’s declined, in the major market shown at least. I mean, users aren’t getting their hands on any. Nor are the cops. So it must be down (as the report then goes on to say) to supply-side successes in the War On Drugs. Central and South American eradication efforts are bearing fruit, hurray.
No, wait. What? It’s that simple? Crop eradication has meant less availability in the US? Well, that’s not the way it normally works, I don’t think. I mean, the price didn’t go up, not according to users I know. (Anecdotal! But, uh, pretty robust.) And that happens if there’s steady demand but a shortage of supply, right? I mean, that’s a market.
Well, let’s look at what else happened between 2006 and 2012 in the major markets for cocaine globally (they’d be America and Western Europe, according to the report). Well, I’m drumming my fingers here. Did ANYTHING happen that might conceivably have led to fewer people wanting to buy cocaine (demand), that in turn led to lower availability?
Let’s look at this, from ZeroHedge.
Oh wow, look: There was this huge dip in gambling spend in the USA over that exact same period! 2006-2012 sure was a dip. So, was there less supply-side availability of bets? Or might something have happened that lowered demand for both cocaine and gambling among consumers in affluent Western markets? God, I’m really stuck as to what that might be.
Let’s look at another graph, from Tim Duys’ Economists Review – plucked from among thousands in a hurried and random manner – see if that helps. This is real personal consumption expenditure, and that huge dip is the period we’re looking at.
OK, look, I can’t ignore this any longer. Was there… was there a recession or something? I mean, if there was a recession in the West, then that would stop consumers spending, right? On stuff, including those nice-to-have lifestyle luxuries like gambling and the odd line of coke, right?
Of course. And that’s exactly what happened. But to admit that the recession is largely responsible for the drop in cocaine use would mean two things. First, that the War On Drugs is fighting the wrong enemy, and that supply is not the problem here, but demand. Second, that the war is unwinnable, because you cannot stop goods making their way to centres of demand without somehow addressing those appetites that drive demand. Which means Americans, and Western Europeans.
And that means intervention. And that means big government, and investment and education, and all those dirty words that put additional zeroes on Government balance sheets. (Nobody minds if those zeroes are on the military budget, to help eradication efforts in Colombia. But put them into a budget that might stop the next generation paying cartels for nosebag that we then have to pay again for soldiers to go and torch, and that sounds dangerously like nanny state madness, right? Give me strength.)
Of course, the report can’t address everything. It may be that looking at the deeper causes of cocaine’s hemisphere-wide blizzard is outside of the remit of the UNODC’s researchers. But it’s a hefty report – 82,264 words including footnotes, to be precise. And the word “recession” appears twice. In references given as footnotes. And neither of those references concerns the reasons for cocaine’s sudden partial disappearance from streets, homes, noses and impounded contraband during the recession.
The economy is growing again. Here comes consumer spending. The dirty habit’s ours, not Colombia’s or anyone else’s. That the UNODC can’t seem to address that makes for a dangerous cognitive dissonance that will cost more lives, and plenty more zeroes, in in the coming decade.
Well, I daresay a more careful reading will bring out hitherto undiscovered nuance. But for now, the World Drug Report 2014 – or at least the way it’s been edited and represented – feels like a ducked opportunity. The UNODC feels more like an arm of US foreign policy than it’s felt in years. And the War On Drugs feels bigger, and more hopelessly wrong, than ever.
You can download the entire report as a PDF here.