Police crackdowns may encourage drug use

Jim Giles
New Scientist
Friday, July 3, 2009

TOUGH policing of the illegal drugs market may have the perverse effect of making drugs more affordable and thereby encouraging people to use them, according to a new model of the dynamics of this market.

Its creators, a team of economists led by Manolis Galenianos of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, stop short of calling for police to soften their approach because this would also have adverse consequences. But for law enforcers whose aim is to discourage drug use, the findings hint that tough policing alone may not be the most effective way to tackle the problem.

The model is based on the interactions of a hypothetical population of buyers and sellers. Unlike other models of the market in illicit drugs, it takes into account two factors that are crucial to the way sellers and buyers act that tend not to be present in conventional markets.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

One concerns the way consumers judge quality. In the market for electronic goods, say, consumers generally have access to reliable information about the quality of the product. In contrast, heroin users often have no way of gauging the quality of a purchase before they use it.

The second concerns what is known as “search cost”. While buyers of TVs can easily switch shops if they don’t like a seller, drug users face an increased risk of arrest every time they search out a new dealer. So in Galenianos’s model, buyers make purchasing decisions without considering whether they could get higher-quality drugs at a lower price from somewhere other than their usual supplier.

Full story here.

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9 Responses to “Police crackdowns may encourage drug use”

1. used to be proud brit Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 am

   Nothing changed then
   the area i was dragged up in the police was doing it for years

   http://www.independent.co.uk/n.....91845.html

2. I'm So Bored With The U-S-A Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 8:26 am

   I read this article and think it has very little to do with reality, which isn’t surprising, given that it’s based on a computer model.
   When there’s a big bust in an area, dealers often raise their prices using that as an excuse, regardless of whether it affected their business or not.
   They don’t say, “Oh, there’s less supply, so let’s lower prices.”
   They also don’t say, “My competition just got arrested, so I guess I ought to cut my stuff less.”
   Purity is dependent on both the quality of the dealer’s supply and his own level of greed.

   

   Dave Reply:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 am

   Exactly! I wonder how much this economist gets paid from our tax dollars?

   

   used to be proud brit Reply:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 8:53 am

   I think you might be referring to the main article
   Not the one i posted

3. poppiesrus Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 9:35 am

   the government doesnt like competition.

4. misunderstood genius Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm

   here’s another one gene. stop doing drugs entirely. the reason they have drugs illegal in the first place is so the govt. can run all their black ops. don’t do them for just one year. everyone, just don’t do them. at the end of the year they will have commercials on tv, come and get your free drug samples with your purchase of x,thereafter with a $50 per ounce tax, we just decriminalized it.

   

   used to be proud brit Reply:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   SORRY M8
   DRUGS ARE FOR DISTRACTIONS SAME WITH
   DRINK
   GAMBLING
   SPORT
   LEARN YOUR “HISTORY “LEARN WHAT YOU HAV`NT BEEN TOLD !
   AND WHY YOU WAS`NT TOLD
   THEN YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO WORK IT OUT

5. Lord Muck Raker Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm

   Another non-article, non-news piece of waffle from the mainstream news. What is prisonplanet.com coming too? Methinks you guys have been twittering too much.

6. misunderstood genius Says:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   it really is a stupid story. like the govt wants us to quit drugs. yeah right. tell me another one. that’s why the taliban eradicated heroin and as soon as the usa invaded it’s a bumber crop. and as soon as honduras wanted to legalize pot the cia said hell no. your not gonna legalize drugs. hell no. we need that drug money for general betrayus to keep betraying us.