A Simple Economic Model of Cocaine ProductionFor twenty years, programs aimed at reducing the production and export of illicit drugs in foreign countries have played a major role in the rhetoric of United States drug control policy. Their role in drug control budgets has been more modest, though not insignificant; in fiscal year 1991 these programs received about $500 million, out of a total federal drug control budget of $10.6 billion. They have been important, often dominant, in U.S. relationships with the Andean region and, at times, with Burma, Mexico, Pakistan, and Turkey. The effort to control drug production overseas has generally been viewed as ineffective. Mexico, the most cooperative of the source countries, continues to produce record amounts of heroin and marijuana, while Asian optium production grows by leaps and bounds. The production and export of cocaine from the Andean region, the primary focus of concern throughout the 1980s, continued almost unabated into the early 1990s. |
