1 ESCALLATING THE WAR ON DRUGS: CAUSES AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES By Bruce L. Benson Chair, Department of Economics DeVoe Moore and Distinguished Research Professor Courtesy Professor of Law Florida State University Tallahassee, FL 32306 (850) 644-7094 [email protected] I. Introduction Involvement in markets for some types of drugs has been illegal for over a century in the United, and marijuana was added to the illicit drug category over seven decades ago. Police efforts to control drug production, sales and consumption have never been as intensive as they are now, however, as the last two plus decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the level of criminal justice resources allocated to drug enforcement efforts. Figure 1 illustrates this, using estimated total drug arrests in the United States as an indicator. Drug arrests were falling in the early 1980s (and late 1970s),1 rose in 1982 and fell slightly in 1983. These arrests rose continuously from 1984 to 1989, however, when they reached a level almost two and a half times the total eight years early. This 1989 peak was higher than any year in the history of drug criminalization, but arrests then declined for two years. The 1991 level was still almost twice what it had been a decade earlier, however, and arrests began rising rapidly again in 1992, surpassing the 1989 peak in 1995, and reaching another temporary peak in 1997. After that, drug arrests fluctuated some from year to year through 2002 (another temporary peak was reached in 2001), but rapid increases set in again in 2003 and this latest escalation has continued through 2006 (the latest data available). The following presentation addresses two aspects of this virtually continuous escalation in drug enforcement. First, it offers an explanation for its beginning and continuation, as well for the most significant departure from this trend in 1991-92. Second, it examines significant unanticipated negative consequences of the escalation. The explanation of both the trend in enforcement and its consequence involves the application of a few very basic principles that underlie all of economics. Economic analysis has, at its foundation, a model of an individual making decisions in the face of constraints. Constraints arise because of scarcity: there are too few resources to satisfy all of the desires that individuals in aggregate want to fulfill. Therefore, scarcity implies that choices must be made. Every scarce resource has alternative uses, so 1 Overall, drug arrests displayed a modest upward trend through most of the 1970s, before modest declines at the end of the decade.choosing to allocate it for one purpose means that the alternatives must be sacrificed or forgone. This in turn implies competition as individuals attempt to influence the allocation of scarce resources in an effort to support the pursuit of their personal objectives. Competition over the use of resources inevitably arises and each individual's decisions are constrained because of this competition. That is, constraints reflect the interdependent decisions and actions of many other individuals. Each individual must decide how to allocate his time and effort in competing to direct the use of scarce resources and/or the goods and services produce by them, with constraints or tradeoffs determined by the competitive actions of other individuals. Much of economics is about competition in markets that determine market prices, but the competition that arises from scarcity can take many forms, including violence, political competition between interest groups, bureaucratic competition for budgets, and competition between thieves and their potential victims. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Drugs and Crime Facts, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm 34 The economics model of decision making assumes that individuals rationally pursue their objectives. Rationality simply mean that individuals respond to incentives and constraints in predictable ways, not that their preferences are “rational” or “normal” in that they can be understood by others (e.g., the preferences that underlie the choices of a rapist or a drug user may not be understood by many people, but the rationality assumption is that if there are changes in the constraints facing such individuals the direction of their responses can be predicted). The model leads to predictions that can be tested by observing actual behavior. For instance, if the price of marijuana goes up, economics predict that, for the most part, individuals who consume this drug will buy less marijuana. Furthermore, if the price rises relative to the price of beer, individuals who consume the drug and consider beer to be a substitute for marijuana are expected to consume more beer as they consume less marijuana.2 The following analysis stems from the fundamental facts of scarcity and the choices that must inevitably follow, and involves tests of the assumption that individuals, including criminals, police, and legislators, rationally respond to incentives and constraints. In this regard, Criminal justice resources like police and prison space are scarce. Therefore, the rapid increase in drug arrests has involved a reallocation of resources away from alternative uses. This is suggested by the third column in Table 1 which shows the trends in drug arrests as a portion of total arrests (the second column lists the total arrest numbers that underlie Figure 1). Before elaborating on this fact and examining its consequences, however, let us ask what might have caused such a reallocation. 2 See DiNardo and Lemieux (1992), Chaloupka and Laixuthai (1997), and Model (1993) for evidence that beer and marijuana are substitutes.5 Table 1 Estimated drug arrests in the United States, 1980-2006 Estimated Total Estimated Drug Arrests as a Year Drug Arrests % of Estimated Total Arrests 1980 580,900 5.56% 1981 559,900 5.17% 1982 676,000 5.47% 1983 661,400 5.67% 1984 708,400 6.13% 1985 811,400 6.79% 1986 824,100 6.60% 1987 937,400 7.37% 1988 1,155,200 8.36% 1989 1,361,700 9.56% 1990 1,089,500 7.60% 1991 1,010,000