The Drug Curse: Drug Enforcement, Trafficking Routes, and their Consequences

• In Event: Drugs, Crime and Territory in Latin America

Abstract

The conventional wisdom across disciplines is that drug-related consequences, including the presence of drug trafficking organizations, violence, and drug use, are intrinsically linked to the drug trade. We provide a theory unifying this conventional wisdom by arguing that drug-related consequences are most prevalent along drug-trafficking routes. Specifically, cities that fall along trafficking routes will suffer most from drug-related consequences. Using network analysis, we model drug trafficking routes with georeferenced data on drug cultivation, transportation infrastructure, and cities in Mexico and Colombia. We further model trafficking routes assuming that drug enforcement efforts by the state alter trafficking routes. Using these routes, we test the conventional wisdom statistically. We first show that drug enforcement efforts by the state do not alter trafficking routes. We then show that cities falling along trafficking routes suffer disproportionately from drug-related consequences, demonstrating that trafficking routes are highly predictive of drug-related consequences. Our results provide the first systematic empirical evidence for this conventional wisdom and shed light on the inefficiencies of anti-drug operations by the state. Our results first suggest that an alternative anti-drug strategy might be more efficient, and also tells us where anti-drug efforts should be concentrated.

Authors

• Marco Alcocer, University of California, San Diego

• Hernan Picatto, UCSD