Should cocaine be legalized?
More cocaine is produced today than in the time of Pablo Escobar. (Photo: Todd Gipstein)
Do you know how much cocaine actually costs? Actually, don’t answer that.
Prior to working on this piece, I couldn’t even give you a ballpark figure of how much money you have to spend to get your hands on some coke. I didn’t even know that it comes from a plant. It’s hard to imagine that the powdery white stuff that I see in the movies comes entirely from a leaf.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that a single kilogram of cocaine can cost as much as $152,207 in places like Australia—and apparently, how it’s made and how much it costs aren’t the only things I never knew about cocaine.
The world has a cocaine problem
The first thing I learned is that almost all cocaine is produced in South America, and Colombia alone accounts for 70% of the world’s supply of coke, according to data from the UN. Colombia produces so much cocaine that US authorities say that a whopping 89% of the the drug circulating in the country originates from there.
In recent years, production of the coca leaf which cocaine is derived from has only skyrocketed despite the Colombian government’s efforts to stop it. Between the years 2012 and 2015, coca production went up by 250% to a record high of 171,000 hectares. Even in the glory days of the King of Cocaine, Pablo Escobar, Colombia never produced this much coke. In fact, in 2020, authorities seized over 500,000 tonnes of cocaine, a record high that was said to be enough to fill a concert hall.
Cocaine production has continuously gone up globally in the last 10 years. (Source: The Economist)
It’s not just Colombia, though. Cocaine production has gone up all around the world. In fact, it’s hit an all-time high of 1,982 tonnes, up by 11% compared to the year before, and almost twice as much as the amount produced in 2014.
So how much does the stuff sell for? As it turns out, the price of cocaine goes up the farther you go from Latin America. Data from 2019 shows that a kilo of coke costs $1,491 in Colombia, $12,433 in Mexico, and $69,000 in the United States. Still, this doesn’t seem to deter people from buying and using the drug. An estimated 21.46 million people worldwide use cocaine, the bulk of which are concentrated in North and South America.
Buying and using aren’t the only issues that come with cocaine production. About a third of the world’s murders occur in Latin America, and that violence is largely linked to gangs and drugs. Drug cartels are complicated operations that involve recruitment, buying weapons, and corrupting government officials—so controlling cocaine production and trade are actually crucial in making Latin American countries safer and better places to live for their populations.
Is this allowed?
The proposed solution to the cocaine problem may surprise you. Contrary to the brilliant ideas of President Richard Nixon in the ‘70s and President Rodrigo Duterte in recent times, it’s not a war on drugs. Quite the opposite: Some suggest that legalizing cocaine might help mitigate the risks that come with production and trade.
The idea is that legalizing cocaine, especially in wealthy countries, would reduce the profit that gangs in third world countries make from it. It would also make the product safer, because gangs often boost their profit by mixing pure cocaine with cheaper drugs, synthetic opioids like fentanyl—which, when combined with coke, becomes toxic, and is assumed to be the main reason for the 500% spike in cocaine-related deaths since 2010.
Plus, estimates from the Cato Institute show that drug legalization could result in up to $106.7 billion in earnings for governments. In the US, state, local, and federal governments spend about $41.3 billion on drug-related law enforcement year-on-year.
With no crimes to chase, governments would not have to spend money on drug enforcement, and treating drugs like any other legal (but harmful) substance like alcohol, or cigarettes, would allow them to impose taxes, which means increased revenue. In fact, the same study from the Cato Institute estimates that full legalization could yield an estimated $47 billion.
Don’t look at my search history
So, as it turns out, legalizing drugs like cocaine may be the best solution for the impending cocaine problem. But for now, while cocaine is still definitely illegal, I’m more worried about what my FBI guy is thinking, because my research for this newsletter has made me ask Google all sorts of concerning things like “how much does cocaine cost?” and “is cocaine dangerous?”
If you’re reading this, Mr. FBI Agent, I swear those searches were purely for journalistic purposes.
