Drugs and Terrorism

Are drugs and terrorism linked?  The Drug Enforcement Administration thinks they are:

A photograph of President Bush waving a flag after the Sept. 11 attacks is juxtaposed against a black-and-white image of an African American mother smoking crack cocaine in bed next to her baby. Larger-than-life portraits of Osama bin Laden and Pablo Escobar line the walls. The central message of a traveling Drug Enforcement Administration exhibit unveiled at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry yesterday is that terrorism and drugs are inextricably linked.

This is just the most recent example of a message that U.S. drug warriors have pushing for years. Many will remember a sequence of television ads that aired during past Super Bowls making the same claim. The premise is that if no one purchased drugs, terrorists could not profit from drug trafficking.   

The logic is unassailable as far as it goes, but it tells only half the story.

Many terrorist organizations do profit from illegal drugs. Usually, terrorists sell protection services to drug traffickers, who have huge profits at stake and are at war with law enforcement authorities and each other. Terrorists organizations are natural suppliers of protection services since they are already fugitives from justice and have the necessary expertise and equipment.  This symbiotic relation between drug traffickers and terrorists has persisted for years in Colombia and Peru, where the FARC and the Shining Path finance their campaigns against the government with drug profits.   

But the reason for this connection between terrorism and drug trafficking is that drugs are prohibited. If drugs were legal, the producers would not need protection from government or from rival suppliers. If drugs were legal, their prices would fall to competitive levels so there would be no excess profits to protect.

A different reason for the connection between terrorism and drug trafficking is that both tend to locate in countries with weak governments, such as Afghanistan. But opium poppy, marijuana, and even coca grow in a broad range of countries, not just those where production currently occurs. If drugs were legal, production would be widely dispersed and have no particular overlap with countries that harbor terrorists.
 
Thus, there would be no drug trade if no one purchased drugs; but there would be no connection between drugs and terrorism if drugs were legal.

So which approach to fighting terrorism is most likely to be effective: the interdiction and eradication efforts the U.S. has pursued for decades; or the legalization of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana?

Past attempts to eliminate drug trafficking have had no demonstrable success. After billions spent on interdiction and eradication over the past several decades, drugs are far cheaper and more readily available—and indicators of drug use little different—than twenty-five years ago, before Ronald Reagan launched a major escalation of the War on Drugs.

Legalization, however, would eliminate excess profits from selling drugs, forcing terrorists to rely on more limited sources of funding. The U.S. could not unilaterally impose legalization on other countries, but since the U.S. has been the driving force behind prohibition, much of the world would follow the U.S. lead.

Legalization would also reduce the bloodshed in countries that produce drugs by stopping the violent resolution of conflicts between drug traffickers, politicians, and law enforcement authorities. Legalization would allow the police and the armies in drug-producing countries to fight terrorism, not drugs. Legalization would undercut the corruption that is funded by drug profits. And legalization would bring drug production above ground, providing additional tax revenue.

The legalization approach does have its own risks; drug use might increase. Claims that use would skyrocket are scare tactics based on no evidence, but an honest defense of legalization must acknowledge that use could rise. Thus, the fact that legalization would hinder terrorism does not by itself mean legalization is the right policy (although in my view, it is).

But blaming terrorism on drug use is a cynical attempt by Drug Warriors to cash in on concerns over terrorism.  The sponsors of this new industry exhibit know it will have no effect, but they also know it makes good press.  Only the country’s fight against terrorism will suffer.

Comments

[Mike Huben]

It amazes me that Miron doesn't even see his own contradictions.

"Past attempts to eliminate drug trafficking have had no demonstrable success. After billions spent on interdiction and eradication over the past several decades, drugs are far cheaper and more readily available..."

and

"If drugs were legal, their prices would fall to competitive levels so there would be no excess profits to protect."

If we apply basic microeconomic theory (the same theory Miron applies to minimum wage, in defiance of the data), then obviously the government has been successful in keeping the supply down far enough to raise prices. And obviously allowing prices to fall would increase usage.

"Claims that use would skyrocket are scare tactics based on no evidence, but an honest defense of legalization must acknowledge that use could rise."

Under Miron's libertarian scheme, of course use would rise, even if the price remained the same: advertising drugs would be legal. New customers would be recruited with the ruthless efficiency of the cigarrette and alcohol industries.

And finally, a better argument is that terrorism is a much smaller problem (in terms of average number of deaths per year) than the current drug problem. Who then would want to make the bigger problem still larger to solve the small problem?

Terrorism costs almost nothing. Box cutters, plane tickets, and a few pilot lessons?

Fighting terrorisn by worrying about terrorist funding sources is misguided.

I agree with your point that drug prohibition helps terrorists more than it hurts, but the the stronger argument regarding drugs and terrorism is that they are quite unrelated.

[James]

Mike,

Our host might be under the impression that prices can fall without falling all the way down to competitive levels.

Since both you and the commenter after you have offered very good alternative arguments, I'll offer one as well: Terrorism is inexpensive enough that even if all drug traffic could be eliminated, it wouldn't hurt the capabilities of terrorists in any significant way.

[Matt Rognlie]

From an American perspective, as Mike Huben notes, terrorism is a very small problem compared to drug use. Although terrorist attacks may kill thousands, drugs ravage millions of lives each year. Arguably, even small percentage changes in drug use dramatically outweigh changes in terrorism.

But other nations suffer far more from the destructive consequences of prohibition. Columbia, for instance, suffers regularly from guerilla warfare and kidnappings. A change in policy would make it indisputably better off.

So when enforcers of prohibition blame drugs for terrorism, they're more than a bit cynical. Ironically, they miss the main point: particularly in the United States, crime (another consequence of prohibition) is the far more damaging result. Disarray in our inner cities is directly traceable to drugs. Where else can criminal gangs, sans Mafia-style sophistication, find their money?

Despite a few reservations, I favor the phase-out of prohibition and its replacement with sizable Pigovian taxes to maintain a deterrent. Marijuana would be a great trail run.

[Alan Brown]

Anything that can be used as a reason why terrorism occurs and persists, other than its actual causes, can and will be used by this administration.

That drugs cause terrorism is just the latest delusion that they are suffering from. Perhaps drugs are causing them to think this way, but its more likely due to their own use of them than anything happening out in the real world.

[Pat]

First. Thank you Dr. Miron for all of your great work.

Illicit drugs don't cause terrorism. Illicit drugs facilitate and empower terrorism. Not simply the occasional random terrorism but stateless asymmetric terrorist armies are able to sustain themselves for years on end with untracable black market dollars.

And then there is asymmetric warfare such as the Madrid bombings. alQaeda has encouraged an off the shelf free standing indigenous cell method of operation that entails selling drugs within a target country to get untracable working capital.

Finally, there is the 'silent jihad'. alQaeda's rationale to its own fundamentalist religious supporters for flooding the west with heroin in order to destabilize out decadent western cultures. SEE: al Qaeda's success strategy - Silent Jihad -

As far as I am concerned if you support the drug wafr you support terrorism. See my blog, LeftIndependent blog for more on terror funding thanks to the drug prohibition. http://leftindependent.blogspot.com/

[Pat]

My LeftIndependent blog offering on this subject:

STATELESS TERRORIST ARMIES; ACCEPTED COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF THE DRUG WAR

[Pat]

The invidious economics of Jim Crow

[drthompsonntuba]

this is a great discussion to follow. the connection between drugs and terrorism or violence is real.
most suicide bombers , take psychoactive substance to alter their conscious ness to for them to be able to blow them selve up, besides the financial and technical benefits of the cash.
dr thompson ntuba

[Victoria]

I also believe that legalizing drugs would not only end so much senseless violence, it could possibly ease our government's deficit tremendously if taxed.