Study on Drugs Violence and Economics
Study on Drugs, Violence and Economics
Introduction
One point on which almost everyone interested in drug prohibition agrees is the existence of a connection between drugs and violent crime. The disagreement is on the form of the connection and the sign of the correlation. Supporters of drug prohibition typically argue that drug use leads to violent crime and should be illegal in part for that reason. Critics of the war on drugs argue that the attempt to prohibit drug use leads to violent crime and that that is one of the reasons drugs should be legal.
A glance at the figures for U.S. murder rates over the course of this century provides some support for the critics' position (Figure 1).[1] Murder rates were high during the period of alcohol prohibition, fell after repeal, rose again with increased efforts to prohibit illegal drugs, and remain high.
The impression given by the graph is confirmed by more sophisticated analysis. Jeffrey A. Miron has analyzed the relation between violent crime in the U.S., as measured by the murder rate, and the enforcement of drug prohibition (including alcohol prohibition) as measured by expenditures by the federal agencies in charge of enforcing prohibition (Figure 2), over the entire period for which murder rates are available on a national basis. His statistical results "suggest the homicide rate is currently 25%-75% higher than it would be in the absence of drug prohibition."[2]
The case of the U.S. is particularly interesting for at least two reasons. One is that the U.S. murder rate is anomalously high relative to other countries that are otherwise similar–about 8 to 10 murders per 100,000 population over the past two decades, compared to 1 to 2 for countries such as Canada, Australia, the U.K. and countries in western Europe. The other is that the U.S. provides data on both the murder rate and enforcement of drug prohibition over a fairly long period of time.
The high U.S. murder rate is frequently attributed to the high rate of gun ownership in the U.S., relative to most comparable nations. One problem with that explanation is that, while it is true that there is a significant correlation in international comparisons between gun ownership and murder rates, that correlation is driven by a single observation–the U.S. Regressions with the U.S. omitted show much weaker results, despite the existence of other countries with relatively high gun ownership rates–and without anomalously high murder rates. A...