174 Heroin Overdoses In Six Days In One City: What You’re Not Being Told

As some former gang members prefer to focus on cannabis sales, opening their own dispensaries and stepping out of the shadow market, others see an opportunity for high profits and, consequently, remain in the streets.

According to the DEA, the opioid business has been booming for Mexican cartels.

In the past two-and-a-half years, Mexican gangs have increased the production of fentanyl, a potent, synthetic opioid analgesic, as well as its acetyl fentanyl variation. Taking the idea of supply and demand into consideration— one of the most fundamental concepts of economics —you might conclude that the increase in production is directly associated with the increase in demand. Taking the fact that since 1999, the rate of unintentional overdose deaths tied to opioids has quadrupled, it appears that the demand for opioids continues to grow, and as more people abuse the drugs, more overdoses are reported.

The high demand also helps to explain the low quality of available illegal opioids. Since pure heroin is more expensive and rare, dealers become creative, diluting the substance or adding other components to make the supply more powerful.

Seeing an opportunity to earn high profits by selling heroin, tainted heroin, or related drugs on the growing American market — while also eliminating competition — these smugglers have been responsible for higher death rates, as well. But is the blood only on their hands if they are simply responding to market demands?

Prohibition Fuels Crime, Violence, and Heroin Overdoses by Boosting the Black Market

In an article for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf writes that “drug warriors helped to fuel the opioid epidemic.” In The Economics of Prohibition, economist and professor Mark Thornton writes that “prohibition results in more, not less, crime and corruption.”

In the black market that results from prohibitive policies, Thornton explains, organizations use violence to “enforce contracts, maintain market share, and defend sales territory.” While few paid attention to heroin when it was criminalized with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1914, Thornton notes, over time, the illegal heroin market grew into an organized and monopolized structure precisely because heroin users were forced to go to the black market for their needs.

These “institutionalized criminal exchanges” create unsafe drugs, which is why we are seeing an increase in tainted heroin-related overdoses. Were heroin legal, economic historian Chris Calton writes, there would be competition among providers to ensure consumers their heroin brand is safe.

“When goods are made illegal,” Calton continues, “smugglers will continue to trade them, but the ability to establish brand consistency is suppressed.”

In Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, economist Thomas Sowell explains that brands “are a way of economizing on scarce knowledge, and forcing producers to compete in quality as well as price.”

Allowing the drug market to go legit by eliminating prohibitionist policies, as well as regulations that criminalize commerce and use, could give addicts and consumers at large better, more accurate, and therefore safer information on their drug of choice. Opening the markets could also give users the opportunity to enjoy other benefits of the free market, such as specialized clinics and other facilities that allow users peace of mind while consuming these products in a controlled and secure environment.

It’s because prohibitionist policies were put in place that drug markets became violent; prohibition breeds monopoly — and monopoly can only be sustained through force.

If, much like the laws of physics, the laws of economics cannot be ignored, we must look at the current opioid epidemic as a consequence of the bad economics of drug prohibition. And the natural answer to this is more freedom — not more law enforcement involvement.