How the war on drugs has made drug traffickers more ruthless and efficient - Vox
▻http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/30/14346766/drug-war-failure-evolution
One reason for the balloon effect is what experts call the “profit paradox.” One of the primary goals of the drug war is to make drugs more expensive by limiting their supply, the idea being that a drug habit is much more difficult to sustain if drugs are more expensive. But this also makes drugs immensely profitable: They still cost as little as pennies per dose to produce — drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin are just plants or based on plants, after all — while the final street value has to account for the risk of shipping the drug through an international supply chain that can be broken by government authorities at any border. — (...)