The illegal drug trade is created by outlawing and restricting a good or
service, therefore, the mandate and legislative authority of the DEA is
the primary cause of illegal drug trading and its surrounding violence.
The enforcement of federal drug policy removes every 'drug' scheduled
for DEA enforcement from the protection of the open market
infrastructure, where information and commerce mutually exchanged from
consenting parties are free and protected by free information,
contractual obligations, property rights, and disputes resolution are
adjudicated under the rule of law. With the removal of the protection
under the rule of law; this subjects the good in question into a
marketplace of coercion. Mutual exchange is subject to property rights
violations by coercion through monopoly of force. It is this type of
legal environment, which is known as a black market, the underground
nature of these marketplaces makes legal enforcement of disclosure
requirements and contractual obligations impossible. With both secrecy
and lack of legal contractual obligations, grievances are no longer
recognized under the law. With no possibility for legal redress, the
participants who wish to engage in commerce may only enforce contractual
agreements directly.
The difficulty of direct enforcement in the
black market creates a demand for an alternative arbitrator to handle
disputes. An arbitrator's desirability is measured by its enforcement
capability and legitimacy within the black market. This legitimacy is
based on reputation and recognition. Thus, competing arbitrators in
black markets attempt to gain reputability through organization. As
competing arbitrators attempt to increase their reputation by expanding
the territory over which they operate they often bribe or blackmail
members of the legal and law enforcement systems in order to continue
operation without legal harassment. Since these arbitrator organizations
are not legally recognized, organizations materialize in the form of
street gangs or organised crime. The DEA essentially cites the
arbitrators' means of enforcement, which usually take the form of
intimidation, violence and/or kidnapping, as the primary byproduct of
the good being exchanged, justifying continued measures to hunt sellers
and buyers. Despite criticism for forcing participants into black
markets and driving the violence surrounding drug trade by targeting all
buyers and sellers, the DEA's position is that the very transaction is
the cause of violence, and has repeated on various occasions to have
been successful at preventing violence and creating a safer marketplace.
In
2005, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related
assets and $477 million worth of drugs.[20] According to the White
House's Office of Drug Control Policy, the total value of all of the
drugs sold in the U.S. is as much as $64 billion a year,[21] giving the
DEA an efficiency rate of less than 1% at intercepting the flow of drugs
into and within the U.S. Critics of this theory (including recipient of
the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman, prior
to his death a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) point out
that demand for illegal drugs is inelastic; the people who are buying
drugs will continue to buy them with little regard to price, often
turning to crime to support expensive drug habits when the drug prices
rise. One recent study showed that the price of cocaine and
methamphetamine is the highest it has ever been while the quality of
both is at its lowest point ever.[22] This is contrary to a collection
of data done by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which states
that purity of street drugs has increased, while price has
decreased.[23][24][25] In contrast to the statistics presented by the
DEA, the United States Department of Justice released data in 2003
showing that purity of methamphetamine was on the rise.[26]
The
DEA is also criticized for focusing on the operations from which it can
seize the most money,[31] namely the organized cross-border trafficking
of marijuana. Some individuals contemplating the nature of the DEA's
charter advise that, based on danger, the DEA should be most focused on
cocaine. Others suggest that, based on opiate popularity, the DEA should
focus much more on prescription opiates used recreationally, which
critics contend comes first before users switch to heroin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEA
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