Despite efforts to reduce drug consumption in the United States over the past 35 years, drugs are just as cheap and available as they have ever been. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines continue to cause great harm in the country, particularly in minority communities in the major cities. Marijuana use remains a part of adolescent development for about half of the country's young people, although there is controversy about the extent of its harm. Given the persistence of drug demand in the face of lengthy and expensive efforts to control the markets, the National Institute of Justice asked the National Research Council to undertake a study of current research on the demand for drugs in order to help better focus national efforts to reduce that demand. This study complements the 2003 book, Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs by giving more attention to the sources of demand and assessing the potential of demand-side interventions to make a substantial difference to the nation's drug problems. Understanding the Demand for Illegal Drugs therefore focuses tightly on demand models in the field of economics and evaluates the data needs for advancing this relatively undeveloped area of investigation.

Fourteen papers analyse the operation of illegal drug markets and explore the implications for prevention policy. Topics include: crack distribution and abuse in New York; how young Britons obtain their drugs; the impact of heroin prescription in Switzerland; women as consumer of drug markets; toward a typology of illegal drug markets; heroin use and dealing in an English Asian community; Swedish drug markets and drug policy; Albanians and illicit drugs in Italy; a geographic analysis of illegal drug markets; drug trafficking as a cottage industry; understanding the structure of a drug trafficking organisation; performance management indicators and drug enforcement; and connecting drug policy and research on drug markets.

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Economics - Macro-economics, general, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, course: Economic Growth, language: English, abstract: Drug crime is a serious problem worldwide. The use, but also the abuse of legal and illegal psychoactive substances, is an integral part of our societies. Correspondingly lucrative, but also damaging, is the business that is done with legal and illegal drugs. In this essay, I will address the effects of illicit drug trafficking on economic performance. Since a global view would go far beyond the scope of this work, I will limit myself to the American continent, especially on Mexico's drug trafficking with the USA. Furthermore, I will mainly focus on the cocaine trade, as this drug has the greatest economic, evidence-based effects for the individual countries studied. First of all I will briefly explain the reasons why drug crime, but also drug prohibition in general, is an economic problem. In the second part of this essay, I will introduce the US demand market and the associated supply markets (Mexico and other Central and South American countries). In this context I will use the analysis of two papers (one written by Robles et al. and one written by Holst et al.) to explain to what extent the activities of drug cartels have an effect on economic growth in Mexico. Finally, I will counter-examine the findings of these two studies and formulate my own conclusion from the results obtained.