The 2019 World Drug Report will include an updated overview of recent trends on production, trafficking and consumption of key illicit drugs. The Report contains a global overview of the baseline data and estimates on drug demand and supply and provides the reference point for information on the drug situation worldwide.

Economists explore the relationship between expanding international trade and the parallel growth in illicit trade, including illegal drugs, smuggling, and organized crime. As international trade has expanded dramatically in the postwar period--an expansion accelerated by the opening of China, Russia, India, and Eastern Europe--illicit international trade has grown in tandem with it. This volume uses the economist's toolkit to examine the economic, political, and social problems resulting from such illicit activities as illegal drug trade, smuggling, and organized crime. The contributors consider several aspects of the illegal drug market, including the sometimes puzzling relationships among purity, price, and risk; the effect of globalization on the heroin and cocaine markets, examined both through mathematical models and with empirical data from the U.K; the spread of khat, a psychoactive drug imported legally to the U.K. as a vegetable; and the economic effect of the "war on drugs" on producer and consumer countries. Other chapters examine the hidden financial flows of organized crime, patterns of smuggling in international trade, Iran's illicit trading activity, and the impact of mafia-like crime on foreign direct investment in Italy.

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.

Forty years after the declaration of the "war on drugs" by President Nixon, the debate on the effectiveness and costs of the ban is red-hot. Several former Latin American presidents and leading intellectuals from around the world have drawn attention to the ineffectiveness and adverse consequences of prohibitionism. This book thoroughly analyzes the drug policies of one of the main protagonists in this war. The book covers many topics: the economics of drug production, the policies to reduce consumption and decrease supply during the Plan Colombia, the effects of the drug problem on Colombia's international relations, the prevention of money laundering, the connection between drug trafficking and paramilitary politics, and strategies against organized crime. Beyond the diversity in topics, there is a common thread running through all the chapters: the need to analyze objectively what works and what does not, based on empirical evidence. Presented here for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this book is a contribution to a debate that urgently needs to transcend ideology and preconceived opinions.

Bribes, Bullets, and Intimidation is the first book to examine drug trafficking through Central America and the efforts of foreign and domestic law enforcement officials to counter it. Drawing on interviews, legal cases, and an array of Central American sources, Julie Bunck and Michael Fowler track the changing routes, methods, and networks involved, while comparing the evolution and consequences of the drug trade through Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama over a span of more than three decades. Bunck and Fowler argue that while certain similar factors have been present in each of the Central American states, the distinctions among these countries have been equally important in determining the speed with which extensive drug trafficking has taken hold, the manner in which it has evolved, the amounts of different drugs that have been transshipped, and the effectiveness of antidrug efforts.

This book presents evidence that drug policies impose high costs on poor transit and producer countries. It argues that, in the face of great uncertainty about the benefits of alternative drug policies, those with lower social costs should receive greater emphasis.

One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.