The Drug Trade in Peru: Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply-Side Economics

Abstract

This paper covers the effectiveness of the United States’ anti-narcotics policy against Peruvian Coca farming in the 1980s. It finds that a supply-side oriented approach to targeting drug use, which made use of extradition, interdiction and eradication of relevant “players” was an ineffective strategy at curbing global cocaine use. It also highlights how this policy failed to account for or curb the emergence of the Shining Path, as well as Peru’s bureaucratic inefficiencies which, through organizations like ENACO, continued to make illicit coca production highly profitable for farmers.