The Costs of Drug Prohibition: Let Them Chew Coca, Beware Talk of Victory in Latin America’s Drug Prohibition Wars ?

To students of the drug prohibition wars, pyrrhic victories that merely displace the problem of the drug barons to the next country are depressingly familiar. They are the story of the past three decades in Latin America. It is no wonder that a growing number of wise heads in the region have concluded that the drug war is costlier than legalizing drugs.