Opium in Afghanistan: Prospects for the Success of Source Country Drug Control Policies
The Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 407-432, 2008
Posted: 29 Feb 2012
Date Written: February, 29 2012
Abstract
Recent estimates suggest that in 2007, Afghan opiate production accounted for about 93% of the world’s total. This paper presents a framework for estimating the potential for source-country drug-control policies to reduce this production. It contains a first pass at estimating the potential for policy to shift the opium supply curve upward, as well as a range of supply and demand elasticities. The estimates suggest that meager reductions in production can be expected through alternative development programs alone (reductions are less than 6.5% in all but one of the specifications presented). They also suggest that substantial increases in crop eradication would be needed to achieve even moderate reductions in production (reductions range from 3.0% to 19.4% for various specifications). The results also imply that, all else equal, the cessation of crop eradication would result in only modest increases in opiate production (with estimates ranging from 1.6% to 9.6%).
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