THEY'RE SO SCARED THEY PUT 20 TONS ON ONE SHIP!

If you thrill to the sight of boats chasing boats, this video of the
Coast Guard's "Top 10 Drug Busts" is for you. In a recent press
release, the Coast Guard brags that it's been "a record year for
cocaine seizures with 355,755 pounds seized, worth more than $4.7
billion." It claims smugglers are "desperate" and cites unusually
large seizures as evidence.

Is a rising seizure total a sign of success or a sign that the volume
crossing the border has increased? Is an increase in large-volume
seizures a sign of smugglers' desperation or a sign that smugglers are
not terribly worried about interdiction, treating the risk as a cost
of doing business? The press release acknowledges that "smugglers
adapt their tactics in response to effective counternarcotic
measures." So even "effective" interdiction efforts cannot have a
substantial, lasting impact on drug consumption, as Antonio Maria
Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, conceded in a
speech at the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform earlier
this month.

However much the Coast Guard seizes, enough drugs always get through
to meet the demand. The most drug warriors can expect is to
temporarily increase prices by raising traffickers' cost of doing
business. Since the cost of replacing seized drugs is very small
compared to their retail value, with most of the markup occurring
after they arrive in the U.S., interdiction is a highly inefficient
way of discouraging drug use. But don't tell John Walters. The drug
czar thinks "every load of drugs seized represents that much less that
can be used to poison our young people and harm our nation."