Drugs - The Traffic In Drugs

In 2000, an estimated 1,306 metric tons of drugs were sold.³ The tonnage may not appear overwhelming (about the weight of 600 smaller automobiles), but keep in mind that a "snort" of cocaine holds only about 100 milligrams of cocaine and a joint has less than half a gram of marijuana.

In 2000 Americans spent $60.6 billion on these drugs (in 1998 constant dollars). If "other drugs" are included, the size of this market in 2000 was $62.9 billion.

Weight of marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin was up over this period, the weight of cocaine was down. Overall tonnage was more or less flat (1.5% increase). Expenditures were down 46%, indicating that prices had declined in the 1989 to 2000 period, possibly as a consequence of softening demand. The number of users had declined, as we shall see in the next panel.

Note please that tonnage data do not in any way reflect the steeply rising arrests rates we have noted earlier. One of the interesting social trends shown by statistics on the war on drugs is that the drug trade marches on, driven by its own imperatives — and so does the war on drugs. If the two are in any way related, it is difficult to discern that by looking at statistics.

Dollar Share of Drugs

The physical quantities represented by the major drugs, and the dollars they fetch in the retail market, are in sharp contrast as shown by the two pie charts to the left. Marijuana is a relatively small part of the dollar trade, 17%, but accounts for the bulk of the tonnage flow, the largest number of users, and the largest share of all arrests.

Tonnage Share of Drugs

Cocaine is a shade over a fifth of the physical quantities distributed but accounts for 59% of dollar sales. Heroin is the most potent of the major drugs. A little goes a long ways. Heroin accounts for 1% of the tonnage but expands into 20% of the dollar value of drugs traded in 2000. Heroin also has the distinction of being the most addictive of the drugs and of causing most of the deaths from drugs — in part by its very nature, in part because, in sharing needles, users often contract HIV/AIDS. Methamphetamine, one of the modern, synthetic competitors of heroin, behaves in a similar manner; it expands from about 1% of the physical quantity sold to 17% of the dollar market.

The data shown here are at best educated guesses based on the analysis of data gathered from all available sources by Abt Associates under contract to the National Office of Drug Policy, an element of the White House. Part of the problem in assessing the war on drugs is that those who engage in the drug trade do not fill out forms when the data collectors of the Economic Census, conducted by the Bureau of the Census, call in years ending in 2 and in 7. But one gets a bit of an idea nonetheless.

Source: Office Of National Drug Control Policy, the White House, What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, 1988-1998, Abt Associates, available at http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/pdf/spending_drugs_1988_1998.pdf.