Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

published 11 March 2016

by TomWainwright

It is sometimesargued that drugdealers are nodifferent fromother businessowners, with thesole differencebeing that theirproduct happensto be illegal. Is thattrue? It's the premise of Narconomics:How to Run a Drug Cartel, by TomWainwright. Wainwright useseconomics to analyse this multibillion-dollar industry and finds thatthere are indeed many similaritiesbetween the cartel kingpins and theaverage multinational.

Despite some grim subject matter,the book is "great fun", says JohnArlidge in The Sunday Times.Indeed, "there are so many well reportedexamples of the smarts ofthe cartels" that "you end up withsneaking respect for some of themost heinous entrepreneurs in theworld". Wainwright does make a"half-hearted" effort to outline someanti-cartel strategies, but the keymessage is that "it will be hard" to getthe estimated 250 million drug users to"kick a habit that they clearly enjoy" his preferred option is legalisation.

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The book is "lively and engaging" and"informed by both dogged reportingand gleanings from academicresearch", agrees David Wessel ofThe Wall Street Journal. Yet it failsto provide "a convincing argumentthat the US could safely legalise andregulate addictive drugs and thatdoing so would reduce the number ofusers". Wainwright himself describes"how many Americans were legallyprescribed the painkiller OxyContinby regulated physicians and becamehooked, with devastating results".

On the contrary, "by looking at thedrug trade as a business, Wainwrightis able to reveal much about why itwreaks such havoc in Central andSouth America," says Misha Glennyin The New York Times. "The violenceit leaves in its wake... is not a randomby-product of gangster culture" thevery illegality of the business meansviolence becomes "the only way toenforce contractual agreements".This book "is one of the pithiest andmost persuasive arguments for drug law reform I have ever read".

Narcoeconomics: How to Run aDrug Cartel, by Tom Wainwright.Ebury Press (£20).