Granted, it is a few dozen bungled policies ago, but remember when we were blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean as part of the administration’s Operation Dude Bro antidrug strategy? Well, the results are in, and they are sadly predictable. From The Washington Post:
In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire. In a closed-door briefing last month, Pentagon officials told lawmakers the strikes in international waters off South and Central America had not reduced its purity.
It’s not actually a bad metric. Basically the demand for cocaine is going to be more or less constant over something like a 6 month window, but the supply is going to fluctuate, so the dealers are going to cut what they have until it’s enough to meet demand. That means you can basically use the purity as a good proxy for available supply; when it goes down, the dealers are feeling the squeeze and having to stretch their limited supply, when it goes up the dealers aren’t having a hard time getting the goods so they can afford to adulterate it less.