title: Does tougher enforcement make drugs more expensive?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review empirical research that seeks to relate marginal increases in enforcement against the supply of illicit drugs to changes in drug prices at the level of the drug supply system being targeted.
  
  
  METHODS
  Review of empirical studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Although the fact of prohibition itself raises prices far above those likely to pertain in legal markets, there is little evidence that raising the risk of arrest, incarceration or seizure at different levels of the distribution system will raise prices at the targeted level, let alone retail prices. The number of studies available is small; they use a great variety of outcome and input measures and they all face substantial conceptual and empirical problems.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Given the high human and economic costs of stringent enforcement measures, particularly incarceration, the lack of evidence that tougher enforcement raises prices call into question the value, at the margin, of stringent supply-side enforcement policies in high-enforcement nations.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Harold A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Pollack
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Reuter
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D016527:Drug Costs / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D004335:Drug and Narcotic Control / Q000191:economics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006291:Health Policy / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs / Q000191:economics* / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs
keywords: Crop eradication; dealer risk; drug enforcement; drug markets; drug prices; interdiction