A Speculative Analysis on the Ultimate Asymmetric Trade War
The Perpetual Stalemate
For five decades, Colombia and Venezuela have bled money, lives, and sovereignty into a war they never declared. They spray their own croplands with poison, deploy their militaries against their farmers, and watch foreign agencies operate with impunity on their soil. The reward for this self-flagellation? Continued poverty, institutional corruption, and the honor of being called “narco-states” by the very nations whose citizens consume their product.
Meanwhile, cocaine remains as available in Manhattan as martinis, at prices that have barely budged since the Reagan administration.
The Nuclear Option Nobody Discusses
Imagine tomorrow’s headline: “Andean Trade Coalition Legalizes Cocaine Exports, Files WTO Complaint Against US Trade Barriers.”
The communique would be simple: “We are transitioning from prohibition to regulation. Cocaine sulfate will be produced under pharmaceutical standards, taxed at 200%, with revenues funding healthcare and addiction treatment. We invite all nations to negotiate regulated import frameworks. Those who refuse bear responsibility for empowering criminal organizations.”
Overnight, the entire architecture of the drug war collapses like a house of cards in a hurricane.
The Mathematics of Madness
Current cocaine economics are absurd by any rational measure:
- Production cost in Colombia: $1,500/kilo
- Wholesale price at US border: $30,000/kilo
- Street price in US cities: $100,000/kilo
That 6,500% markup doesn’t pay for quality control or customer service. It pays for submarines, bribes, and bullets. It funds private armies and corrupts entire institutions. Most importantly, it ensures that only criminals can participate in a trade that would otherwise be no more remarkable than coffee export.
How Much Could Cocaine Cost?
Imagine this – cocaine could in theory be produced at a cost price on par with coffee or sugar. That is under 10 euro in my supermarket. Think about this for a second.
The coca plant is easier to grow than coffee. It thrives in poor soil, needs minimal fertilizer, resists pests naturally, and yields multiple harvests per year. The processing from leaf to powder requires less infrastructure than turning coffee cherries into espresso-grade beans. No roasting facilities, no complex fermentation, no precise temperature controls. Just basic chemistry that’s been understood since the 1860s.
At agricultural scale with modern processing, a kilogram of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine would cost roughly the same to produce as a kilogram of instant coffee – somewhere between €8-15. The active alkaloid content is higher than caffeine in coffee beans. The extraction process is simpler than decaffeination. The packaging requirements identical to any white powder sold in bulk.
Your local supermarket could theoretically stock one-gram packets next to the aspirin for €0.50, with a 300% retail markup built in. The same product that currently funds private armies and corrupts entire nations would sit on shelves between the paracetamol and antacids, costing less than a fancy chocolate bar.
This isn’t speculation – it’s agricultural economics. Coca is a bush. It grows in dirt. Everything else – the submarines, the violence, the trillion-dollar enforcement apparatus, the prison-industrial complex – exists solely because we collectively pretend this particular plant requires special treatment.
A gram of cocaine costing less than your morning latte. That’s not a wild dream or nightmare depending on your perspective – that’s just what happens when you remove artificial scarcity from an easily produced agricultural product.
The entire drug war, viewed through this lens, is a massive market manipulation scheme that makes De Beers’ diamond cartel look like amateur hour.
The WTO Gambit
The genius of using World Trade Organization mechanisms isn’t about winning – it’s about forcing the conversation into daylight. Picture Colombian trade representatives asking:
“The United States insists on free trade for soybeans, semiconductors, and Hollywood movies. Yet they militarily enforce prohibition of our agricultural product, creating a black market that destabilizes our entire region. Could the American delegation explain why this specific commodity requires exemption from normal trade rules?”
The American response would be fascinating to watch. They couldn’t cite public health – alcohol and tobacco flow freely. They couldn’t cite addiction potential – Oxycontin has FDA approval. They certainly couldn’t cite success metrics – overdoses are at record highs despite trillion-dollar enforcement spending.
The Dominoes Would Fall Fast
Once legal, pharmaceutical-grade cocaine priced at $5,000/kilo (including hefty taxes) would still destroy cartels instantly. Why risk submarines when you can use shipping containers? Why bribe judges when you can hire lawyers?
Portugal would probably accept this new situation first, adding regulated cocaine to their decriminalization framework. Switzerland would launch a “pilot program.” The Netherlands would suddenly remember their commitment to evidence-based policy.
The United States would find itself in the position of enforcing military blockades against legal commerce while explaining why this doesn’t violate every trade agreement they’ve ever signed.
The Uncomfortable Questions
This scenario forces questions nobody wants asked:
- If cocaine prohibition worked, why haven’t prices increased in 40 years?
- If it’s about public health, why do legal pharmaceuticals kill more Americans?
- If it’s about addiction, why not regulate and tax rather than criminalize?
- Who actually benefits from keeping the trade illegal?
That last question is the killer. Because the answer isn’t “nobody.” Prison contractors, money launderers, intelligence agencies running black budgets, cartels, corrupt officials – they all share a common interest in maintaining prohibition. The drug war isn’t failing; it’s working exactly as designed for those who profit from it.
Would Decriminalization Damage Lives?
Yes. Many would strat using who can’t afford right now… But the current situation damages without a doubt more lives. In fact we can argue this would reduce impact in several key ways – and for some reason everyone keeps ignoring these self-evident facts…
Every overdose death from fentanyl-laced cocaine is a regulatory failure, not a drug failure. Every HIV infection from shared needles exists because clean supplies are criminalized. Every young person shot in turf wars dies for price margins that only exist through prohibition. The current system doesn’t prevent cocaine use – it just ensures that every single use carries maximum possible harm.
Legal pharmaceutical cocaine would come with dosage labels, purity guarantees, and child-proof packaging. No more Russian roulette with every line. No more users accidentally overdosing because their dealer’s supplier switched sources. No more teenagers getting shot over corner territory worth $50,000 a week that would be worth $500 under legalization.
The Swiss proved this with heroin – when they gave addicts clean, measured doses in clinical settings, crime dropped 60%, HIV transmission nearly vanished, and most users eventually voluntarily entered treatment. Turns out people are more likely to seek help when seeking help doesn’t mean risking arrest.
Portugal decriminalized everything in 2001. Drug deaths dropped 80%. HIV infections among users dropped 95%. Teen usage actually decreased. Yet we pretend these numbers don’t exist, like acknowledging reality would somehow make the sky fall.
The current system maximizes harm at every level – users get poisoned products, communities get violence, countries get destabilized, and somehow we call this “protection.” It’s like setting your house on fire to prevent arson.
How Much Does the “War on Drugs” Cost?
…and what purpose is this war really serving?
The United States alone spends $51 billion annually on drug prohibition – enough to provide free college tuition to every student in America. Add in global enforcement, military operations, incarceration costs, and we’re looking at roughly $100 billion yearly. That’s not counting the lost tax revenue (estimated at $106 billion annually) or the economic productivity of millions behind bars. The real price tag approaches a quarter-trillion dollars per year to maintain cocaine at street prices identical to 1990.
For that money, we could literally buy the entire global cocaine supply at current black market prices and burn it – and still have $150 billion left over for treatment programs. Instead, we’ve built a perpetual motion machine of human misery that enriches exactly the wrong people.
So who benefits from this magnificent bonfire of resources? Private prisons pulling $70,000 per inmate annually. Intelligence agencies running untraceable black budgets through “seized drug money.” Military contractors selling helicopters to spray Colombian farms. Drug testing companies. Ankle monitor manufacturers. The entire ecosystem of companies that profit from prohibition while lobbying against legalization with money that smells suspiciously like powder residue.
The war on drugs isn’t failing – it’s a spectacular success for everyone except taxpayers, communities, and users. It’s the most expensive jobs program in history, employing millions to fight an enemy that gets stronger with every battle won. Every seized shipment raises prices, incentivizing more production. Every arrested dealer creates a job opening with hazard pay. Every militarized response justifies next year’s budget increase.
When a “war” costs this much, lasts this long, and achieves the opposite of its stated goals, you have to wonder – is failure the actual product being manufactured?
The Realpolitik
Would Colombia and Venezuela actually do this? Probably not. The US has demonstrated willingness to overthrow governments for nationalizing fruit companies; imagine their response to legalizing cocaine exports.
But the mere threat changes everything. It’s the economic equivalent of nuclear weapons – a deterrent that says “push us too far, and we’ll flip the table.” Every military threat, every DEA operation, every sovereignty violation would have to be weighed against the risk of triggering the legalization option.
The Future Is Already Here
The irony is that this transition is already happening in slow motion. Cannabis legalization has created billion-dollar companies trading on the NYSE. Psychedelics are entering FDA trials. The only difference between these and cocaine is which lobbyists got there first.
Colombia and Venezuela sit on the agricultural equivalent of oil reserves, forced to watch criminals get rich from their natural resources while their economies struggle. The question isn’t whether this changes, but when and how.
The choice is simple: continue bleeding for a war that enriches your enemies, or flip the script entirely. Sometimes the only winning move is to stop playing by rules written by those who profit from your loss.
What would happen if they actually called this bluff? Would the mask finally slip, revealing what the drug war was always really about?