The Idiocy of Using a $200 Billion Navy To Enforce a 140× Cocaine Premium

Last year there were 178 million alcohol drinkers in the US, which, unfortunately, resulted in 178,000 alcohol related deaths in the US. That’s a regrettable 0.1% fatality rate among users.

But alcohol isn’t illegal because America hasn’t forgotten the bitter lessons of the Prohibition disaster 100 years ago.

By contrast, the only illegal drug that comes in from Venezuela is cocaine. There is no evidence whatsoever by the Federal government’s own lights that any fentanyl comes into the US from Venezuela.

So the “killer” drug they are gumming about is cocaine. Yet even then Venezuela grows zero percent of the annual US supply of about 826,000 pounds, and accounts for only 8% of US bound shipments via transit from Colombia and other sources.

Still, cocaine may well be both illegal and a dubious source of recreational stimulants for most people, but it is actually no more deadly than alcohol. To wit, according to DEA and other government agencies, last year there were about 5 million cocaine users in the USA and about 5,000 deaths from pure cocaine overdoses.

In this regard, the higher figure of 20,000 cocaine deaths per year often cited by drug prohibitionists reflects the widespread spiking of street cocaine with deadly fentanyl. The latter is far, far cheaper at 0.3 cents per dose versus versus $150 per dose for cocaine or more than 1,000X more.