The U.S. drug war shifted trafficking routes without reducing consumption, creating a balloon effect

Evidence

These refugees typically ended up in the poor neighborhoods of cities like Los Angeles. Once there, many impoverished boys and young men (and, to a lesser extent, girls and young women) found themselves joining U.S.-born-and-bred gangs. In addition to terrorizing U.S. neighborhoods, these refugee gang members were often arrested and deported back to their home countries, where they soon established new branches of their U.S.-based gangs. In turn, these gangs became centrally involved in the growth in drug trafficking in Central America—which the Contras helped kick-start—as drug traffickers took advantage of the region’s poverty and instability to create a new transshipment hub between South American producers and North American points of sale. The main result of the U.S. drug war has been merely to shift transportation routes while increasing violence and doing little to affect consumption. Squeezing trafficking in one place has created a “balloon effect,” pushing the trade from the Caribbean to Honduras and other parts of Central America. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 313

Categorization

• XREF: Balloon effect in drug enforcement parallels the displacement dynamics seen in the Milgrom law-merchant reading about institutions emerging around costly information.
• SEED: A concrete causal chain (deportation of gang members seeding home-country gangs that feed trafficking) could anchor an article on unintended migration of crime across borders.