"In Detroit, officials say that their busts have helped raise the street price of a kilogram of cocaine to roughly $43,000 from about $30,000."

As another user pointed out, what's the end goal here? Why is that a good thing? I don't know. I definitely think hurting the pockets of the poor-er drug addicts is a bit... pointless as you said.

Imagine how much money was spent on this entire operation... it must be a bloody lot, and from what we can see, not a lot of gain either. As a guess, maybe they got some better intelligence, new informants.. which they can use to further their "war on drugs".

In reality, "took down * drug runners who spent * years evading us and supplying * with amount of drugs over * years" looks really good on someone's CV than "Did an undercover bust and put a drug dealer in jail". All comes down to politics in the end doesn't it?

> In reality, "took down * drug runners who spent * years evading us and supplying * with amount of drugs over * years" looks really good on someone's CV

What I found most interesting was the disconnect between the reality of the drug operations, and the information the DEA had. The DEA thought a $2M transaction was huge and rare. The drug dealers were doing that amount regularly.

In the end, the only way the DEA got inside the organization was that someone talked. If everyone had kept quiet, the DEA would still have no idea about the scale of the operation.

> what's the end goal here? Why is that a good thing?

Less supply means less consumption, period. Increased price is just a mechanism that determines who still gets to consume how much.

Of course, it also incentivizes getting the supply back up.

> Of course, it also incentivizes getting the supply back up.

I think you answered yourself, didn't you?

One thing I've observed about (legal or otherwise) markets with inelastic demand is that temporary supply shortages tend to translate into permanent price increases.

So, what DoJ has accomplished is a pretext for dealers to hike their margins, and an incentive for desperate addicts to rely on more violent means to support their usage.

Basically, Merry Christmas and a Fucked-up New Year...

If you're addicted price won't matter. You will find a way to get that money and that probably means theft/mugging etc. The only people hurt by this are ordinary citizens.

Let's say less supply interdiction in this case, at least locally, and for a certain period, actually reduces consumption of cocaine.

What's the benefit? What's the cost?