Will the Global Slowdown Reduce Cocaine Demand?

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — “What America needs now is a drink,” Franklin Roosevelt famously declared upon repealing Prohibition in 1933, amidst a bleak economic climate. But according to the U.N.’s top anti-drug official, consumers of prohibited substances — particularly cocaine — might not have the same reaction to today’s comparable economic turmoil. “There is no doubt the [economic] crisis will have an impact [on the drug trade],” Antonio María Costa, the director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told Reuters last week. “It may turn cocaine into a much less desirable discretionary income expenditure.” Costa was referring to European […]