Title
What the 'War on Drugs' and Prohibition Can Tell Us About Countering the Illegal Wildlife Trade
Author(s)
Hedges, Simon
Published
2017
Abstract
Many economists draw attention to the failure of the ‘War on Drugs’ (WoD) arguing that prohibition-based effortsto combat the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) will similarly failas well as removing communities’ stakes in conservation.A better approach, they argue, is a legal trade in wildlife.There are good reasons for comparing the WoD and IWTincluding (1) both involve trade in products that wereformerly legal and (2) banning trade in these productsdrove the trade underground and lead to the involvementof organized crime. However, legal trades in wildlife havebeen undermined by parallel illegal trading in the sameproducts. It is important to understand why such paralleltrading happens but here the WoD is not very informative.Fundamental differences between the trades in drugsand wildlife are of greater importance: (1) supply of ivory,rhino horn, and other wildlife products is finite and oftensmall relative to levels of demand but the supply of illegaldrugs is easily increased and (2) the nature of demand forwildlife products can change both radically and quickly.This nexus of economics and biology places limits on thetrade in wildlife that do not apply to drugs. It is for suchreasons that the success of even the previous exemplarsof sustainable legal trade, e.g., vicuna and crocodilians,have been challenged. We must, therefore, identify whichspecies can be traded sustainably and why. But what aboutthose species whose biology and socio-economic contextpreclude sustainable trade? Several additional differencesbetween the trades in drugs and wildlife should give us hope: (1) ivory, rhino horn, and other wildlife productsare not addictive; (2) there is much higher global demandfor drugs than there is for wildlife products; and (3) thedemand for drugs spans the globe but the main marketsfor ivory and many other wildlife products are in onlya few countries. These differences can be exploited tocombat IWT without undermining local livelihoods.
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PUB22346