Also, It Makes Your Coke Cost More

Over at Alternet, the Drug Policy Alliance's Bill Piper offers some reasons to think the recent increase in cocaine prices is not the good news the Bush administration says it is:

Higher drug prices contribute to increased violence… 

Higher drug prices tend to lead to decreased purity, which can have devastating public health consequences. As cocaine purity falls, some people may switch from smoking or snorting cocaine to injecting it, increasing the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases

Cocaine users who do quit will likely switch to other drugs, with unpredictable consequences…

Rising drug prices leads to greater trafficking, not less.

Piper also points out (as I did in a post on the subject a couple weeks ago) that supply reduction is a doomed strategy over the long term.