Drug Warriors Take 103 Percent

Narcoleaks, a new website produced by Italian journalists and the drug trafficking researcher Sandro Donati, keeps track of cocaine seizure reports and compares them to official estimates of worldwide production. The most recent projection based on Donati's calculations indicates that seizures, which totaled 47.1 metric tons from January 1 through yesterday, will hit 664 to 714 metric tons by the end of the year. According to the U.S. State Department's production estimate, that means governments will succeed in confiscating all of Earth's cocaine, plus another 19 metric tons or so (based on the middle of the projected range), possibly produced on Mars. The production estimate from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime does not look quite as silly, but it does rather implausibly suggest that drug warriors manage to seize more than three-quarters of the world's illicit cocaine.

[Thanks to Peter Cohen for the tip.]