Drug War - Drug Policy: How Dodgy Numbers Distort the Drug Trade

InSight Crime: "Public perceptions of Mexico's drug trade are largely based on unreliable estimates by government agencies, who have an incentive to make the threat seem as large as possible.

Take, for instance, the estimate that the amount of illicit cash flowing across the U.S. border to Mexican capos is between $18 billion and $39 billion annually. It is immediately apparent that this is a huge range; an economist who estimated that the U.S. economy was worth between between $10 trillion and $20 trillion would be laughed at. (The real number is a bit less than $15 trillion.) For those familiar with such statistics, the lack of clarity over the government's methodology is equally worrying."

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