Taxing the drug trade: Coercive exploitation and the financing of rule

Under the current prohibition regime fornarcotic drugs, taxing the illicit drugtrade appears a contradiction in terms.Nevertheless, a great variety of exactionsystems exist by which states, or fractionsof states, try to fiscalize resources fromparticipants in drug markets, and integratethis drug revenue into their system ofrule. Anti-money laundering legislationand new asset forfeiture laws are the morerecent examples of a much more extensivefiscal toolkit that is applied for thisgoal. This chapter tries to understand theunderlying dynamics of the war on drugs andits outcomes from this fiscal perspective.It looks at diverse modes of ``taxing' thedrug trade, in a variety of jurisdictions along theproduction-trafficking-consumption-investmenttrajectory of the international drugtrade, and tries to assess the implicationsof different fiscal regimes for the natureof rule. The general argument is that crimefighting and law enforcement are poorcategories to comprehend the much morefundamental question of social order thatunderlies these fiscal strategies. Theargument also suggests that criminalization could therefore be seen,not only as a qualitative change in theglobal political order, as Bayart wouldhave it in the citation below, but also asa political coercive strategy that aims tocreate the parameters of a new kind oforder through which power, wealth andsecurity can be accumulated andre-distributed.