Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

by Tom Wainwright

Overview

Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, Colorado pot shops, and the online drug dens of the Dark Web, Tom Wainwright provides a “a lively and engaging book, informed by both dogged reporting and gleanings from academic research” (The Washington Post)

How does a budding cartel boss succeed (and survive) in the $300 billion illegal drug business? By learning from the best, of course. From creating brand value to fine-tuning customer service, the folks running cartels have been attentive students of the strategy and tactics used by corporations such as Walmart, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola.
 
In Narconomics, Tom Wainwright is an intrepid guide to the most exotic and brutal industry on earth. Picking his way through Andean cocaine fields, Central American prisons, and communities where the cartels rule, Wainwright offers a vivid, fresh, and innovative look into the drug trade and its 250 million customers. More than just an investigation of how drug cartels do business, Narconomics is also a keen and daring blueprint for how to defeat them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610397704
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/11/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Tom Wainwright is the media editor of the Economist. Until 2013 he was the Mexico City bureau chief, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, as well as parts of South America and the United States border region. Wainwright has been a commentator on the drugs business on CNN, the BBC and NPR, among others. He has a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. Wainwright lives in England.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction Cartel Incorporated 1

Chapter 1 Cocaine's Supply Chain: The Cockroach Effect and the 30,000 Percent Markup 9

Chapter 2 Competition vs. Collusion: Why Merger Is Sometimes Better Than Murder 29

Chapter 3 The People Problems of a Drug Cartel: When James Bond Meets Mr. Bean 53

Chapter 4 PR and the Mad Men of Sinaioa: Why Cartels Care About Corporate Social Responsibility 77

Chapter 5 Offshoring: The Perks of Doing Business on the Mosquito Coast 103

Chapter 8 The Promise and Perils of Franchising: How the Mob Has Borrowed from McDonald's 133

Chapter 7 Innovating Ahead of the Law: Research and Development in the "Legal Highs" Industry 149

Chapter 8 Ordering a Line Online: How Internet Shopping Has Improved Drug Dealers' Customer Service 167

Chapter 9 Diversifying into New Markets: From Drug Smuggling to People Smuggling 193

Chapter 10 Coming Full Circle: How Legalization Threatens the Drug Lords 215

Conclusion Why Economists Make the Best Police Officers 239

Acknowledgments 255

Notes 257

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

[Tom Wainwright] brings a fine and balanced analytical mind to some very good research. By looking at the drug trade as a business, Wainwright is able to reveal much about why it wreaks such havoc in Central and South America. Wainwright show[s] how drug violence is not so much senseless but the devastating result of economic calculations taken to their brutal extreme. [His] conclusion is titled ‘Why Economists Make the Best Police Officers.’ It is one of the pithiest and most persuasive arguments for drug law reform I have ever read.”—Misha Glenny, New York Times Sunday Book Review

“A lively and engaging book, informed by both dogged reporting and gleanings from academic research...”—Wall Street Journal

“A cracking read… both an extended black joke and a hard-headed analysis of the economics of getting high.”—Reuters

“An economics book for the Breaking Bad generation”—Times (London)

“Tom Wainwright of the Economist brings a fine and balanced analytical mind to some very good research”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Tom Wainwright has powerfully argued in favor of legalizing drugs. He says that the policies aimed at stifling the drug trade seem to be misdirected and have failed... a controversial but well‑argued book... a must‑read for everyone interested in solving the drug issue. Wainwright makes a lot of sense at a time when the world seems helpless against drug traffickers.”—Washington Book Review

“Readers interested in the intersection of crime, economics, entrepreneurship, and law enforcement will find this work fascinating.”—Library Journal

From the Publisher

…[Wainwright] brings a fine and balanced analytical mind to some very good research, undertaken largely in northern Mexico. By looking at the drug trade as a business, Wainwright is able to reveal much about why it wreaks such havoc in Central and South America.

The New York Times Book Review - Misha Glenny

2015-12-17
In his first book, seasoned journalist Wainwright asks a radical question: what if we stopped looking at drug cartels as armies of faceless gangsters and instead analyzed them as innovative global businesses? Like many journalists, Wainwright is critical of the war on drugs and its ineffective tactics. But during his tenure as a correspondent in Mexico City for the Economist, the author observed that high-level drug dealers are successful often because they understand effective management strategies. The full-body tattoos of the Salvadoran maras encourage loyalty among gang members, who are essentially lifelong employees. Mergers between Mexican gangs help expand international trade, while rival gangs spark competitive innovation. Wainwright suggests that the cocaine trade is eerily similar to the business approach of Wal-Mart, which holds a "monopsony" over its suppliers. The most astonishing chapter covers Internet commerce in the "deep web," where pills and stolen credit card numbers are effortlessly exchanged. Using a bogus account, Wainwright discovered that anonymous participants employ a rating system to assess buyers and sellers, just like eBay, keeping customer service at high levels. "Even when I send a deliberately annoying message to a meth-pipe dealer called ‘vicious86,' asking if he does custom engraving of his pipes for gift orders, he sends a nice reply regretting that he can't but wishing me luck in finding someone who will," writes the author. Wainwright has a good sense of humor, and he describes himself as a "not very brave business journalist," yet his book is courageous on several levels. He not only ventured into brutal prisons and Andean coca fields, but he also approached illicit drugs from a thoughtful new direction. In order to combat the cartels, governments must work together and evaluate the cost-benefit of their social policies as well as the prices of firearms and flak jackets. In a way, Wainwright challenges everyone at once—the dealers, the drug czars, and the bystanders in between. A daring work of investigative journalism and a well-reasoned argument for smarter drug policies.

Kirkus Reviews