Oh man, I enjoyed the crap out of this book. It’s basically a surprisingly brave business/econ reporter discussing the economics of illegal drugs. Like, for instance, he talks about how we keep fighting the supply side of drugs, which just drives up the price. There’s also a really interesting discussion of how law enforcement groups calculate the value of drug busts. In short, they don’t calculate the value to the cartel, but rather the street value. The author notes that this is sort of like calculating the value of a cow by seeing the price of a steak at a Manhattan restaurant.
Anyway, yeah, really interesting. Wainwright, like just about everyone who looks into this topic deeply, comes out in favor of legalization.