Dual-Edged Benefits of Drug Policing: A Quarter Century’s Lesson from a Heroin Drought

Sergey Alexeev and Don Weatherburn

Journal of Law and Economics, 2026, vol. 69, issue 1, 81 - 106

Abstract: We develop a strong triple-difference design, with variation across crimes and areas, to quantify the impact of Australia’s 2001 heroin shortage on crime, providing precise and uniform evidence on both the immediate and long-term effects of drug law enforcement. Applying the design to 25 years of monthly postcode data, we show that crime experiences an 8.4 percent surge in the first month, followed by a 1 percent decrease every 13 months, resulting in a roughly 23 percent reduction in crime by 2019. At long-run levels, this implies an annual reduction in crime costs of around AUD 2.21 billion (2020 AUD), highlighting that the benefits of supply-side drug policies are significant and often underestimated because of their delayed realization. We conclude that supply-side policies have a more substantial role in reducing drug-related harm than is conventionally assumed.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/736041 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/736041 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/736041

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().