Production, consumption or supply - where should the illegal trade of illicit drugs, like Cocaine and Heroin, be controlled? That is the central question of this debate, and many other similar issues that have puzzled the minds of policy makers and legislators for a long time.

Most often, the response of law-makers and leaders is to solve the problem by making laws that ban every singly activity of such trade. Unfortunately making law alone does not bring an end to the trade, it only shifts it underground. The suppliers add the cost of violating the law to the price they demand, and the consumer has to pay because the demand for drugs is totally inelastic to changes in price. This inelastic demand, in fact, leads to another dimension of this trade, i.e.. crime indulged in by addicts who are neither able to control their urge for drugs like cocaine and heroine, nor have the money to purchase it from the illegal market. Very often, this aspect is the most dangerous part of this drug-crime syndicate.

Then what can solve a problem that even law can not resolve?

Addiction is a complex problem, intricately linked with human and social behavior. Drug trade is a closely related but separate issue, having its own economic dimensions of profit and loss. Production of drugs is a third issue that is closely related with trade, because trade is the connecting link between consumption (demand) and production (supply) and a thriving trade of cocaine and heroin is what sustains the illegal cultivation of coca and poppy crops. The issue becomes far more complicated when the same substance has both legitimate medicinal use, as well as illegitimate use as drugs, as in the case of cocaine and morphine. In such cases, the challenge is to allow production for the legitimate use without letting it diverted to illegitimate channels - an arduous task that can not be completed without strict elaborate supervision and the huge cost involved in it.

By closely manipulating the variables within the sovereign jurisdiction of the state, it is possible to bring the quantity of such illegal trade down. However, the debate acquires an international political hue when the variables like production fall outside the sovereign jurisdiction and power of the state, as it happens in case of cocaine production in Bolivia and poppy crops in Afghanistan. The biggest problem is that the producers as well as their political leaders may not be willing to curtail production and sacrifice their

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