This article critically interrogates the political effect of portraying drug-related organized crime in the Americas as a resilient market phenomenon. It works out how both drug demand and supply are constructed as immune to repressive policy interventions of the War on Drugs. Drug demand is seen as a pathologic consumer habit which is inelastic to price changes brought about by interdiction. Drug supply, in turn, cannot be permanently suppressed as the ‘balloon effect’ ensures that trafficking routes merely shift from one country to another. In this discursive framework, policy making is consigned to perpetual adaption rather than purposive social transformation. In consequence, the political horizon of international policy making is limited to living with danger. This discursive move is facilitated by the resilience approach which consigns human communities to coping with threats and upheavals they can no longer have any hope of overcoming.

本文批判性地探讨了将美洲与毒品有关的有组织犯罪描述为具有弹性的市场现象的政治影响。它研究了毒品需求和供应如何被构建为不受毒品战争的压制性政策干预的影响。药品需求被视为一种病态的消费习惯，对禁药带来的价格变化缺乏弹性。反过来，毒品供应不能永久抑制，因为“气球效应”确保贩运路线只是从一个国家转移到另一个国家。在这个话语框架中，政策制定是为了永久适应而不是有目的的社会转型。因此，国际政策制定的政治视野仅限于与危险共存。