Wrecking Latin America, early 1980s
After America's 1931-1946 war on foreign drugs led through WW2, the UN replaced the League of Nations as vector of laws against production and trade. Nixon and Gov. Reagan banned psychedelics worldwide from 1967 through 1971--and money suddenly flowed into Latin American jurisdictions. Ronald Reagan stepped into Herbert Hoover and Harry Anslinger's shoes and per-capita manufacturing GNP in the largest such country, Brazil, promptly changed from increasing to decreasing in 1981. Probability tells us that two events A and B are independent if and only if the probability of event A does not change when B occurs or is a given condition. This requirement is written P(A|B)=P(A). From 1980 through 1987, American mixed-economy conservatives noticed that expensive cocaine had replaced cheap LSD--unobtainable thanks to their prohibiton laws. The 400% price hike resulting from prohibition laws made the crude replacement substance profitable enough to finance tens of thousands o...