Black Market

A black market, underground economy or shadow economy is a market characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an instutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transcation itself is illegal.

Illegal Drugs
From the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many countries began to ban the keeping or using of some recreational drugs, such as the United State's war on drugs. Many people nonetheless continue to use illegal drugs and a black market exists to supply them. Despite law enforcement efforts to intercept them, demand remains high, providing a large profit motive for organized criminal groups to keep drugs supplied. The United Nations has reported that the retail market value of illegal drugs is $321.6 billion USD.

Although law enforcement agencies intercept a fraction of the illegal drugs, and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of wholesale and retail sellers, the very stable demand for such drugs and the high profit margins encourages new distributors to enter the market without a decrease in the retail price. Many drug legalization activists draw parallels between the illegal drug trade and the Prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920's. In the United Kingdom, it is not illegal to take drugs, but is illegal to possess them. This can lead to the unitended consequence that those in possession may swallow the evidence; once in the body they are committing no crime.