Cheaper drugs, and thus less crime: the crime drop's "Philosopher's Stone"?

The crime drop in New York City, the USA, across Western societies and beyond, has produced a whole industry of scholars attempting to explain this crime drop, while also defending the turf they build their careers on, or perhaps their own political convictions. Our article “More Drugs, Less Crime” (Wendel et al. 2016), and the other articles in this themed issue of Dialectical Anthropology, are a contribution to this growing industry of mostly implausible explanations. This article provides our comments on the critiques, and compliments, of the various authors commenting on our original article.