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Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually

JacksinPA

JacksinPA

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Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
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I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
 
There is a bit of money there indeed. Though on some level, I'm not sure that everything should be legal. Meth shouldn't be. Want to legalize pot? OK, whatever. There's a good industry there that can support American workers well. But that may be as far down that tree as I'm willing to go. Cocaine? Not sure that should be legal. Heroin shouldn't be. Meth certainly not.
 
The war on drugs, by just about every measure, has been a failure.

And if the war on alcohol failure taught us anything at all in addition to the above, we should be able to conclude with ease that any war on guns will result in the same failure.
 
How about LSD, 'shrooms, Designer Drugs?
 
JacksinPA said:
Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
=======================================================
I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
Click to expand...

So I'm guessing we have a more severe alcohol problem in the united states than drugs by those numbers. I can only presume that if cannabis were to be legalized there would be even more spending on alcohol than drugs.
 
I would be for legalizing or decriminalizing the USE (but not the importation or distribution) of illegal drugs with 1 caveat. Anyone that uses illegal narcotics and developed health problems is eliminated from the receipt of social services and insurance benefits. It’s not mean...it’s just common sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
That 150 billion is just the costs to users to buy the drugs. It doesn't include several other major costs, including enforcement (including non-drug crimes that don't get investigated,) court, jail/prison, additional medical costs related to lack of quality control, violence which is directly related to the prohibition, and the social costs of ostracizing a significant segment of our citizenry.

Another way to view this is that instead of permitting and regulating the trade (which we absolutely can not stop in any meaningful way) and profiting via taxation, the government has chosen to pay all those costs above and get nothing in return, while still failing to improve the situation on the ground.

It seems like the laws need to justify themselves a bit better than they've managed so far.
 
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VanceMack said:
I would be for legalizing or decriminalizing the USE (but not the importation or distribution) of illegal drugs with 1 caveat. Anyone that uses illegal narcotics and developed health problems is eliminated from the receipt of social services and insurance benefits. It’s not mean...it’s just common sense.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't be illegal any more under your scenario, unless we went with decriminalizing, and then we need some more details on how that would work.

I presume that you'd be on board with having the same laws for people who drink alcohol or use tobacco? They're killing themselves too, are they not?

P.S.: Guess I missed the USE bit. If you leave the business side illegal, you're not doing any good on violence, quality control or costs (for users or the enforcement,) so I can't get behind that.
 
JacksinPA said:
Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
=======================================================
I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
Click to expand...

Especially when prosecution of "non-violent drug law offenders" is largely ignored. If an addict buys a 30 day dosage (now "legal" to possess) every week and sells 3/4 of it to cover the cost of it's purchase then they are (typically) left alone. So long as their 'small time dealer' possesses no more than that 30 day (allegedly for personal use) supply (at any one time) then they too are (typically) left alone.
 
WillyPete said:
That 150 billion is just the costs to users to buy the drugs. It doesn't include several other major costs, including enforcement (including non-drug crimes that don't get investigated,) court, jail/prison, additional medical costs related to lack of quality control, violence which is directly related to the prohibition, and the social costs of ostracizing a significant segment of our citizenry.

Another way to view this is that instead of permitting and regulating the trade (which we absolutely can not stop in any meaningful way) and profiting via taxation, the government has chosen to pay all those costs above and get nothing in return, while still failing to improve the situation on the ground.

It seems like the laws need to justify themselves a bit better than they've managed so far.
Click to expand...

Hmm... maybe they can implement civil asset forfeiture laws which act (exactly?) as a (100% or more?) tax on illegal drug profits. ;)
 
JacksinPA said:
Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
=======================================================
I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
Click to expand...

The use of illegal drugs in the US explains a great deal about the US society heading downward.
 
mike2810 said:
The use of illegal drugs in the US explains a great deal about the US society heading downward.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of the decline of the Roman Empire. Too much wine?
 
JacksinPA said:
Reminds me of the decline of the Roman Empire. Too much wine?
Click to expand...

Gibbon put a lot of blame on Christianity. I put more blame on the continued reliance on a military-lead system that required continual conquest, eventually leading to the Empire eating itself alive. Strife such as the Blues vs. the Greens were mere side-effects. I don't recall anyone blaming the wine...
 
VanceMack said:
I would be for legalizing or decriminalizing the USE (but not the importation or distribution) of illegal drugs with 1 caveat. Anyone that uses illegal narcotics and developed health problems is eliminated from the receipt of social services and insurance benefits. It’s not mean...it’s just common sense.
Click to expand...

But this is exactly the problem, what’s going to happen to a person who’s an addict that doesn’t want to be anymore, instead of helping that person which any of us for any vast array of reasons can fall into that trap, some turn to drugs, others to alcohol, video games, hell, food... We then just as a society turn our backs on them completely and shut them out of any assistance for what is in the vast majority of cases a mistake they wish they hadn’t of made...

That’s simply self righteous retribution, any of us or our children of a family member could fall into the trap of drugs and the continued stigmatization and treating it different than any other addiction only becomes a vehicle to continue the vicious cycle of abuse rather than solve anything.
 
JacksinPA said:
Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
=======================================================
I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
Click to expand...

USA exporting **** to ****holes since 1776. Clearly, we are the problem.
 
Mr Person said:
Gibbon put a lot of blame on Christianity. I put more blame on the continued reliance on a military-lead system that required continual conquest, eventually leading to the Empire eating itself alive. Strife such as the Blues vs. the Greens were mere side-effects. I don't recall anyone blaming the wine...
Click to expand...

I dunno, the military piece was only part of the problem, I doubt the average Russian would have become so fervently anti-monarchist due to military failures alone although the Russo-Japanese War and WWI certainly were large factors specifically in the downfall of the last Tsar.

But ultimately I think the overall imperial system under Alexander the III and Nicholas II failed to understand the changes happening in the country, failed to reform or when mainly Nicholas II did, it was either too late, too little and often both.

To this day Russia could have been a constitutional monarchy and history would have been completely different had one man (the Tsar) paid attention to what was really going on in 1905.

The parallel in America is that more and more of the wealth is being concentrated by an oligarchy that has become indifferent to the actual concerns of ordinary Americans and while some of those ordinary Americans continue to proudly support policies that only benefit the oligarchy, what’s bubbling under the surface as those average Americans are continually and continually squeezed by those large corporations of some of those oligarchs that make more and more basic necessities, housing, healthcare, education more and more out of reach for them will cause a severe reaction at some point.

On top of that the way law enforcement in the United States policy and enforcement is so unbelievably unfair to poor people compared to rich people and it’s a future recipe for utter disaster.
 
Jetboogieman said:
I dunno, the military piece was only part of the problem, I doubt the average Russian would have become so fervently anti-monarchist due to military failures alone although the Russo-Japanese War and WWI certainly were large factors specifically in the downfall of the last Tsar.

But ultimately I think the overall imperial system under Alexander the III and Nicholas II failed to understand the changes happening in the country, failed to reform or when mainly Nicholas II did, it was either too late, too little and often both.

To this day Russia could have been a constitutional monarchy and history would have been completely different had one man (the Tsar) paid attention to what was really going on in 1905.

The parallel in America is that more and more of the wealth is being concentrated by an oligarchy that has become indifferent to the actual concerns of ordinary Americans and while some of those ordinary Americans continue to proudly support policies that only benefit the oligarchy, what’s bubbling under the surface as those average Americans are continually and continually squeezed by those large corporations of some of those oligarchs that make more and more basic necessities, housing, healthcare, education more and more out of reach for them will cause a severe reaction at some point.

On top of that the way law enforcement in the United States policy and enforcement is so unbelievably unfair to poor people compared to rich people and it’s a future recipe for utter disaster.
Click to expand...

Roman Empire (which I took to mean the Western Empire), not Romanov ;p

Come to think of it, that era of Russian history is one I really do need to fill some gaps in.



As for the Romans, there certainly are parallels in concentration of wealth and class squabbles, but we definitely lack the same kind of security/military policy that old Rome used. By the end their armies were made up of foreign mercenaries and/or captured foreign soldiers, who had to be regularly bribed to stay in some semblance of order. Their policy required them to continually expand to feed the army, but that then required them to defend ever-larger borders. Throw in population shifts coming from now-Eastern-Europe and Western Asia and the Empire simply couldn't keep up.
 
Mr Person said:
Roman Empire (which I took to mean the Western Empire), not Romanov ;p

Come to think of it, that era of Russian history is one I really do need to fill some gaps in.
Click to expand...

**** dude I just finished the last czar on Netflix and have been reading the real history after that I saw Romanov lulz.

Wow... need more coffee.

As for the Romans, there certainly are parallels in concentration of wealth and class squabbles, but we definitely lack the same kind of security/military policy that old Rome used. By the end their armies were made up of foreign mercenaries and/or captured foreign soldiers, who had to be regularly bribed to stay in some semblance of order. Their policy required them to continually expand to feed the army, but that then required them to defend ever-larger borders. Throw in population shifts coming from now-Eastern-Europe and Western Asia and the Empire simply couldn't keep up.
Click to expand...

I dunno, the Roman parallel with America is often used, often in different ways, sometimes American christians like to go the decadence is destroying America like the Roman Empire meme, sometimes it is the clear Imperialistic for better or worse maintaining of the American Global Hegemony which is now under pressure from a couple of corners but I’m not convinced the Roman Empire holds all that much parallel for the United States situation
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Hmm... maybe they can implement civil asset forfeiture laws which act (exactly?) as a (100% or more?) tax on illegal drug profits. ;)
Click to expand...

Well, that only works on U.S. citizens, and we have a history of kinda overlooking high level participation in the trade, so I don't have much hope of that having the needed impact.

The asset forfeiture doesn't very often touch the profits of the cartels directly, and to whatever extent it does it's likely a drop in the bucket.
 
JacksinPA said:
Spending on illicit drugs in US nears $150 billion annually: Amount rivals what Americans spend on alcohol -- ScienceDaily

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine fluctuated between $120 billion and $145 billion each year from 2006 to 2016, rivaling what Americans spend each year on alcohol, according to a new study.

Spending on cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine by Americans reached nearly $150 billion in 2016, with a large proportion of spending coming from the small share of people who use drugs on a daily or near-daily basis.
=======================================================
I guess you could call this an example of the free market economy at work. Demand always wins. Look at what Prohibition did to this country: established organized crime on a firm footing, but people got their alcohol, legal or not.
Click to expand...

And how much cost in law enforcement. Plus, overdoses because of the black market. Tons of tax revenue missed out on, and safety
 
WillyPete said:
They wouldn't be illegal any more under your scenario, unless we went with decriminalizing, and then we need some more details on how that would work.

I presume that you'd be on board with having the same laws for people who drink alcohol or use tobacco? They're killing themselves too, are they not?

P.S.: Guess I missed the USE bit. If you leave the business side illegal, you're not doing any good on violence, quality control or costs (for users or the enforcement,) so I can't get behind that.
Click to expand...

You bet. I think people that drink
themselves into oblivion or use tobacco to the point where their choices cause excessive health problems should bear responsibility. Same for people that eat themselves into health problems.

And yep...I’d still keep the distribution illegal. It’s one thing to not jail people for use...it’s quite another to participate in the distribution of drugs like meth, heroin, etc.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Jetboogieman said:
But this is exactly the problem, what’s going to happen to a person who’s an addict that doesn’t want to be anymore, instead of helping that person which any of us for any vast array of reasons can fall into that trap, some turn to drugs, others to alcohol, video games, hell, food... We then just as a society turn our backs on them completely and shut them out of any assistance for what is in the vast majority of cases a mistake they wish they hadn’t of made...

That’s simply self righteous retribution, any of us or our children of a family member could fall into the trap of drugs and the continued stigmatization and treating it different than any other addiction only becomes a vehicle to continue the vicious cycle of abuse rather than solve anything.
Click to expand...

It’s not self righteous anything...it’s dealing with destructive behaviors responsibly. You want help getting off drugs, even behavioral health treatment...that’s a different pot of money altogether. But if you use and destroy your body, society does not have an obligation to feed you, house you, diaper you, and patch you up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ikari said:
There is a bit of money there indeed. Though on some level, I'm not sure that everything should be legal. Meth shouldn't be. Want to legalize pot? OK, whatever. There's a good industry there that can support American workers well. But that may be as far down that tree as I'm willing to go. Cocaine? Not sure that should be legal. Heroin shouldn't be. Meth certainly not.
Click to expand...

Why not?

You offer an appeal to emotion, standard fare for a discussion of drug policy, but nothing more.
 
Thoreau72 said:
Why not?

You offer an appeal to emotion, standard fare for a discussion of drug policy, but nothing more.
Click to expand...

Why shouldn't heroin and meth be legal? I've considered drug legalization for some time. At base, I thought that pretty much everything should be legal and it should be up to the individual then to make choices. And if everyone existed in vacuum, I think that's a fine idea. But there are aggregate effects on the whole that ultimately would effect us all in some way, so one's consequences from their own choices are not limited to their own person. There are certain drugs that are devastating, addicting, and crushing that should any percentage of our population be on it, there would be crime and funding ramifications on us all. I think what we'd call "hard drugs" fall into that mix. Heroin, I think we should have learned our lesson in the 90's about that one. Too much. Meth? Are you kidding? Meth is out. It's too much. While people do use these drugs when they are illegal, if they became legal then more people would begin to try it. This ain't like pot, these things are neigh instantly addicting and neigh instantly destroying.

Which would bring up the case of designer drugs. And I think we can see with the opioid crisis in America the problem with that one. If you took the reigns off big Pharma and allowed them to make recreational drugs...they'd make something that was instantly, insatiably, permanently addictive. And who cares if folk die if you can just get more folk addicted. So designer drugs are out. Not a can of worms worth opening, the effects on society at large would be too devastating.

It's not an appeal to emotion, it's cause and consequence.
 
Ikari said:
Why shouldn't heroin and meth be legal? I've considered drug legalization for some time. At base, I thought that pretty much everything should be legal and it should be up to the individual then to make choices. And if everyone existed in vacuum, I think that's a fine idea. But there are aggregate effects on the whole that ultimately would effect us all in some way, so one's consequences from their own choices are not limited to their own person. There are certain drugs that are devastating, addicting, and crushing that should any percentage of our population be on it, there would be crime and funding ramifications on us all. I think what we'd call "hard drugs" fall into that mix. Heroin, I think we should have learned our lesson in the 90's about that one. Too much. Meth? Are you kidding? Meth is out. It's too much. While people do use these drugs when they are illegal, if they became legal then more people would begin to try it. This ain't like pot, these things are neigh instantly addicting and neigh instantly destroying.

Which would bring up the case of designer drugs. And I think we can see with the opioid crisis in America the problem with that one. If you took the reigns off big Pharma and allowed them to make recreational drugs...they'd make something that was instantly, insatiably, permanently addictive. And who cares if folk die if you can just get more folk addicted. So designer drugs are out. Not a can of worms worth opening, the effects on society at large would be too devastating.

It's not an appeal to emotion, it's cause and consequence.
Click to expand...

Nothing personal, but it's drama.

Reality is that legislative "solutions" to human behavioral issues fail more often than they succeed. A legislative act is not a surgeon's scalpel, it is rather a sledge hammer and despite the best of intentions, has more unintended consequences than success.

Humans and society deal with addiction to many substances, including tobacco and alcohol and caffeine, and they manage to do that without "wars" waged by politicians.

Personally, I think a huge mistake was made in allowing vaping to proceed unfettered, but it's hard to tell a way through it, now that the cat is out of the bag. Could they effectively prohibit vaping? Not likely. Some humans are stupid and make very poor health decisions, and all the laws in the world cannot stop that.
 
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