TL;DR:
- Alcohol $7.8b
- All illicits: $1.8b
- Meth: $0.365b
I wanted a figure for cannabis and found this from 2020:
- All illicits: $1.9b
- Meth: $0.824b
- Cannabis: $0.911
I notice that the per kilograms measure for harm is also useful to account for volume of usage, but think that per ‘dose’ would be better.
- Meth: $1.1m per kg with 743kg consumption
- Cannabis: $0.35m per kg with 58000kg consumption
These figures include ‘associative crime’ as harm. So it apparent counts the cost of buying it as harm, it also counts the tax loss of that expenditure, so IMHO it skews unfavourabley to higher expenditure. But put that aside.
These figures show that all illicit drugs combined are less harmful to society than alcohol, and tautologically the harm is inflated by illegality.
I feel like you’re right, but perhaps not for the reason you might be implying.
Meth causes a tiny fraction of the harm of alcohol because there isn’t a legal meth store on every corner with meth companies sponsoring rugby games. Police are talking about where their efforts should be placed rather than suggesting it would be better if meth was legal and alcohol illegal.
However, in my view meth should be decriminalised, because the justice system is the wrong place to treat heath problems.
Decriminalization is the worse of both worlds, though.
With full legalization you can have control over the impurities in it and the revenue from it.
Decriminalisation is the start, the first step.
Once use of drugs is no longer a legal problem and solely a heath problem then it’s safer for everyone.
One cannot just sell booze or tabacco out the boot of ones car either, neither should any other drug dealer. There’s already precedent for how to manage legal drugs.
How does the Scandinavian model work? Something about the govt providing the drugs?
I know Portugal did it with a huge success.
Yeah I was just reading up on it but it seems they didn’t go full legalisation, but had authorisations for addicts. In addition they made addiction treatment much more available.
From my understanding they didn’t really legalise drugs, but instead tried to send addicts to rehab instead of prison.
Heard an interesting perspective from a criminal lawyer on this. They think we should copy the Portugal model because meth is attracting the cartels like Sinaloa, and cartel presence normally corrupts police.
We have a tendency to use prison to handle all behaviour we don’t like, when realistically each behaviour has much more effective interventions, but it’s different per behaviour so it’s harder to organise and coordinate, and especially campaign on. It’s easier to just build more prisons, even if it’s not effective.
The trouble with that is, we get so much more crime this way. Like you say, there’s much better interventions.
I’m not sure that it’s just logistics and fear of the unknown (though given how long it took Aucklanders to be okay with building a subway, that obviously comes into play)!😀
But talking to people over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a sizeable chunk of people for whom punishing criminals is much more important than having less crime. I can understand feeling that way, but emotions probably isn’t the best thing to base policy on.
A study in the US found that different judges gave vastly different sentences for the same crime. One of the factors they found is that sentences were very different depending on if the judge thought prison was for punishment vs prevention or rehabilitation.
The punishment angle is still very popular, even if we know that it makes crime worse long term. You can even see plenty of it on Lemmy in the right threads.
I’m not an expert in Scandinavian drug laws but if you figure them out I’m always curious about new information.
Hmm I did some reading but didn’t find anything about any countries that have made much progress towards lagalising all drugs.
You seem keen on legalising all drugs, did you have a view on how that would work?
Well, you’d start off by legalizing them and use the revenue to put in place a treatment network, regulations and enforcement.
What does legalising mean to you compared to decriminalising? Could I buy meth at the local bottle store?
Legalization typically means you buy it from a government agency or government regulated supplier.
Decriminalization usually means personal possession and use is not illegal but you still buy it through the black market.
I’m sure if you asked around you could buy meth most places now but I’m not sure about your local bottle store.
Ah thanks for the clarification. Yes that does sound like a better option, possibly with a Portugal style policy of needing a waiver to allow you access to the government supply.