Social harm and drugs: Is something missing?

For every kilogram of pot you buy, the pot dealer than takes the money and buys E, then the E dealer takes the money and buys P, then the P dealer goes and blow it all on alcohol, gets drunk, have unprotected sex and have little P dealer babies with uzis.

That’s what happens when you smoke pot, little Johnny.

If more than a quarter of people of voting age are toking or have toked up, then that’s a fairly sizable percentage, it’s more than the greens ever get voted in.
It should never have been illegal in the first place.

From their report:

The study focuses on social costs, that is costs borne by the individual or wider society for which there is no corresponding benefit. While there are arguments as to the legitimacy of, and value to be placed on, the private benefits of illicit drug consumption (see Collins and Lapsley (2002: 17:19), this study does not attempt to explicitly value net private benefits. Consistent with New Zealand public policy, and the argument set out in Collins and Lapsley (2002: 20-21), this study assumes that illicit drug consumption is abusive and imposes a social cost. Therefore, all resources diverted by illicit drug consumption are regarded as social costs.
The study aimed to estimate net social costs, rather than gross social costs of drug use. That is, drug use may offset some costs as users reduce the burden on society’s scarce resources. For example, premature death reduces the health care that users might otherwise have required if they had lived longer.

So exact same thing as the later alcohol report. “Social costs” include internal costs where there are no corresponding benefits, but we’ll define benefits to be equal to zero to make things easier. Then we’ll keep calling it social costs or net costs to make it sound like it’s a proper welfare measure.

It is a measure of the corruption in the bureaucracy that a company like BERL can be paid so much to assume their answer and then have their entirely bogus estimate quoted as authoritative.

I’ll speculate that BERL’s report implies negative productivity. Not only is the time and effort of its authors diverted to an enterprise of zero (gross) worth, the time and effort of many others is also uselessly diverted when reading it. Not producing BERL’s report would not only freed its authors to do something useful, nobody would have to waste their time reading their rubbish.

Call it the BERL Multiplier: the ratio of the total value of time wasted on reading a BERL report to the value of time wasted writing it. How does 1.87 sound?

90% of the “harm” figure for cannabis (table 6.2) comes from the full cost of production, as handwaved up by taking a percentage of the street price, because it could otherwise have been used to produce something “useful”, and the cost of the associated criminal activity and prosecutions, because it is illegal. Sigh.

Harm as in harm to the economy because so many less bags of potato chips were purchased? It’s a strange metric especially because it isn’t explained at all….yes the cops need to stop the flow of drugs but let’s be realistic about the costs on both sides!

I think there IS a social cost of dope, the fact that it drains motivation from young people and destines them to a life on the dole (I grew up in West Auckland) means that others have to support them through the benefit system.

I struggle to come up with enough ideas for social benefits to offset that.

Of course I accept that it is possible that the nohoperism and loserdom came before the dope smoking. But I have amassed enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that otherwise intelligent, motivated young people can be made complacent with their lives very early in adulthood and live to regret it not very long after. They try to catch up, but its hard and the other option is easier.

Anyway, WTF is BERL going on about with premature death in relation to dope? Heroin yes, P yes, but marijuana? Are they serious?

the problem? people are talking about drugs – however never about the underlying reasons and problems, why people are using drugs/drinking a lot of alcohol… just for example? i know a man, his brother died in a dreadful accident, his father died by suicide and and and… what´s now? he is drinking a lot of alcohol… not any wonder… or another case: i know a 27 old young man who has been one of the best soccer players in his country at the age of 17 years old (not in new zealand – in another country) and then he had an accident – so he had to stop playing soccer – he is a morphium junkie now… i asked him why… he just said – he wish to be happy and he just wish to have a happy feeling… or michael jackson – who died not long ago – see comment on one of my websites – http://www.newsupermusic/newsupermusic and as long – as the underlying problems not get solved or it is not possible to solve the underlying problems – which are leading to the problem, that people are using drugs or alcoholics, all those discussions are very superficial nearly all the time and not leading to any positive results in my opinion! what i wish to say is, people wish to be happy and if they have problems or if they are not happy, then many people are beginning, to use drugs or to drink alcohol, to be happy/more happy or to forget their problems! and a discussion without all those aspects is a total nonsense in my opinion, most of the time – in my opinion – leading “to nothing”… newsupermusic – richard niki fuchs, herbststrasse 71-75/12/2, at-1160 wien, austria, europe.

@Paul Walker
Yeah, those are teh cost of drug harm, they are the costs of prohibition harm, which are different.

And again, they don’t measure the benifits of drugs, i.e. fun, getting laid, funding the property industry, etc.