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Alcohol causing 20 times the harm of meth, police float tighter regulation (www.newshub.co.nz)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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TL;DR:

Alcohol $7.8b
All illicits: $1.8b
Meth: $0.365b

I wanted a figure for cannabis and found this from 2020:

PDF https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/the-nz-illicit-drug-harm-index-2020-10-feb.pdf

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but to be fair a lot of things in the 1920’s US politics didn’t work.

Also the whole criminalization aspect to substance abuse is finally being talked about openly as a major failure in policy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Banning things in general should be an absolute last-ditch effort, not the go-to response that it is today. We're supposed to be a free society, and I think a lot of citizens have lost sight of what that means.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

More than that I think society still doesn’t talk about addiction in a useful, healthy way very often. Alcohol being so ingrained in many cultures that it’s basically invisible to many people.