Aotearoa / New Zealand

1651 readers

2 users here now

Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general

For politics , please use [email protected]
Shitposts, circlejerks, memes, and non-NZ topics belong in [email protected]
If you need help using Lemmy.nz, go to [email protected]
NZ regional and special interest communities

Rules:

Don't be a dick

FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom

Banner image by Bernard Spragg

Got an idea for next month's banner?

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

175

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]

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

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

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.