KraZeeY
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2000
- Messages
- 293
Another well writen article by the man Ross Gittens.
Victory for the police in war on drugs
April 7, 2004
Statistics suggest the high price of heroin might be limiting its use and the crime it causes, writes Ross Gittins.
You wouldn't believe it - at long last we're making progress in the war against drugs. Evidence is mounting that we've succeeded in limiting the supply of heroin available, which has led to a decline in its consumption and the harm it causes.
What's more, the decline in heroin use has led to a decline in property crime. And these good outcomes flow from the workings of simple market forces.
This encouraging chain of events is demonstrated in a study by Dr Don Weatherburn and colleagues at the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, which was presented to a conference of criminologists late last year.
Around Christmas 2000, Australia began experiencing a major shortage of heroin. Some time later, the average street price of a gram of heroin in Cabramatta had risen by three-quarters, from $218 before the shortage to $381 after it.
Heroin users interviewed by Weatherburn at the time also reported a sharp drop in purity and a significant increase in the time it took to "score".
The supply of heroin around Australia seems to have recovered somewhat since then, but at no stage have street prices fallen back to where they were before the end of 2000.
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Why is there now less heroin available? It can't be proved conclusively, and there might be other factors at work, but the most plausible explanation is the increased effectiveness of federal and state law enforcement.
Some people have credited it to the effect of drought in the Golden Triangle, but the suddenness with which supply dried up makes that unlikely.
The shortage occurred soon after a huge jump in the quantity of heroin seized by Customs. It also began after the arrest of a large number of heroin importers and distributors by the Joint Asian Crime Group.
For obvious reasons, we don't have official figures for how much heroin is being consumed. Researchers have satisfied themselves, however, that changes in the rate of heroin use are fairly well reflected in changes in the rate of ambulance call-outs to incidents of heroin overdose.
In the time since the shortage began, the average rate of non-fatal heroin overdoses per month in NSW has been 50 per cent lower than it was in the years before. That's pretty clear evidence of a beneficial effect on public health.
It's no secret that dependent drug users often resort to crime to finance their purchases of illicit drugs. Heroin dependence, in particular, has been a major factor behind the growth in robbery over the past 35 years.
About three months after the start of the heroin shortage there was a sudden leap in the number of robberies. Why? In his interviews with users, Weatherburn found that those with very large heroin habits compensated for the lack of heroin by topping up with other drugs, particularly cocaine.
But the effects of cocaine don't last as long as those of heroin and it tends to be used more frequently by dependent users. This makes cocaine dependence a lot more expensive. And frequent use of cocaine makes people more prone to violence and aggression.
This suggests that robberies might have risen after the shortage partly because more deeply entrenched heroin users began switching to cocaine and partly because cocaine itself leads to increased aggression on the part of the user.
But the leap in robberies fell back almost as sharply as it had risen. Why? Possibly because cocaine, like heroin, became much harder to obtain.
Figures collected by the Australian Institute of Criminology show a steep rise in the proportion of arrested people testing positive for cocaine shortly after the start of the heroin shortage, followed by a sharp decline.
After the spike in robberies, their number kept falling slowly in the following months and years. Weatherburn and colleagues use a lot of fancy statistical tests to demonstrate that the fall in heroin use (as indicated by the fall in overdoses) led to the fall in robberies.
Just looking at the published crime statistics, between 1999 and 2002 (the latest year available) the rate of robberies per 100,000 people in NSW fell by more than 10 per cent, as did the rate of burglaries. The rate of car thefts fell by more than 15 per cent.
These falls might seem modest, but something to watch for when the crime figures for 2003 are published is whether the fall has continued.
It's important to understand that the object in outlawing harmful drugs and using law enforcement to intercept and seize them is not so much to make them simply unobtainable - that's an impossible goal - as to drive up their price by restricting supply.
As you raise the price of drugs you make them harder to afford so that fewer are bought and less harm is done.
Ah yes, you may say, but surely if such drugs are addictive, raising their price won't have much of a deterrent effect. Indeed, it might just mean addicts have to commit more crime to support their habit.
Nice point, and an objection that's often been raised by people who've lost faith in the War Against Drugs - prohibition - and think some form of controlled legalisation might end up doing less harm. But, as an economist would tell you, this is an empirical question. Is the demand for drugs "elastic" (sensitive to changes in price) or "inelastic" (insensitive)?
The message to take away from our recent experience with heroin is that, contrary to what you might expect, the demand for drugs turns out to be reasonably price-elastic.
And this suggests the conventional approach to the drug problem might have something going for it: the way to limit the harm done by drugs is to price them out of the market.
But this encouraging tale also carries an economist's caution, which can be seen from that brief switch to cocaine use and the consequent spike in robberies.
Had the shortage of heroin not been accompanied by a shortage of its close substitute, cocaine, it could have made matters worse rather than better.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/06/1081222469069.html
Victory for the police in war on drugs
April 7, 2004
Statistics suggest the high price of heroin might be limiting its use and the crime it causes, writes Ross Gittins.
You wouldn't believe it - at long last we're making progress in the war against drugs. Evidence is mounting that we've succeeded in limiting the supply of heroin available, which has led to a decline in its consumption and the harm it causes.
What's more, the decline in heroin use has led to a decline in property crime. And these good outcomes flow from the workings of simple market forces.
This encouraging chain of events is demonstrated in a study by Dr Don Weatherburn and colleagues at the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, which was presented to a conference of criminologists late last year.
Around Christmas 2000, Australia began experiencing a major shortage of heroin. Some time later, the average street price of a gram of heroin in Cabramatta had risen by three-quarters, from $218 before the shortage to $381 after it.
Heroin users interviewed by Weatherburn at the time also reported a sharp drop in purity and a significant increase in the time it took to "score".
The supply of heroin around Australia seems to have recovered somewhat since then, but at no stage have street prices fallen back to where they were before the end of 2000.
advertisement
advertisement
Why is there now less heroin available? It can't be proved conclusively, and there might be other factors at work, but the most plausible explanation is the increased effectiveness of federal and state law enforcement.
Some people have credited it to the effect of drought in the Golden Triangle, but the suddenness with which supply dried up makes that unlikely.
The shortage occurred soon after a huge jump in the quantity of heroin seized by Customs. It also began after the arrest of a large number of heroin importers and distributors by the Joint Asian Crime Group.
For obvious reasons, we don't have official figures for how much heroin is being consumed. Researchers have satisfied themselves, however, that changes in the rate of heroin use are fairly well reflected in changes in the rate of ambulance call-outs to incidents of heroin overdose.
In the time since the shortage began, the average rate of non-fatal heroin overdoses per month in NSW has been 50 per cent lower than it was in the years before. That's pretty clear evidence of a beneficial effect on public health.
It's no secret that dependent drug users often resort to crime to finance their purchases of illicit drugs. Heroin dependence, in particular, has been a major factor behind the growth in robbery over the past 35 years.
About three months after the start of the heroin shortage there was a sudden leap in the number of robberies. Why? In his interviews with users, Weatherburn found that those with very large heroin habits compensated for the lack of heroin by topping up with other drugs, particularly cocaine.
But the effects of cocaine don't last as long as those of heroin and it tends to be used more frequently by dependent users. This makes cocaine dependence a lot more expensive. And frequent use of cocaine makes people more prone to violence and aggression.
This suggests that robberies might have risen after the shortage partly because more deeply entrenched heroin users began switching to cocaine and partly because cocaine itself leads to increased aggression on the part of the user.
But the leap in robberies fell back almost as sharply as it had risen. Why? Possibly because cocaine, like heroin, became much harder to obtain.
Figures collected by the Australian Institute of Criminology show a steep rise in the proportion of arrested people testing positive for cocaine shortly after the start of the heroin shortage, followed by a sharp decline.
After the spike in robberies, their number kept falling slowly in the following months and years. Weatherburn and colleagues use a lot of fancy statistical tests to demonstrate that the fall in heroin use (as indicated by the fall in overdoses) led to the fall in robberies.
Just looking at the published crime statistics, between 1999 and 2002 (the latest year available) the rate of robberies per 100,000 people in NSW fell by more than 10 per cent, as did the rate of burglaries. The rate of car thefts fell by more than 15 per cent.
These falls might seem modest, but something to watch for when the crime figures for 2003 are published is whether the fall has continued.
It's important to understand that the object in outlawing harmful drugs and using law enforcement to intercept and seize them is not so much to make them simply unobtainable - that's an impossible goal - as to drive up their price by restricting supply.
As you raise the price of drugs you make them harder to afford so that fewer are bought and less harm is done.
Ah yes, you may say, but surely if such drugs are addictive, raising their price won't have much of a deterrent effect. Indeed, it might just mean addicts have to commit more crime to support their habit.
Nice point, and an objection that's often been raised by people who've lost faith in the War Against Drugs - prohibition - and think some form of controlled legalisation might end up doing less harm. But, as an economist would tell you, this is an empirical question. Is the demand for drugs "elastic" (sensitive to changes in price) or "inelastic" (insensitive)?
The message to take away from our recent experience with heroin is that, contrary to what you might expect, the demand for drugs turns out to be reasonably price-elastic.
And this suggests the conventional approach to the drug problem might have something going for it: the way to limit the harm done by drugs is to price them out of the market.
But this encouraging tale also carries an economist's caution, which can be seen from that brief switch to cocaine use and the consequent spike in robberies.
Had the shortage of heroin not been accompanied by a shortage of its close substitute, cocaine, it could have made matters worse rather than better.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/06/1081222469069.html
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")