Where did you get the idea that users will be using 1 gram of hydromorphone per day?
I thought you were saying that heroin would cost as much as hydromorphone. I was guessing a typical heroin regiment is 1 gram every 6 days. What would you guess?
Heroin in Canada has a typical price of $250 per gram at a typical purity of 50%. So that's $500 per pure gram, or 50 cents per milligram.
Good point! Purity is important.
Given that hydromorphone is roughly as potent as heroin, the hardcore user would be spending $25 per day, while the average user would be spending $2.50. So it looks like I underestimated the price for the heaviest users, but a typical user will still spend more on cigarettes, given a pack-a-day habit.
So let's be conservative and say they would spend the same on heroin as on cigarettes. Eh?
If you think that someone who hustles every day of their life to make that kind of cash is not going to settle down when it's no longer necessary, you have a poor grasp of economics and human behaviour.
Economics and human behavior are not my forte, but not being exposed to them has little bearing on how well I can grasp them. If you have information, share it, but I am not learning anything by you telling me how stupid I am.
Some users probably hustle up ten thousand dollars a year by commiting a long string of crimes, fewer if they are a good crook. People I know blew $40,000 on drugs each year because they had $40,000 sitting around, they also worked and had a family, with a home to sell. Others had taken drugs just so they
could work multiple jobs, finish school, and were succesful little buggers,
for a time. Obviously we come from different worlds but we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, not the few we know of.
For the typical user, this is huge... enough saved to pay for rent and groceries every month. Or, $8100 less they will need to acquire through theft, prostitution, or drug dealing.
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The New England Journal Of Medicine; said:
"The addicts who were given the diacetylmorphine were more successful than the ones who took methadone. One year into this study 88% of the diacetylmorphine group remained in treatment compared to the methadone group where only 54% continued. The illegal behavior was curbed by 67% in the diacetylmorphine group with 48% curbed in the methadone group. This covered all crimes including the use of illicit drugs."
We are talking about quite a boon with 63% less addicts and a 40% reduction in crime.
Why isn't this stuff legal!?
Now, let me throw some sand in that beautifully running machine and see how well it really works.
With my knowledge in sociology and psychology, I know it is not easy to predict human behavior based on prior experience, and this study covers a single year. What happens when treatment ends?
With what you have told me about heroin addiction, I know if a person that makes money by commiting crimes needs less money to buy heroin that they will commit less crime. That is why this would be considered a crime of economics.
That is a major cause of criminal behavior. So with a reduction in heroin cost we can predict a reduction in economic based crime.
Another crime of economics is that while the current cost for a script of hydromorphone is $50/g the street price for hydromorphone is $1250/g. Creating an economic advantage to crime and introducing it to career criminals undergoing heroin treatment. This allows us to predict an increase in economic based crime.
What I also said is that you have many other factors that influence crime, besides those that are affected by a change to the economic or legal issues of the drug.
I gave several concrete examples.
These limit the amount of reduction available, even if we maximized the results. Even if we do see a reduction in crime it is also expected to happen gradually and could even increase due to other factors that have nothing to do with economic or legal concerns. Such as rising unemployment.
Saying each individual would still retain criminal activity is different than talking about about how much money each person would steal or how many crimes each person would commit. If you are a hooker 73% less of the time, you are still a hooker.
I've been here all along, you just never looked in my direction.
Creepy!
Wow, now you're arguing about the harm caused by the illegality of the drug! It's a merry go round.
Darn tootin'!
