NEWS: The Herald-Sun 01 Apr 03: Victoria's heroin habit hits $845m

Victoria's heroin habit hits $845m
By GEOFF WILKINSON
01apr03

VICTORIA has an $845 million-a-year heroin habit – and that's a conservative estimate of the cost of heroin addiction to the community.

The $2.31 million-a-day hit to the state's economy is revealed in a new report, which calls for more government spending on drug prevention.

Former police chief Neil Comrie, a member of the Premier's Drug Prevention Council, yesterday described the report as a wake-up call for anyone who'd become complacent about heroin.

The council's research study, to be released today, found that:

AN estimated 27,000 Victorians are heroin dependant.

THE cost to the community of heroin-dependant individuals ranges from $46,400 a year for a prisoner to $20,776 for a recovering drug user.

CRIME-related expenditure on law enforcement, the courts and corrections – an estimated $312 million a year – accounts for 37 per cent of total costs.

SOCIAL security benefits for heroin addicts are $244 million a year.

LOST tax revenue is an estimated $160 million a year.

The report says Victoria's current investment in drug prevention is less than 1 per cent of the cost to the community of problematic heroin use.

State Government investment in drug prevention has increased from 5 per cent of the total drugs budget in 1999 to 11.7 per cent last year.

A quarter of the Victorian Government Drug Initiative's $77 million spending since 2000 has been allocated to drug prevention.

But the report points out dramatically higher spending on prevention campaigns in other areas such as road safety, smoking and HIV/AIDS.

National spending on HIV/AIDS prevention programs totals $607 million for an estimated cost benefit of $3.1 billion.

Health improvement benefits from reduced tobacco consumption nationally are estimated to be $12.3 billion and prevention spending is about $176 million.

The TAC in Victoria spends $534 million on payouts to road accident victims while investing $30 million in accident prevention, and the State Government spends another $108 million on road safety and traffic management.

The Premier's Drug Prevention Council research study acknowledges that the $845 million economic burden underestimates the impact of illicit drug use in Victoria.

It does not include the impact of other drugs, lost production from heroin addicts, the health costs of long-term complications such as hepatitis C and HIV or property damage and third-party injury from traffic accidents.

The report defines the social cost of heroin abuse as the value of resources unavailable to the rest of the community as a result of heroin use.

"With such a high cost the potential benefit of even a small reduction in heroin use is likely to be substantial," it says.

The Premier's Drug Prevention Council was formed after a historic joint sitting of Parliament called for by Mr Comrie in the Herald Sun in 2001.

He made the call for a bipartisan approach and new priorities in the war against drugs just before his retirement as chief commissioner.

[...]

A SUMMARY report of the PDPC's research is available on www.druginfo.adf.org.au

The number for DirectLine, the 24-hour telephone counselling and referral line for anyone seeking assistance with drug or alcohol issues is 1800 888 236.

Full article at: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6217238%5E661,00.html

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BigTrancer

We all know how the media/law like to exaggerate and embellish the totals when it comes to drugs. (e.g 1000 pills found with a street value of $500,000 or something stupid like that).


Do you think this is the case for this article. Does it really cost the state almost 1 billion dollars? I just find that amount staggering.. and very scary.

Compared to the rest of the world how bad is Victoria's heroin problem?

Thanks.

F

LOST tax revenue is an estimated $160 million a year.

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Huh? Is this because those bad, nasty dealers don't charge GST on their smack sales?

This report should probably be ignored. There is very little actual data here, just numbers plucked out of the air to justify current spending. All governments/businesses do this; do reports that show that the world will end unless they get extra funding. If anyone added up all these reports you'd find that the total money spent on everything is more than actually exists in our economy.

^^^^

Thanks JB.

F

I think this is an excellent report. I had a read through the summery report which outlines where they got the amounts to make up the 800 odd million and I don't find it surprising at all.

The person who commissioned the report should be given a good pat on the back, this is the first time I've seen anything that quantifies herion abuse in terms of a dollar amount. It should put some things into perspective when prioritising funding for different programs. Including tax loss as a 'cost' is perhaps taking it a bit too far and some of the social costs would have heroin addiction as a factor rather than the sole cause.

I think perhaps people here should have a good read and a bit of think before knocking this report back as just some more Government properganda of the Just Say No variety. This report may be a good tool for policy programming in the future, its not a report that has any recommendations attached to it.

^^ Total agreement. Took the words out of my mouth.

Fair enough, but how exactly do you quantify "productivity loss" due to heroin use? This is perhaps where I get most annoyed.

Are these people unemployed because they use heroin, or do they use it because they are unemployed? I am not denying heroin is a problem, and this is a useful tool to work out priorities, but it tends towards over simplification, my major problem much of the governments approach to these issues.

Another reason, perhaps, for my strong reaction is that this is not exactly the first Premier's Drug Prevention (don't you love that phrasing) Commitee. Remember the Pennington report?.

Actually back then it was called the Drug Advisory Council, but their report said the only sane thing to do was to remove cannabis from the criminal world, and prevent people from getting entangled in that world. This of course was unacceptable to the readers of the Herald Sun, and consequently the politicians, so it was quashed, and nothing changed. Now they've got another report, this time about "prevention". Yay. Sorry if I'm not ecstatic.

For a second there when I saw the post, I thought Posh Spice had picked up one hell of a smack habit

--- G.

johnboy said:

Are these people unemployed because they use heroin, or do they use it because they are unemployed?

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They start because they are unemployed, then don't feel the need to get a job because they have heroin. Or...they are employed, have the money to try it, then can't keep up the job and their habit.

A lot of these "costs" could be reduced if heroin was regulated. Tax, for one, crime and possibly a lot of the health issues. Even if this did happen, you would still have wasted people out of work.

Some would simply feed their addiction and be able to get on with their lives, but others would still just want to want to get stoned.

The oversimplification issue..well, you've gotta start somewhere. If this means at least one thing will get done towards reducing the problem, then I don't see the problem. Trying to find out and quantify everything at once will mean more delays and prevent some actual work being done. I agree it isn't a simple issue, but I don't think that these costs were just pulled out of thing air. Often a bit of research goes into the figures we finally get to see.

That said, I think the Premier's Drug Prevention Council may have already decided on the conclusions before seeing the results of the "research".

I think we need to be really clear here that it is not "heroin use" which is creating the bulk of the costs - it is the war on drug users. To me this is an attaempt to scapegoat users and blame them for society's economic woes - just as they do with certain migrant populations, refugees, the unemployed, and young people.
Lets look at the figures - $46K annually for keeping a prisoner, only half that to support a user in "treatment". Yet the Vic government is more comfortable providing money to private prison operators than to support users when they are wanting to change their patterns of use (not that it should be a questions of "Treatment or prison", but users should be able to aceess support if they need it - and at the moment many cannot)
Social security benefits - internatioanl research shows that where users are able to access heroin affordably and reliably, they are able to enter and maintain stable employment.
They spend $312 million! a year in customs and law enforcement, in order to create the sort of environment where some users find it difficult to work, end up in prison, or having to receive "treatment."
The true social costs of drug use can never be estimated while such an illogical economic distortion exists.
What about those users, like myself, who for reasons of physical pain or emotional torment could not work were it not for the effects of heroin? In that sense, isn't heroin making an economic contribution? In the Swiss trials, rates of symptoms of mental illness among program heroin recipients was lower, after a year of heroin access, than that seen in the general community. What about those users - and I have seen this in a number of victims of torture, or, particularly, sexual assault - where they woukld almost certainly suicide were it not from the solace they receive from their use.
Having a heroin habit is portrayed as a huge stress - but for some that stress is nothing compared to the internal torment of events they would rather forget, and should have every right to.
The flow on effects of "lost productivity" from a suicide - not just the lost economic input of the person who goes, but a huge impact ont he ability to work of family members and friends.
It is not users asking the P-T-B to spend money on law enfocrement - indeed many of us believe it is the economically sane argument to legalise.
To provide methadone to a dependent opiate user, the NSW government is currently giving chemists $6K annually to dispense methadone - which they receive for free, and charge users $30-$50 a week to have. When the international evidence suggests diacetylmorphine is infiniytely more successful in meeting harm reduction goals both for the individual (stabilised weight, lower risk of BBV transmission, increased ability to function) and for the community (less crime, less family stress, lower rates of BBV within the community), isn't it time we made the economically-sustainable, evidence-based, human-rights-affirming, decision, and legalised?
Australia is the largest producer of opium for medical purposes in the world. All we need to do is end our participation in the UN Treaty On Narcotics, and we would not even have to import - think of the economic gains if even a fraction of the money flowing into the black market for heroin was invested in legal Tasmanian opium. Opium is also a drought-viable crop, so in times of drought farmers could switch to poppies and have a viable income-source.
This link http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm shows the expenditure of the US government, and even some world figures, on different expenses which could be eliminated by an end to the drug war.