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Sunday, May 3, 2015

Drug Addiction is Great for the Economy

In Baltimore, MD, alone there are an estimated 60,000 heroin and cocaine addicts either using the white powdered type or the rock version called Crack. Minorities and urban dwellers are more likely to be addicted to the Crack version while the Caucasian and suburban dwellers are more likely to be addicted to the powder. Penalties for possessing or selling the Crack version holds prison terms that are two to ten times longer than for the powdered stuff.

A typical daily consumption costs $70- $150 per addict. That becomes $6,000,000 per day in total consumption if we use $100 per day. Let us assign half of that cost to the people who can still hold gainful employment and pay for their habits with legally obtained funds. The other $3,000,000 per day has to be raised through crime. At 10 cents on the dollar for fencing stolen goods and pawn shop loans, the amount of stolen property is $30,000,000 per day. Annualizing that number it becomes $10.95 Billion to support the habits of Baltimore's cocaine addicts. Now apply that number to the 50 largest cities in America and that's $547.5 Billion annually.

If I were a retailer selling electronic devices and other portable things like watches, rings and gold chains, I would love the trade that drug addicts create for my business. If I were a manufacturer of such things, I would likewise appreciate the market that the drugs create for me. In neither case would I have to have any connection to the production, transport, import, sale or buying of controlled substances in order to realize this benefit.

Everyone who has property stolen will replace it with and maybe without an insurance settlement. Not including any of the criminal justice cost-benefits to the economy, just the "stimulus" that drug addiction provides is highly beneficial to the economy while being wholly detrimental to the addicts.
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