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Three, to address the purely monetary section of your argument, the answer to the question is purely mathematical. What is 700,000+ x 20,000 (does that figure include the price for making new prisons, which we seem to be doing at a prodigious rate?) versus Unknown # of ER x 20,000+ (likely 20k to 30k?). Drugwarfacts.org lists the number of deaths from illicit drug use, direct and indirect, at 17,000. I have to say even if it cost 30,000 for the average ER visit, and we multiply the number of deaths figure by 2 or even 3 times to simulate ER visitations, the numbers don't even come close to comparing.

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to justify the cost of incarceration we would need to establish that on average..each drug user generates at least one ER visit (at $20000) per year...

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SlashOZ said:
do you honestly think that drug related medical expenditures rival the tens of billions that we spend keeping drugs illegal? the simple fact is that the two numbers aren't even close. i would be willing to go one step further and say that alcohol and tobacco are directly related to more medical expenditures than all illegal drugs combined.

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You replied to me, but this is exactly where I was headed. Totally on your side on this one bro.

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SlashOZ said:
do you honestly think that drug related medical expenditures rival the tens of billions that we spend keeping drugs illegal? the simple fact is that the two numbers aren't even close.

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i would be willing to go one step further and say that alcohol and tobacco are directly related to more medical expenditures than all illegal drugs combined.

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# In January 2001, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University published an analysis of costs to states from tobacco, alcohol and other drug addiction. According to the report, "CASA's analysis revealed a few cost categories where only a single category of substances is implicated. (Figure 2.B) For instance, CASA identified $1.1 billion in state spending linked to illicit drug use only: $574 million for public safety costs for drug enforcement programs; $114 million for drug courts; and $412 million linked to illegal drugs in state spending on Medicaid.
"CASA estimates that $7.4 billion in state spending is linked exclusively to tobacco through state Medicaid spending.
"The single drug linked to the largest percentage of state costs is alcohol. We were able to identify $9.2 billion in state spending linked to only to alcohol in addition to the costs associated with abuse of both alcohol and illegal drugs: $915 million on highway safety and local law enforcement associated with drunk driving; $837 million in state costs for the developmentally disabled as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome; and, $7.4 billion in state Medicaid costs."

Source: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets (New York, NY: CASA, Jan. 2001), p. 11.

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SlashOZ said:
the cost of keeping a person in prison ranges from 8,000-38,000 depending on the state. the average er visit costs less than 2,000 dollars according to my source. the total amount of tobacco related medical expendatures is at 72.8 billion dollars a year. you cannot tell me that illegal drugs cost more than that in medical expendatures, if you do you are in extreme denial.

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# In January 2001, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University published an analysis of costs to states from tobacco, alcohol and other drug addiction. According to the report, "CASA's analysis revealed a few cost categories where only a single category of substances is implicated. (Figure 2.B) For instance, CASA identified $1.1 billion in state spending linked to illicit drug use only: $574 million for public safety costs for drug enforcement programs; $114 million for drug courts; and $412 million linked to illegal drugs in state spending on Medicaid.
"CASA estimates that $7.4 billion in state spending is linked exclusively to tobacco through state Medicaid spending.
"The single drug linked to the largest percentage of state costs is alcohol. We were able to identify $9.2 billion in state spending linked to only to alcohol in addition to the costs associated with abuse of both alcohol and illegal drugs: $915 million on highway safety and local law enforcement associated with drunk driving; $837 million in state costs for the developmentally disabled as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome; and, $7.4 billion in state Medicaid costs."

Source: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets (New York, NY: CASA, Jan. 2001), p. 11.

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http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/spe01.pdf
http://www.consumerhealthratings.com/index.php?action=showSubCats&cat_id=34
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0916/smoking.html
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/economi.htm

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Annapurna1 said:
the problem with that arguement is that the adulterants are generally inert substances meant to sell one gram of coke as five.. drug dealers have nothing to gain from poisoning their market to death...the vast majority of drug-related injuries and deaths are either straight overdoses or the results of driving while intoxicated...in these cases..an increase in drug use will still increase the demand for healthcare services..even if there are no impurities...

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Here's a link to one clinical trial of heroin maintenance, not one OD from legally prescribed USP grade heroin, and the costs of legal maintenance are much less than current health, criminal investigations, trials and imprisonment, but I already knew that

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/8461349/an/0/page/0

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Earlier studies done in Europe have shown that prescribing heroin to difficult-to-treat addicts costs less than the health, judicial and law-enforcement resources used by untreated addicts, Schechter said.

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Annapurna1 said:
your comparing apples & oranges on two fronts ..first of all..theres a yooj difference between administering controlled doses of pure heroin under a doctors' supervision (which does not mean ending prohibition) vs making it available on an open market (which does)...second of all..i need not explain the differences between europe and amerikkka.. not the least of which is that a single-payer healthcare system is immune to nonlinearity...

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