Similarly, the war on illegal drugs is heavily driven by imputed social costs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy says illegal drug use costs society $181 billion annually. But: “Over two-thirds (71.3 percent) of the costs of drug abuse are attributed to lost productivity.” It also notes that $39 billion of that lost productivity results from incarceration, so this “is not a cost of drug abuse but, rather, the costs of current [drug-control] policies.”
Actual health costs from drug abuse? Less than 9 percent of the total. The reason you can’t buy narcotics over the counter, then, seems to have just as much to do with other people’s desire that you maximize your economic output as with their concern for your continued well-being by itself. Put another way, a big chunk of the concern about drug abuse arises not from altruistic paternalism (it’s for your own good) but from selfish paternalism (it’s for everyone else’s).
Public policy advocates of all stripes love inflating their numbers, but 9% of the total seems a little nutty. The worst part is that 9% likely includes hospital admissions or arrest records that indicate drug use, but make no statement regarding its role in the social cost. For instance, a person who smoked pot daily up until last week gets rear-ended by another motorist. His hospital admission will likely list his admission as drug-related, regardless of actual impairment or causality. So, the actual cost of drug use and abuse on society is probably less than the 9% stated.
One of my pet peeves is on display in this otherwise great article. Hinkle conflates use and abuse in the above paragraphs and throughout. This is likely because the government often makes no distinction between the two, as the legal (not medical) definition of drug abuse is use of a prohibited drug. But, it is likely not the drug abusers that paternalists citing these statistics are after. They are looking for the able-bodied adults who do just-well-enough at their jobs and also use drugs. As Hinkle points out, they advocate prohibition of drugs because it would keep people from using these drugs in a controlled manner that might impact their ability to contribute to other people's livelihoods. Of course, this idiocy follows a common economic fallacy. Just because a person is less productive at work does not mean they are less productive or economically useful overall. They may get stoned while performing music or writing creatively or being social with friends. Economic metrics like these omit intangible benefits and non-monetary output.
For the record, the majority of people who use drugs do not become dependent (<12% of first-year initiates to any drug are dependent two years later). Furthermore, most people who do become dependent on drugs have other problems that contribute to both the drug use and lost productivity including mental illness, unemployment, trauma histories, etc. Combine that with the proportion of drug abusers who are unlikely to become employed or otherwise economically productive, the actual social cost of drug use and abuse becomes vanishingly small.
The second point I want to make is a little more flippant. Why the hell is an alcohol binge counted as having 5 or more drinks in one night? That's a night of drinking! Over the course of a night out, starting at 10PM and going to 2AM, having about one drink per hour is a sign of temperance not intemperance! Good lord. This is yet another example of inflating numbers to make a problem seem worse than it is.
Finally, though it is not mentioned in this write-up, other analyses of the CDC data have pointed out that binge drinks most often is... old people! Let that one sink in for a minute. How about putting a maximum drinking age on alcohol use, as the intemperance of older adults has shown their generation to be too irresponsible to be trusted with the privilege of alcohol use. I'm being facetious, of course, but much the same argument is applied to college students.
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