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Americans Spend Nearly As Much on Illegal Drugs As They Do on Booze, Which Shows What a Ripoff Prohibition Is


Muda69

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https://reason.com/2019/08/20/americans-spend-nearly-as-much-on-illegal-drugs-as-they-do-on-booze-which-shows-what-a-ripoff-prohibition-is/

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Americans spent nearly $150 billion on marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine in 2016, according to a RAND Corporation report released today. Total spending on illegal drugs, including psychedelics and MDMA, would have been even higher. By comparison, Americans spent $227 billion on alcoholic beverages in 2016.

The fact that the illegal drug market and the alcohol market are in the same ballpark is pretty remarkable, given that drinkers outnumber illegal drug users by more than 3 to 1 if you look at consumption in the last year and nearly 5 to 1 among past-month consumers. The "risk premium" associated with prohibition helps explain why illegal drug users nevertheless manage to spend almost as much money as drinkers do. The near-parity in spending reflects the profits traffickers can earn thanks to prohibition and the welfare loss caused by artificially high prices. Prohibition enriches criminals and rips off consumers.

Of the four drugs considered by RAND, marijuana (including state-legal products), accounted for the biggest share of spending (36 percent), followed by heroin (29 percent), methamphetamine (18 percent), and cocaine (16 percent). Adjusting for inflation, the researchers found that cocaine spending fell by 59 percent from 2006 to 2016, while spending on methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana rose by 23 percent, 39 percent, and 53 percent, respectively.

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Yet the War on Peop....  err Drugs continues.    The government shouldn't have any business telling an adult individual what they can't put into their body.   

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