Some interesting stats quoted from the article I linked on the first page that relate to the recent discussion about whether it would save money or cost money to legalize pot (or other drugs) and spend it on rehabilitation/etc. instead of policing/punishment/etc. There is actually a lot more about this in that article, around page 28/29 (going by Acrobat's page numbers, not the page numbers that are part of the document).
Quote:
A study published by CCSA in 1996 but based on 1992 data had identified the following costs of substance abuse:- The costs associated with all illegal drugs were $1.4 billion, compared with $7.5 billion in the case of alcohol and 9.6 billion in the case of tobacco.
- Expressed as a percentage of the gross domestic product, the total costs for all substances was 2.67%. Of this, 0.2% was for illegal drugs, 1.09% for alcohol and 1.39% for tobacco.
- The principal costs of illegal drugs are externalities, that is, loss of productivity - $823 million, health care - $88 million, and losses in the workplace - $5.5 million, for a total of about 67% of all costs related to illegal drugs.
- The cost of public policies, or opportunity costs, represent about 33%.
- The cost of enforcing the law represents about 29.2% of all costs, or about 88% of all policy costs. The balance goes to prevention, research and administration.
|
And I'll re-link the article again to save you going back to page 1. If you haven't read this yet I highly suggest you do. It's long, but it's worth it - it is a summary report of a research committee of the Canadian Senate and their findings about pot (this doc is kinda at the root of the entire thing about decriminalizing pot in Canada btw)
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/c.../summary-e.pdf