Drug usage goes hand in hand with theft. Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit. It's hardly a victimless crime.
'Drug use goes hand in hand with theft'
Do you know how ignorant that sounds? Caffeine and alcohol are drugs, do they go hand in hand with theft? Is everyone legally smoking weed in Colorado a thief too?
'Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit.'
Not all drugs are addictive. Most are less addictive than alcohol, nearly all are less addictive than tobacco. The vast majority of drug users are not addicts. In any sensible country those people who do get addicted would receive help and maintenance doses of their drug and wouldn't need to turn to crime. See Switzerland and their heroin programs.
'It's hardly a victimless crime.'
It's exactly a victimless crime. If someone steals stuff to support a habit THAT is the crime with the victim. Not drug use. FFS.
'Caffeine and alcohol are drugs' - yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
'It's exactly a victimless crime' - it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
And I support claim that war on drugs is wrong, and you can't win it (for economical reasons). But usage should be controllable.
My issues with the parent comment are not that addicts never steal, it's the ignorance of lumping all drug use into the same category and then saying 'drugs' make you steal.
It's the same in the UK - addicts of one sort or another do disproportionately make up the crime figures. However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft go hand in hand is just plain wrong.
>> yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft and other crimes.
Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem, this is not the same as saying they go hand in hand, implying anyone who has a drink is going to get addicted and steal stuff to support their habit.
>> it's victimless short term, but if it's hard drugs addict, there will be victims sooner or later. They will do nasty things just to get next dose.
Firstly, we're now talking about a subset of drugs, rather than trying to tar all drug users as thieves. Secondly, in a situation where the government treats heroin as a health issue this doesn't occur. Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case. And there's nothing like a queue of old junkies outside a medical facility to put the youth off heroin.
OT but your parent was down-voted for what I would say was a totally reasonable and constructive comment. I guess you didn't do it because you can't down-vote those that reply to you, right? I wish people would keep the down-voting for situations where a comment is offensive / destructive / mean, instead of something they disagree with. Anyways, I'm going to up-vote to counter it.
Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
>> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem
Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems. More than half domestic murders are caused by alcohol in Russia. Whole villiages die out because if alcohol, you can hear sometimes in some village there's no one who can work, because all men became total drunks. I think magical removing of alcohol would be single most positive thing crime-wise you can do in Russia. But of course it's impossible.
>> Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case.
Yes, that's what I was talking about - using should be controllable. Special clinics etc. But Switzerland experience can be hard to reproduce elsewhere, this country just has different social structure. So it should be applied carefully.
Maybe we have. One of the reasons I was hacked off at the first comment on this was that it's not even talking about addicts - "drug use goes hand in hand with theft". This is just not true.
>> Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
I've never heard of anyone stealing to support their Ketamine habit either!?! K causes various bladder problems, and while it does seem to be a little addictive isn't really very high up the scale I don't think.
>> Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems.
I will defer to your knowledge. I know we have problems with alcohol in the UK but I get the impression Russia is more familiar with this problem! I agree actually, that decreasing use of alcohol in our societies would probably be a really positive thing. And that it would be next to impossible. Perhaps if everyone had access to some cannabis they might not bother so much? (I'm only half-kidding there).
In general I don't think addiction is a good thing, and I don't think anyone should be encouraged to take drugs of any sort, let alone the really nasty ones. I'm very pro-legalisation but that doesn't mean I want to hide the damage drugs do to people and to society.
I just think it's way off-mark to say "all drug users are thieves" !!
Yes, the inference only goes in that direction...
That's a succinct way of summing it up :)
This would likely not be the case if cocaine cost about the same, or even ten times as much as sugar. The high price of drugs is a direct result of laws against their production and distribution. I expect addicts stealing to support their habits would be much less of an issue with legal drugs, even if there were moderately high taxes on them to offset the costs of treating addicts.
I agree that war on drugs can't be won because of economical reasons, though.
The cost to society would be far less.
How much does generic-brand sugar cost? A dollar per kilo? Two?
Cocaine should cost about that, definitely less than ten times that, if it was manufactured at scale by corporations in a competitive market, and one didn't need to compensate everyone in the distribution network for the risk of being arrested or killed.
Your stereotypical addict on the streets should be able to get as much as they "need" from panhandling for an hour a week. A tragedy, but a contained one.
Instead, they need twenty bucks for the next dose, precisely because of the war on drugs. Think about that.
Not at all.
Of course, you could just get a job that pays enough to support your habit? Software Engineering works for me, for example, and has allowed me to maintain a twenty year heroin habit, almost.
You most certainly don't.
I'm guessing a GBP 80 (1/16 oz) per day habit could drop to around GBP 10-15 (not really sure about purity, but assuming adulterated to 10% would mean 0.1g street Heroin is equivalent to one of these pills, so that would be the equivalent of 10g or over 1/4 oz which would be GBP 160 probably)
We seem to be getting a lot of stuff wrong in this area....