this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Alcohol causing 20 times the harm of meth, police float tighter regulation (www.newshub.co.nz)
submitted 5 months ago by deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz
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TL;DR:

  • Alcohol $7.8b
  • All illicits: $1.8b
  • Meth: $0.365b

I wanted a figure for cannabis and found this from 2020:

PDF https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/the-nz-illicit-drug-harm-index-2020-10-feb.pdf

  • All illicits: $1.9b
  • Meth: $0.824b
  • Cannabis: $0.911

I notice that the per kilograms measure for harm is also useful to account for volume of usage, but think that per 'dose' would be better.

  • Meth: $1.1m per kg with 743kg consumption
  • Cannabis: $0.35m per kg with 58000kg consumption

These figures include 'associative crime' as harm. So it apparent counts the cost of buying it as harm, it also counts the tax loss of that expenditure, so IMHO it skews unfavourabley to higher expenditure. But put that aside.

These figures show that all illicit drugs combined are less harmful to society than alcohol, and tautologically the harm is inflated by illegality.

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[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

The general awareness that alcoholics tend to do far more damage to their lives and people around them than potheads do, that goes back a very long time.

Even if we weren't looking at raw data, common sense and basic powers of observation let us draw solid general conclusions.