Safe Injection Sites

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Is there a similar scale problem with black market and adulterated tobacco and alcohol as there is with currently illicit drugs? Brand names came into being because they were recognised as safe at a time when food and other adulteration was rife.

Booze? No. cigarettes?

Hell yes.

Illegal cigarettes are big business, probably bigger than illegal drugs, not only do you have many more addicts to sell to, you also have lower penalties if caught.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Booze? No. cigarettes?

Hell yes.

Illegal cigarettes are big business, probably bigger than illegal drugs, not only do you have many more addicts to sell to, you also have lower penalties if caught.

Because it is not an illegal product. Slap a tax on anything and someone will try to smuggle it. That's been an element of most economies for pretty much forever.

[Montmorency]

If we're talking about black markets for cigarettes, then I understand that usually these are standard legal cigarettes. The illegality, the smuggling, derives from buying the cigarettes in a lower-tax jurisdiction and reselling them without right in a higher-tax jurisdiction.

So these bootleg cigarettes are not any more harmful than the convenience store cigarettes you normally lay eyes on. Like the inter-Scandinavian alcohol smuggling business, I guess, an organized extension of what drives private Finns to buy booze in Estonia and bring it back to Finland for personal use. But ciggies.

[Husar]

Well, that sort of smuggling also happens with money. People get money in a high tax country and try to smuggle it to a low tax country to avoid paying the higher taxes.

The only way to fully elimiate a black market is to reduce the price of the product to such levels that the turn over of watered down or even stolen goods isnt worth the effort. I dont see that happening with drugs so the drug war would continue to some extent.

There's still this angle though, the price. Think of sugar. How often is there stretched or cut sugar sold at a cheaper price on the black market?
Are people even looking for that or is sugar so cheap and abundant that it's not worth the effort? Similar for salt.
Now drugs have a much higher price, but why is their price so high? Is it perhaps only so high because the drugs are illegal, which makes the plants harder to grow, the import mechanics more complicated and dangerous and it "forces" the producers to pay higher wages and buy weapons and transport vehicles like airplanes and submarines etc.?

So perhaps if these drugs were legal, their price would drop significantly due to higher supply, and at least for some of them, the incentive to smuggle them would drop. I guess it is possible that some would still have a higher price since the plants need special attention or the chemical process of making them is inherently expensive, but cannabis for example seems easy to grow and I would assume some others would also have price drops.

And we could have the actual COCA Cola back!

[Idaho]

Whenever legal prescribing of Heroin is tried seriously, it leads to less problems, less use, less crime, less new addicts. But politicians prefer dealers to take the blame for lots of deaths and crime, than have their own policies take responsibility for a few.

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This transcript is produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.
Senior police officers push for doctors to prescribe heroin 10/1/02

LIZ MACKEAN:
The battle against heroin has not been a happy one. It's easily measured by a dismal statistic - when it began in the '60s, addicts numbered 500. Now there are more than 500 times that - the Home Office estimates at least 270,000. No wonder the Home Secretary is considering a change of tack.

DR ANNE READ:
(CONSULTANT PSYCHIATRIST)
Hello. Come on up.

MACKEAN:
Sarah, not her real name, has a 20-year habit which is now perfectly legal. Every day she collects her dose of heroin from the chemist and injects it at home. About 300 addicts in the country are prescribed heroin - diamorphine - and the Government might extend the scheme. It's liberated Sarah from a life of crime.

"SARAH":
Now I'm used to it. Instead of taking methadone, I'm back on that and it's great. I'm leading a lovely life. I call it a clean life, cos to me, I'm clean. I'm not running around shoplifting. I'm not in the vicious circle. I used to call it living in a triangle. I'd score, then go shoplifting or doing credit cards or whatever, then home, then score¿ I was going in like a triangle. Awful life.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1755279.stm

[Pannonian]

Well, that sort of smuggling also happens with money. People get money in a high tax country and try to smuggle it to a low tax country to avoid paying the higher taxes.

There's still this angle though, the price. Think of sugar. How often is there stretched or cut sugar sold at a cheaper price on the black market?
Are people even looking for that or is sugar so cheap and abundant that it's not worth the effort? Similar for salt.
Now drugs have a much higher price, but why is their price so high? Is it perhaps only so high because the drugs are illegal, which makes the plants harder to grow, the import mechanics more complicated and dangerous and it "forces" the producers to pay higher wages and buy weapons and transport vehicles like airplanes and submarines etc.?

So perhaps if these drugs were legal, their price would drop significantly due to higher supply, and at least for some of them, the incentive to smuggle them would drop. I guess it is possible that some would still have a higher price since the plants need special attention or the chemical process of making them is inherently expensive, but cannabis for example seems easy to grow and I would assume some others would also have price drops.

And we could have the actual COCA Cola back!

There's also the regulated market argument. If a produce is legal if it follows regulations, it can be sold legally on the market, and recognised brands will spring up that reflect the regulation. In a market where adulteration is dangerous, people will gravitate towards the recognised brands. Food, drink and medicines used to be adulterated back in the 19th century, before regulations cleaned these products up and companies following regulations cleaned up in the market.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I agree with Idaho as to prohibition, at least in general. The costs outweigh the curtailment almost every time and associated problems tend to become more intransigent.

I am not sure I see the value in criminalizing any substance in and of itself. Education, fraud reduction, etc. all have value.

While not interested in paying for it out of my tax dollars, I am of the mind that doctors should be able to prescribe pretty much whatever they wish that provides care for their patient. If that is a light dose of heroin to get a damaged addict up to normal and functional, I conceive of that more as a medical issue than a political one.

[Husar]

While not interested in paying for it out of my tax dollars, I am of the mind that doctors should be able to prescribe pretty much whatever they wish that provides care for their patient. If that is a light dose of heroin to get a damaged addict up to normal and functional, I conceive of that more as a medical issue than a political one.

Well, I'd wager to guess that paying for that would require fewer of your tax dollars than the war on drugs, the crime, the prison cells and medical bills that you currently pay for either directly or indirectly.

[Idaho]

While not interested in paying for it out of my tax dollars, I am of the mind that doctors should be able to prescribe pretty much whatever they wish that provides care for their patient. If that is a light dose of heroin to get a damaged addict up to normal and functional, I conceive of that more as a medical issue than a political one.

Why are you Americanos so averse to helping your fellow citizens and having a healthy and cohesive society? It's the cheapest and most effective approach.

[Gilrandir]

I am of the mind that doctors should be able to prescribe pretty much whatever they wish that provides care for their patient. If that is a light dose of heroin to get a damaged addict up to normal and functional, I conceive of that more as a medical issue than a political one.

Treatment of alcoholism included?