The NY Times runs a story today just bound to encourage those taking a cursory look at it to push for continuing the war on drugs. Headlined "Social Cost of Meth is Gauged in New Study", the story begins:
"In the first effort to calculate the national price of methamphetamine abuse, a new study said the addictive stimulant imposed costs of $23.4 billion in 2005. While the authors, from the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., caution that many impacts were difficult to quantify, their study suggests that methamphetamine takes an economic toll nearly as great as heroin and possibly more."
Yes, well, it shouldn't surprise anybody that the authors tried to add a note of caution above. Because further along in the article, we find this:
"Dr. Wilson Compton, a division director at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the study’s major innovation was its effort to quantify the effects of addiction on the quality of life — how factors like poor health, anxiety and paranoia shrink the addict’s horizons and pleasure over time. Such estimates have been made for heart diseases and other major ones but not for illegal drugs, Dr. Compton said."
Yes, indeedy, and just how DO we quantify the social cost of "anxiety"?
I doubt we do it with much precision.
I'm not in favor of anyone becoming hooked on meth. But this recent growth in meth addiction has occurred in the midst of the current war on drugs. Lord only knows what would happen if we continued to expand this losing war. More conservatives should be speaking out against the war on drugs--it's a perfect example of big, costly government that hasn't worked.
