USA - Question: How much do Americans spend on illicit substances per day/year?

[johnshaw]

Greetings,

It has been a while since I've posted here, and now look forward to concentrating more on this issue than ever before.

I hope this question is relevant enough to post in this forum. My apologies ahead of time if I skipped over a more relevant subforum.


I'm trying to find statistics that might show how much Americans spend annually and/or daily on illicit substances. I've perused the internet quite a bit and can only find statistics from the late '80s and early '90s.

Does anyone have an idea where I might find such statistics, or would anyone happen to have any statistics handy?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

John Shaw
Independent Candidate, Florida House of Representatives, District 9
www.johnshaw.org

[Purest]

To be honest, one problem with that question is that its very difficult to really tell exactly how much any country actually spends on drugs. "Official government statistics" are often used only as scare tactics to show "how evil drug users ruin the economy" whilst those pro-legalisation retalliate saying that its tax revenue lost. One of the problems is that because the trade is so underground for every dealer they catch and track theres at least 2 more out there unknown, some may remain unknown entirely during the time they deal then will just stop all together and never be known. Also some drugs such as Nitrous oxide, DXM and solvents, it's very difficult to tell how much is being spent on them because some people will buy them for their reccomended use or to get high.

I'm sorry I can't be much more help, but its actually a really difficult thing to even guess at, or maybe I'm just looking into it too much.

[johnshaw]

You bring up a VERY good point, and one that I perhaps overlooked until you elaborated on it. Thanks very much for your feedback.

[Lunar Loops]

As has already been pointed out, this is a very difficult figure to estimate and those figures that do tend to make it into the public realm are generally unreliable due to the nature of the trade and the spin applied by those releasing the figures. Take a look at the following thread on here which includes a tongue-in-cheek look at the narcotics industry from The Economist:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34308

Apologies that there is not something more concrete in terms of a reply, but even if there were we would be talking about very crude guesstimates.

Maybe also take a look at the UNODC Annual Report from 2008 that The Economist report lampoons (but remember the spin):

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...4705&catid=137