Making drugs is cheap. Making alcohol is cheap. Recreational drugs are expensive at the retail level due to the black market price premium. That's why there is the stereotype of the thieving junkie rather than the thieving alcoholic. Both are addicted but only one of them pays black market prices.
For $15 a day a person can spend every hour of it inebriated. $15 a day is barely a down payment on a black market opioid dependency.
An example I often give to make people understand how ludicrous the war on drugs has become:
I can drive a moving van up to the back of the government liquor store and fill the van to the brim with hard liquor. Nobody will bat an eyelid as I drive away with enough alcohol to kill 1,000 people.
By contrast, if I drive the same moving van up to the back of a warehouse and attempt to transport 1,000 potentially lethal hits of fentanyl, I could face 25 years in prison.
As the delivery man, how much would you want to be paid in each case? I’m betting the premium for delivering against a risk of life in prison is probably a touch higher.
Interestingly, in the US, legal cannabis prices are usually more than double those on the black market because they’re taxed extremely heavily.
Granted, users of cannabis aren’t* usually as captive as those on opioids, but the issue remains that legality may not provide the price change desired.
>users of cannabis are usually as captive as those on opioids
Gonna need a source for that one, chief.
I can sleep off a weed craving, that’s telling your mind no more slight dopamine boost. Can’t really ignore your body the same way when it’s going through opioid withdrawals because all of your chemicals are out of whack.
For $15 a day a person can spend every hour of it inebriated. $15 a day is barely a down payment on a black market opioid dependency.