It is not difficult to understand that heroin or other opioids is a major problem in our society. The grotesque imagery of a two-year-old child trying to wake up her mother dying from an overdose should not only concern our law-enforcement, our child-care institutions or our rehabilitation clinics, but our politicians since they are our societies “representatives”.

Maybe this problem might be considered as worse than terrorism? Killing more people, and where the killer is hidden in broad daylight. An addict killer, forced to sell his lethal drugs and thereby making his addiction a weapon.

Is the drug addict both sedated and weaponized?

There are no justifications to a drug war, since the people affected are involuntary victims. The victims are random sacrifices throughout all layers of society, rich or poor.

Is it possible to stop the development of the increased production, the increased usage, and increased death rates from the use of opioids?

Yes!

Let’s try to find the facts to support the truth.

The logic of the market

The market is defining the usage of all products, and the addictive properties of a successful product are normally defined in two ways.

There are many products with different classifications, but we want to define the two most important ones, because it defines the villain vs. the great inventor.

The product who is addictive, with negative impacts in our society

The product with positive impacts, and no addictive properties

A product existing in the area between the two is Social Media Platforms; addictive and with negative impact for small children and real social interaction between people. Addictive games and other products with an unclear positive impact in our society are probably also possible to define between the two classifications.

But Heroin and other opioids is defined as a horrible product, with the most negative possible outcome; Death.

The cause is in the mathematics.

For each addict, a weapon has been created, with the sole intention to increase the market. The addiction is so strong, that the addict will prey on the young, curious or weak to increase his own possibility as an addict. This means that you most likely have an exponential growth, because one addict will try to create two or more. In such a market the addicts death is the only factor limiting the size and growth of the market.

This basically means that it is the market that drives the market, not the supply. The supply is only starting the market. If some supply chains are killed, the prices will go up, and eventually the supply will be replaced. The market will be equally strong in any case, because the market possesses the addiction and will use any means possible to ensure that the supply will be replaced.

This will lead us to a conclusion and a fact:

With extremely addictive products the market drives the supply

In the war against drugs, many still believe that it is the supply chain that needs to be dealt with, instead of realising the important fact; the supply cannot exist without a market.

Of course it is difficult to not conclude that the supply is starting the market in the first place, but it does not take a big market before it is self-amplifying and self-driven.

Many still think that the addict is just a poor victim of his own misfortune. Social institutions and politicians still seem to feel it is more correct not to victimize the poor drug addict. This is a big mistake, when analysing the facts surrounding the drug market.

It is important that the public knows one vital fact, that determine the outcome of criminalizing the supply chain.

When the criminals in the drug industry are put down, and their money is seized, it is the government who is the sole beneficiary of that money.

You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand facts and its implications.

We will try to provide some facts that can establish an understanding of the mistakes concerning the logic of illegal addictive markets, and how to provide a simple solution by replacing them.

The math behind the addictive market

If you supply one addict with drugs, this addict needs money to supply his own addiction. Since one dosage has a street value between 10-20 USD, we will assume that he needs at least 300-600 USD for an entire month. But since most heroin addict is assumed to use more than one dosage, the numbers might be as high as 3000 USD per month.

According to the onset of withdrawal symptoms due to heroin, the 6 hour timeframe makes it reasonable to understand that the fear of the sickness require at least 4 doses of heroin every 24 hours.

Let’s use a simple number just above the assumed minimum, and state for the case of simplicity that an average addict need to have 4 doses per 24 hour, and that this will cost him at least 50 USD. This averages to approximately 1500 USD a month. The living costs for an average person, makes it unlikely that sustaining an addiction will make it possible to live an ordinary life.

Since heroin addiction is almost entirely certain to be connected with unemployment, he would probably need to sell drugs for 8000-15000 USD to be able to support his own addiction.

This is probably unreasonably high numbers of sales for a man/woman with limited functionality. Most likely they will start to pray on their surroundings and family for the support of money.

Let’s use some statistics to get a number for the annual usage in a particular country (e.g. the US) and limit this to a big city ( Ohio ) to have some reasonable numbers to work with.

Ohio has approximately 12 million inhabitants, and by using the average prevalence of opioid usage, it would average to approximately 12000 addicts in the state.

Since the average number of death was reported to 4293 per year, 12000 addicts might not be a correct number for this state since the number of deaths per 100000 users indicates that there are around 30000-40000 users.

Let’s use 30000 for the sake of simplicity, and to establish the cost of this addiction, by multiply it by the cost of usage at 1500 USD per month.

The cost of this addiction is 30000 * 1500 *12 = 540 million USD each year in Ohio alone. Remember that only a very small percentage of the population will be unfortunate to bear this cost. And remember that the collection of these money, is done by governments when they punish the supply chain (repeatedly).

If we add the cost of police-forces and the repeated incarceration of drug addicts, these numbers would probably increase considerably.

The simple math of an apparent solution

The annual cost per inmate is around 20000 USD.

Let’s make an interesting observation. For the incarceration of the entire population of addicts, it would cost around 30000 * 20000 = 600 million USD. This is only 60 million dollars more than the cost of the addiction itself.

But this is probably not a correct number, since a drug rehabilitation centre differs considerably from an ordinary correction facility. Most likely the cost for such a project would be a fraction of what is required of a correctional facility, including the benefits other sectors would gain from the drug markets disappearance.

Notice that this is a one-time cost, versus an annual cost; if you put all addicts in prison then the market collapses. This means that the near impossible task of controlling a drug market that grows in an exponential way, is actually a simple task by incarcerating all addicts.

Since the biggest fear for the addict is a detoxification procedure, he will soon enough learn to stay clean, instead of repeatedly be put through his worst fears through incarceration.

The fact is obvious:

Detoxification is being nice to every addict in a good cruel way

Instead, the governments injects people almost dying from overdose with their secret formula, and where the now suddenly healed “drug money-machine” is put back into the streets. This does not seem to be a logical way to treat people who is a burden to their environment, even if it is not by choice.

Some would say that it will be difficult to find the addicts and incarcerate them. Is it difficult to perform surveillance on a zombie addict constantly trying to feed his euphoria? I believe all officers who pledged to obtain law and order, should feel a bit shameful when you compare the mentally and physically fit officer with a zombie drug addict.

Why should we perform surveillance on good people through stupid Social Media platforms, when we can use surveillance technologies to stop illegal markets from killing children? Satisfaction through policy can only be obtained if the politicians are able to prevent children to be exposed to a very probable early death, instead of portraying as the good guys when it is more apparent that they are “supporting” the criminals for the purpose of collection.

Since the effect of the incarceration of drug addicts will result in a cost that will be cut in half (or more) every year until a close to zero cost for all foreseeable future.

Simple math makes it possible to have near zero cost and remove heroin addiction for all foreseeable future!

If the market appears somewhere, put them all in prison (rehabilitation centre), and keep them there until the suppliers are dead; not the opposite. If the supplier try to store his stash until the customer is released, make sure that the probation time is tracked with high tech technologies.

Today we have technologies that enable tracking of illegal activities, as long as the correct activity is specified illegal.

Capitalism is very often connected to the understanding of cost-efficiency, and employing these methods to satisfy customers. If the customers will save 540 million USD on their children’s addiction, any capitalist should try to be a part of that solution. The simplicity of social gains does not make anyone a communist because they are helping the unfortunate to use their money on more viable products than opioids.

But it is difficult to invest in a elimination of a market, compared to collecting money from criminals. This is why government more easily accept the sales of drugs, compared to a more complex investment in the removal of a illegal billion dollar market.

It would be fairly simple to conclude that taxpayers who looses a child to this industry, should know where to put the blame instead of shedding tears over their loss and the lack of ability to prevent it.

Conclusion

An addict is a killer because he will impose his addiction on others, whereas the supplier is only a simple criminal, because they are passive suppliers in an ever increasing army of addictive killers. This makes the supplier comfortably ruthless, and the killer addicts uncomfortably numb.

When the politicians are allowing the growth of an exponentially increasing market, and killing young innocent children, the only conclusion is that they are either sleeping or being a supplier; sedated or weaponized!