Drugs: Relative Addictiveness (Joe)

I was just reading a Time article about the health effects of marijuana -- pot being a big topic in the press lately due to talks in California focused on trying to legalize the nation's #1 cash crop in order to resolve major financial difficulties -- and stumbled across this interesting set of numbers:

[T]he risk of becoming dependent on marijuana is comparatively low. Just 9% of those who have used the drug develop dependence. By comparison, 15% of drinkers become dependent on alcohol, 23% of heroin users get hooked, and a third of tobacco smokers become slaves to cigarettes.

Disclaimer: didn't see the studies, don't know exactly what was measured, etc.  Still, that's interesting.  Not on the relative lack of harm caused by marijuana, which is well-documented, but rather on the positioning of tobacco -- the biggest gap anywhere (from pot to alcohol to heroin to tobacco) is in the step up from heroin to tobacco.

Suddenly, big tobacco sounds pretty powerful.  And isn't it interesting that restrictions on opioid painkillers are constantly being ratcheted up, while nothing similar occurs for cigarettes?  You should be less likely to get hooked on your hydrocodone (to take an example from near the middle of the spectrum) than heroin, after all, which on a high estimate would make them only mildly worse than alcohol.  But there is widely understood to be an addiction crisis with respect to painkillers.  Whatever else, I think it's at least safe to say that there's a lot going on with drug policy -- and little of it rational.

Comments

[andrew r]

Well-said. And in reading these gory accounts of narco-traffickers in Mexico, since so much of their business is pot, I can't help but wonder: why the heck aren't we doing more on the demand side!?? Legalize it! (And I don't even smoke it)!

[pain pill addiction]

Addiction is a form of illness, and children can relate to the pain and suffering of sickness. This analogy helps them empathize with an addict and perceive them as a good person who needs the help of a doctor instead of a bad person who is intentionally making poor decisions that hurt themselves and others. It also reminds them that the addict could get better if he or she agrees to get help.Thanks for the post.

-jomie-

[D]

I think Time's "risk of dependence" measure is just a bad one, at least used by itself. I'm pretty dependent on my coffee, knew full well when I started drinking it that I'd become dependent, and don't really care. At the very least must be convolved in things like risk from dependence (minimal for coffee or pot, quite large for heroin), cost/effort in losing dependence, etc.

In fact, if simple measures are deemed desirable, I'd much rather we focused on these latter and left out risk of addiction entirely.

[Joe]

D, what exactly do you mean by "risk from dependence"?

It seems plausible to me that the costs of being dependent should be the most meaningful measure from a prohibition-policy perspective. The cost/effort in losing dependence would be most relevant for rehabilitation-type policy. The risk of becoming addicted matters most when coupled with the costs of being dependent, as your coffee example illustrates -- there's no social harm from widespread caffeine addiction (other than the proliferation of Starbucks).

[D]

Joe, I was thinking mainly of the health risk to the person - risk of becoming dependent vs risk to person from said dependence. Probably an economic-cost-to-society type analysis is also quite well motivated. But yes, I think risk of addiction to something can only be a relevant consideration once it's been shown that some harm arises from being addicted to this thing to begin with.