Littlefuzzy: yes, it's 2 years, but it's 28 states... but ok, good points.....
But, GGT, The Economist supports my view.
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Littlefuzzy: yes, it's 2 years, but it's 28 states... but ok, good points.....
But, GGT, The Economist supports my view.
What? :confused: If The Economist supports your theory of supply/demand, it's based on opioids, not marijuana.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Marijuana. And cocaine, I guess.
Quote:
Heroin traffickers are also responding to market forces in America. For one thing, Americans are consuming less cocaine than they used to. And the cannabis they buy is increasingly home-grown: nearly half the United States now allow medical marijuana, and four have voted to legalise it outright, making it difficult for Mexican exporters to find a market. Struggling to sell cocaine and cannabis, they have homed in on heroin. The rise in consumption is therefore down to the coincidence of rising supply at a time of rising demand.
You're trying to insert a "drug" variable in your supply/demand model without understanding the mechanics of pain or pharmaceutical addictions that lead to black market use.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but whatever it is isn't based on facts or studies.
Maybe he's fighting addiction ???Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Actually The Economist said the primary reason was prescription drugs. Also The Economist supports drug legalisation.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
Yes, it is..... Aimless (facts -- "early half the United States now allow medical marijuana, and four have voted to legalise it outright, making it difficult for Mexican exporters to find a market. Struggling to sell cocaine and cannabis, they have homed in on heroin.") and LittleFuzzy (studies -- "a recent analysis of 2010–2012 drug overdose deaths in 28 states found that decreases in prescription opioid death rates within a state were not associated with increases in heroin death rate").Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Mexican exporters have honed in on heroin because there's a growing demand for black market opioids -- as legal prescriptions have decreased. You're cherry-picking bits of data (from the studies other posters cited) in an effort to make your "theory" sound better? :rolleyes:
Also, some of those drug overdose death rates were reduced after Naloxone was put in emergency kits for police, and family members of addicts, as first-responders (not just EMTs). The important point is that heroin use has sky-rocketed. The legality/availability/price of marijuana doesn't matter; it's not "interchangeable" with opioids.
No, not because there's demonstrably growing demand for heroin, but falling demand for marijuana.
> The important point is that heroin use has sky-rocketed.
Because it's cheaper than it was.
> The legality/availability/price of marijuana doesn't matter; it's not "interchangeable" with opioids.
Not for users. For sellers, it is.
But the demand for marijuana isn't falling! And heroin has always been cheaper than prescriptions!
So what's your "theory" again? :confused:
Demand for marijuana isn't falling, but supply is up. Do you deny that?
Demand for marijuana isn't falling, and the legal supply has grown. Can't deny that. But it's a stretch to theorize that has led to more heroin use and/or deaths.
What's your supply/demand economic theory again? :confused:
I'll say it again. (and it's also The Economist's theory/fact). Marijuana sales have led to a decrease in drug profits for drug dealers and cartels. Cheaper marijuana (or lower demand for "illegal" marijuana) makes selling heroin on the black market relatively more lucrative, thus leading to an increase in heroin users.
No, it's not the Economist's theory/fact. Minx has already pointed out they accept the same conclusions from the CDC that we all repeatedly tried to point out to you from your own article. You cherry-pick a sentence here and a phrase there from everyone's sources and try to string them together, out of context, to "prove" your empty hypothesis and disregard everything else all those sources say pointing to something else, abuse of prescription opiates.
Even if your hypothesized (and STILL completely unsupported) claims about cannabis and heroin being competing goods supply-side were true, supply does not create demand. Supply has never created demand. The rising use (and death rate) from heroin is because of prescription opiate abuse, as every single one of the sources linked in this thread claims, not because cannabis is increasingly legal or semi-legal.
If you're trying to use supply/demand economic theories to explain illegal cartel behaviors.....you're doing it wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
I never said that supply created demand. ??????????????????????????????????????????????Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Edit: I suppose you mean that I am saying drug dealers are pushing the most-profitable product, and that this means this is supply creating demand. However, I never said this.
If you are a drug supplier group (i.e.: a Mexican drug gang), will you go around selling now wildly unprofitable marijuana? No, you wouldn't. You would try to create and sell something else that has a better profit, meaning you would source more of the other drugs, whatever they are, be it highly dangerous designer drugs, or cocaine, or (since cocaine doesn't have much demand right now according to The Economist) heroin.
Heroin cost $400 per gram in the US in 2002, and $1600 in 1982. According to the UN, the current price is $200.
You linked something which described a quantitative study that potentially refutes this claim.Quote:
The rising use (and death rate) from heroin is because of prescription opiate abuse, as every single one of the sources linked in this thread claims, not because cannabis is increasingly legal or semi-legal.
I give up. Well, maybe. We'll see.
To be fair, increased supply would lower the price, which would (together with better availability due to increased supply) make it more accessible - in theory. Not sure how that works with addictive drugs, to be honest.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
You are saying that because demand is the only thing talked about in the only material you've brought to the discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
It did not. That was you cherry-picking a phrase, ripping it out of context, and misinterpreting it to try and back up your fanatical claim.Quote:
You linked something which described a quantitative study that potentially refutes this claim.
Depending on elasticity yes but that's not the supply/demand context Aga's been using.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
Ok, so first of all, marijuana prices have been falling for way more than 4 or 5 years. Maybe you should start with the legalization for medical use in California, and before that the growing of marijuana in Redwood forests in California, increasing supply...
I didn't make inferences or conclusions from pieces of text from the article I posted that you all did, taking it out of context. The article was posted in full so I wouldn't be accused of abridging. I considered the prescription stuff article fluff because it does not link or attempt to link one thing with another.
I don't think I took anything out of context from the link you posted.... it seems quite clear about what the mentioned study shows, which is that decreasing the prescription of opiods to deal with pain doesn't correlate with an increase in heroin use!
The claim that an increase in marijuana supply decreases the price of heroin isn't fanatical. The data supports a decrease in the price of heroin over the past 35 years, as marijuana supply increased.
I'll quote this again:
I fully recognize that the linked study also shows that heroin users are more likely to also be prescribed opiod abusers, however that is completely separate from any contention that a decrease in prescriptions per user leads to more heroin use and also separate from any contention that a path from prescribed drugs to heroin is the only reason that heroin deaths quadrupled from 2002 to 2013.Quote:
Although it has been postulated that efforts to curb opioid prescribing, resulting in restricted prescription opioid access, have fueled heroin use and overdose, a recent analysis of 2010–2012 drug overdose deaths in 28 states found that decreases in prescription opioid death rates within a state were not associated with increases in heroin death rates; in fact, increases in heroin overdose death rates were associated with increases in prescription opioid overdose death rates (6). In addition, a study examining trends in opioid pain reliever overdose hospitalizations and heroin overdose hospitalizations between 1993 and 2009 found that increases in opioid pain reliever hospitalizations predicted an increase in heroin overdose hospitalizations in subsequent years (7). Thus, the changing patterns of heroin use and overdose deaths are most likely the result of multiple, and possibly interacting, factors. Moreover, there is a lack of research examining recent trends in the prevalence of other substance use among persons using heroin, especially among the high-risk population of heroin users who meet diagnostic criteria for heroin abuse or dependence.
How can this (from your link) be taken out of context?:
So here are the facts, not contentions or suppositions:Quote:
The increased availability and lower price of heroin in the United States has been identified as a potential contributor to rising rates of heroin use (12). According to data from the Drug Enforcement Administration's National Seizure System, the amounts of heroin seized each year at the southwest border of the United States were approximately ≤500 kg during 2000–2008. This amount quadrupled to 2,196 kg in 2013 (12). Since 2010, increased availability of heroin has been accompanied by a decline in price and an increase in purity, which may contribute to its increased use in the United States (13). This increase in the amount of heroin seized, increased availability and purity, and decreased cost are temporally associated with the increases in heroin use, abuse and dependence, and mortality found in this study. Increasing availability points to the importance of public health and law enforcement partnering to comprehensively address this public health crisis.
1) Heroin use and deaths went up.
2) Heroin prices went down and supply went up, along with marijuana prices going down and supply going up.
And I say that if marijuana wasn't so cheap, heroin wouldn't be so cheap either. And if heroin is so cheap, then deaths will go up, because you can buy more of it. So that's fanatical?
But you're treating heroin and marijuana as if they're interchangeable drugs when they're not. The only supply/demand connection is between prescription opioids and heroin. You can't just add marijuana to the mix....and then "theorize" that heroin and marijuana are somehow connected. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
Your own link says heroin purity has increased, which can explain the increase in overdoses/deaths better than its price can. That's another flaw in your "theory": all the studies and data you cite refer to opioid or heroin overdose deaths. Marijuana doesn't cause 'overdoses' let alone deaths (unless you're talking about synthetic substitutes that do, but that's a whole different category of drug).
The entire article was about what you call the "fluff." The only mention of cannabis anywhere in it was about four words, in a list with other substance-abuse materials which are all commonly used by people who end up doing heroin.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
Yeah, you did. You even refused to consider the second part of that sentence.Quote:
I don't think I took anything out of context from the link you posted.... it seems quite clear about what the mentioned study shows, which is that decreasing the prescription of opiods to deal with pain doesn't correlate with an increase in heroin use!
Correlation is not causation and you've only got the loosest of correlations in the first place.Quote:
The claim that an increase in marijuana supply decreases the price of heroin isn't fanatical. The data supports a decrease in the price of heroin over the past 35 years, as marijuana supply increased.
It does nothing of the sort. We know heroin use and prescription drug abuse are closely correlated, as shown by both the second part of the sentence which you have completely ignored time and time again but by all the other cited data, including your original article. For whatever reason (and I already suggested one mechanic which you acknowledged you could not dispute) this one single facet, which isn't even tracking USE, is not following the pattern all the other data shows. Yet. And you use that to completely ignore everything else and once against assert your claim of causation, which isn't backed up by so much as a single line written by anyone but you.Quote:
I'll quote this again:
I fully recognize that the linked study also shows that heroin users are more likely to also be prescribed opiod abusers, however that is completely separate from any contention that a decrease in prescriptions per user leads to more heroin use and also separate from any contention that a path from prescribed drugs to heroin is the only reason that heroin deaths quadrupled from 2002 to 2013.
That tells us heroin use has gone up. So has supply. Which could itself be a function of demand. Which can be a function of changing conditions in Mexico and points further South. Which could be a result of almost anything at all, most of which track much more closely as correlates than your cannabis (and I'll note, you haven't provided one BIT of data on cannabis supply either, just an insistence that it must logically have changed massively as a result of legalization. When you've also just said in the post above you're trying to talk about the last thirty-five years and not just the last decade as had previously been under discussion.Quote:
You know what has skyrocketed in very close combination with the heroin use and death rates, much more closely correlated than your uncited claims about marijuana prices and supply. Prescription opiate abuse. Maybe, just maybe, that's the driving factor. You know, as alleged by every single citation in this thread, including yours!Quote:
So here are the facts, not contentions or suppositions:
1) Heroin use and deaths went up.
2) Heroin prices went down and supply went up, along with marijuana prices going down and supply going up.