resented by the US government last week, and published by the Herald Tribune, it is estimated that the cost for the US society for the 9 million offences committed each year by drug addicts, in order to purchase drugs, amounts to 5 billion dollars for damages directly linked to to the offences, and 30 billion dollars for other social costs; d) the drastic reduction of deaths due to overdose caused by an excess of pure substances or faulty dilutions; e) the drastic reduction of diseases, ranging from hepatitis to Aids, caused by the clandestine manner in which drugs are consumed, aggravated by the life conditions of the drug addicts (poverty, homelessness, lack of primary services); g) a huge diminution of work for public institutions such as the magistracy, the police, prefectures, etc, which will finally be able to deal with that 20-30% of purely criminal offences (not involving "drug addicts"), which are presently not prosecuted or punished. I could continue with the list of advantages, but I want to add one partisan element, on which I am not hoping Tedoldi will agree: the less consistent incidence of the state apparatus for the control and repression on the private life of citizens is also an advantage to consider.
On the other side, there is the increase in consumption. I am personally not at all convinced that this would occur, in most countries of the world, those in which the drug trade is already consolidated. I am on the contrary convinced that the consumption today is significantly more consistent than "normal", and that it would occur in conditions of easy purchase of the drugs through legal channels, in all the countries in which the commercial networks of the drug trade have developed their presence. In Europe as in the US, today, there is an extensive sales network, which goes from the clandestine offer in a square or a dark alley, to a highly efficient door to door system for the privileged classes. Any drug addict today sells drugs, and therefore proselytize, in order to provide himself with money. Most people today enter a drug circuit to sell drugs, more than to use it, in many situations.
But let us take an increase in consumption for granted. We then have to deal with the indexes referring to the quality of life, as I mentioned in my last intervention, and which Laura Terni had excellently portrayed in her apology. Tedoldi had replied with an equally plausible argument. But the fact is, that today only Tedoldi's story is possible, whereas tomorrow stories such as the one told by Laura will be possible. To consume a substance that can cause damage to the body, in conditions of relative sanitary safeness is possible only if there is a quality control, a quantity control and the guarantee of the producer's honesty. To die of overdose is a possibility linked to the use of heroin, just as the possibility of dying in an accident caused by excessive speed is a possibility related to the use of a car. What we want is that doses of heroin comparable to cars without brakes were no longer available on the market.
