The latter is the difference between the real economic value of drugs and the scarcity-inflated market price. 1 Black market drug prices are estimated to range between 70 and 140 times real economic worth. It finances gangs and gangsterism, drug running, corruption of the criminal justice system, and it motivates the seduction of new drug users.
Prohibition leaves untreated addicts as the captured clients of the drug merchants.
Swedish indices of alcohol-related pathologies rank with the lowest. Putnum's Sons, p. 7. 16, Number 1, Spring, 1995.