I don’t know what the definition of responsible is (no offense meant to you recovering addicts with that term), but as a guess
-Doesn’t commit crimes to pay for the drugs
-Has a job (or if unemployed, not due to the drug use and actively looking for work if healthy and able enough to)
-Has stable, healthy personal relationships
-Isn’t using the drugs to cope with and hide from emotional problems
-Isn’t physically addicted to the drug and uses it for pleasure rather than to avoid withdrawl pains
-Keeps the cost of drug use as a very reasonable level of their monthly financial expenses, not a major monthly expense and not over more important expenses like rent, child support, food, car payments, etc.
Is there any way to measure that, or has anyone figured it out?
I guess it depends on the definition of ‘drug’ too. I’m sure marijuana is 90% or more by those definition. What about meth, heroin or coke?
I doubt you’ll be able to figure that out since the people that meet all those qualifications aren’t going to be included in most statistics. For example, let’s say John uses drugs, John also meets all the above criteria, but because John meets those criteria, John was never arrested, never met with a counselor, never stood before a judge, was never in the welfare line, was never on a state supported health insurance plan, never had a positive drug test (probably never took a drug test to begin with) etc. There’s no record anywhere that says “John used drugs”
Obviously it would have to be based on self-reporting.
And in fairness, the comparison should not be to non-users generally, but to non-users who are also not criminals, gainfully employed, having only stable healthy relationships, not hiding (by other means) from emotional problems, and not spending money unreasonably.
The answer is ‘most’ because alcohol is a recreational drug that can be used as hard as any drug up to including incarceration and death. You have to break the rest of the drugs down specifically because they vary wildly in how dysfunctional they tend to make users.
Marijuana - most users are casual and functional. It is only a ticketed offense for users in Massachusetts now so you won’t get into much legal trouble for it and it isn’t expensive.
Cocaine - some people do that off and on without true addiction for long periods. It is expensive and that is one minus in your equation. Crack cocaine is extremely addictive and the environment that it gets distributed in has huge minuses. Neither cocaine nor crack cause life threatening withdrawal symptoms though so it is possible to stop on your own once your are addicted.
Heroin - there aren’t very many old heroin addicts and it isn’t because they all grew out of it. Using heroin casually doesn’t always lead to death or incarceration but it is a really good place to start. It isn’t a good casual use drug at all. People go from normal to pure junkies in months or less against their better judgment.
Meth - probably the worst of the bunch. That is the mythical scary drug teachers warned you about in school even if it wasn’t popular then. There may be a casual and functional meth user somewhere out there right now but it won’t stay that way once addiction sets in. Complete bad news.
I thought drugs like coke and heroin were fairly cheap now. My understanding is a gram of coke about 60% pure runs about $60-100 now. A line is about 75mg, so that is not that expensive if you are getting 14 lines out of a gram for $70.
Heroin is the same price and purity, cheese is down to $2 a hit. A recreational dose is 50mg or less, so $4 or less.
My point with the prices and purity is just that someone who chips or parties on the weekend isn’t going to go broke on $2 cheese and $5 lines of coke.
Some people do use coke recreationally and somewhat economically over time. It used to be common among some professionals and most of them just gave it up without much trouble. Not even they know who will take off at the races and go wildly beyond that when they first start however.
Heroin is a different story. I have never used heroin but I have known lots of users all of which ended up badly. Heroin is cheap at the starter levels which is one reason of many why it is alluring and dangerous. Tolerance grows very quickly however so that the starter levels don’t do the job anymore and it gets to be very expensive very quickly especially when you have an arm full of needle marks and can’t get a job because the signs are visible to anyone. That is when the crime and lawlessness cycle kick in because nothing is more important than getting the next hit chasing the allure of that first one. I don’t think you understand the addiction cycle well enough to quite get this. It doesn’t matter how cheap something is if it takes over your life and that is your main focus. Simple economics don’t work if you do it enough to lose your job and everything you have to support your sole goal every single day of the year. Heroin is a drug made to do that to people.
I recall from the 60’s there used to be the occasional story about doctors or other health profrssionals with easy access to drugs who had been functioning addicts for years. IIRC the story goes that they would be responsible enough to take enough to satisfy the craving without incapacitating themselves during work hours.
This was very similar to “functioning” alcoholics. However, the tight controls or ordering and prescriptions of certain drugs generally imposed by most governments nowadays make it very difficult to pull that off today.
I guess it also depends on your definition of “addict”.
