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Comment by shasheene | Hacker News Reader

"The [Portuguese] Health Ministry spends less than $10 per citizen per year on its successful drug policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent some $10,000 per household (more than $1 trillion) over the decades on a failed drug policy that results in more than 1,000 deaths each week."

That's a intellectually dishonest and misleading statement: it's comparing Portuguese annual cost per citizen to US cumulative multi-decade cost per household.

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So what's the average number of citizens per household? 3? 5? Even at 5 which seems high, that's $2,000/citizen with ~56k deaths vs $10/citizen and deaths in the low tens of people.

I agree it would've been better off with a more apples-to-apples comparison, but let's not miss the forest for the trees here.

You missed the part where the cost is split by decades not just household.

It's not to say that I support US drug policy, because I don't, it's that this really is dishonest journalism.

$2000/40 years is still five times as much.

When you hear:

- ..spends less than $10 per citizen per year

- Meanwhile, the U.S. has spent some $10,000 per household...

Do you think to yourself, "yeah, that sounds like about 5x"? The presentation of the data is clearly cherry-picked to make it sound as bad as possible for the US.

The first step of solving a problem is usually accepting there is a problem.

Well, sure, but it's still 5x as much per person however you put it.

Absolutely, USA's war on drugs is an expensive waste of human life. Although, even 5x seems a bit high - is that controlled for higher wages in the US (not just exchange rates)?

Arguments are not soldiers. I was criticizing the yellow journalism, not saying anything one way or the other on the efficacy of US drug policy.

Let's correct that and estimate it ourselves: The War on Drugs was launched in 1971, so that's 46 years it's been going on. And the average household size in the US was 2.58 in 2010 and 3.11 in 1971 according to census - let's take the higher number to get a conservative result that is generous to the US. That comes out to $10000/46/3.11 = $69.9 annually per citizen on average. It's a pity they muddled it up by comparing apples to oranges, because it's actually very favorable for Portugal if you compare apples to apples.

That's a reasonable estimate. While the journalist used 'household', I don't think there was a reason to. Looks like there was a lot of news articles published between 2010-2015 with the $1 trillion figure being cited (haven't found a break down of that yet though).

Anyway for fun here's my estimate: The mean US population between 1971 to 2015 (inclusive) was 262.1 million [1]. There were 44 years in that period (inclusive). Therefore:

1E12/(262.1E6*44) = $86.71/person annually

[1] http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table and a spreadsheet

Unless the US has 10 citizens per household and the period in question is 10 decades, the point still stands that the Portuguese policy is cheaper per citizen as well as more successful.

(The actual numbers are more like 2 and 4 than 10 and 10.)

Uh... it seems honest in that the facts seem correct and is only misleading to people too dumb to figure that "per citizen per year" !== "per household over the decades."

You're implying that the US has a more effective drug policy than Portugal, which is absolutely ridiculous

Where in the comment is that implied? Seems like he/she disapproves of the apples to oranges comparison of the stats presented and not making any further judgment on policy efficacy.

Not at all. GP is implying that there's some shitty journalism going on.

Your comment bothers me more than it should. Why do people who feel strongly about stuff allow, or even encourage, shitty reporting and intellectual dishonesty as long as it suits the narrative they support?

I mean, you're calling out a commenter for being 100% right, putting words in their mouth and then calling those words ridiculous. What's the point?

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