Economic Analysis of Public Policies for Controlling Heroin Use

Policies for controlling heroin use are surveyed. Motivations for harm minimisation and abstinence policies are derived. Pursuing abstinence alone using supply‐oriented policies increases heroin prices possibly creating social harm. Pursuing harm minimisation alone reduces user costs that compromise drug abstinence objectives. These tradeoffs between policy objectives are examined for a number of proposed policies including (i) the public provision of heroin to addicts, (ii) the use of safe injecting rooms, (iii) methadone programs and (iv) drug use prevention policies. Coupling legal sanctions that impact specifically on new users with harm minimisation policies, enables relaxation of some policy tradeoffs but penalises a class of users who impose low social costs.