It was studied & the conclusion was that every $1 spent on kids during their early child care yrs in places like Head Start & such was worth $15 later, yes, it was many yrs later but the return was high. These kids were much more likely not to become drug dependant & not end up in prison. They were much more likely to continue schooling on into higher education instead of dropping out of high school. So again, it's education that works best.

As for tossing everyone in prison, that gets society nowhere. Contrary to some beliefs, it costs for more to house a convit per yr than it does to educate someone in college. I have 2 kids in college & a brother & a cousin in prison, the costs to the state are by far way more for the 2 in prison.
Durg pervention & intervention is a cheaper cost that just letting them commit crimes & then run them through the system for the remainder of their lives. Education, pervention, intervention & rehabilation only carries the costs at best for no more than a few yrs. Criminal behavior for the drug dependant lasts a lifetime.

Here in the US back in the 60' & 70's (I don't know if you were here then, I was) the drug maintance programs, instead of distributing Heroin they maintained junkies on Methadone. The crime rate dropped in drug related crime & the junkies that where on these programs many worked jobs (some junkies were only criminals after becoming drug dependant, not the other way around). The methadone because of it's over[owering strengh blocked any highs or effects from other narcotics. Troble was the Methadone was so addictive becoming dependant on it was pretty much a life sentence. "So what" says society, it's worth it. Is it? In my opinion NO! It's lives wasted when to educate is a win, win situaion.

While I agree the costs of crime are high the costs of ignorance & doing nothing of value or substance is much higher. We are building prisons (good for employment??) at a far higher rate than in the days when drugs weren't a national problem. We could be building schools instead, that produce a more disirable & productive citizen.

Believe it or not alcohol is more addictive than heroin & cigarettes are more addictive than both but the other 2 are legal, taxable & turn a clean profit. As far as a rate of recidivism here drugs users have the best shot of "kicking the habit", somethings wrong here.

Drug education & education (which is in it's self is a detterant to drug use) itself is so cheap (in comparison) that it can be worked into the public systems as an aside & over the few yrs that our kids are in school. That's pretty cheap compared to having to deal with the costs of a junkie on society over the lifetime of their "career criminal" activities.
On the costs to society that junkies rack up. We don't feed, shelther, clothe, or educate them, so there's some savings on the pro side, except when they're spending whatever time they accumulate in our prison system and we don't do farm & chain gang work so they don't pay off their crimes either. They steal at a rate that ants breed, that's one loss, destruction of property, to fightthe drug trade costs the government "billions, all beacuse junkies commit crimes for the drugs they need. Governments are run on the money the drug trade produces. the cruption that drug money costs everyone is staggering. The costs in lives, in waste & death, both innocent & the guilty is overbaring. The costs in wasted time, effort & resources is again staggering.
It makes no sense that in the past few decades we've gone so far backwards in our fight on this so called "war on drugs". When money allocated to education, prevention, intervention & rehab would be far cheaper in the long run espically when you consider that the potential for turning the wasted lives into productive lives is a windfall that's worth imagining.

Barry