Cost of drug-related crime
Examples of users needing £15,000 to £30,000 a year to fund drug habits have often been given. To make such amounts of money from stolen goods police often suggest multiplying by three – on the basis that stolen goods will fetch about one third of their normal value. There are estimates of around 306,000 heroin and / or crack users in England, with around 200,000 of them in treatment in any one year. That is a lot of theft, burglary, fraud or shoplifting if all are stealing to pay for things. This has led some people to suggest that up to half of all acquisitive crime is drug-related and that the market value of goods stolen involved could be between £2-2.5 billion each year.