Drug addicts terrorize people on the streets and in their homes. They reportedly commit half the crimes in metropolitan areas of the United States! As a result, you may fear to venture from your home alone after dark.

It is reported that addicts “shoplift” over $2,000,000,000 worth of merchandise a year; so stores raise prices to compensate for their losses. Also, drug abuse by employees costs American corporations thousands of millions of dollars a year; a cost passed on to you in higher prices. And hundreds of millions of dollars are spent yearly on programs to fight drug addiction​—increasing your taxes.

But you can be affected in other ways. A driver “high” on drugs may ram into you on the highway.

✔ “Addicts sporting habits that often cost $200 a day have spawned a wave of drug-related crime. Authorities ascribe as much as 70 per cent of Detroit’s armed robberies​—90 per cent of its bank holdups—​to the upsurge.”​—Newsweek, February 28, 1972.

✔ “Drug abuse has risen dramatically in Oklahoma City . . . and no slowdown is in sight.”​—The Daily Oklahoman, April 17, 1971.