A few months ago the European Union asked the Office of National Statistics to take into account illegal activities such as prostitution and narcotic drug use when calculating the value of the economy.
This was so that the UK’s economic statistics could be harmonised with those of the rest of the EU.
This is great news for us, because we get to find out more about our spending habits when it comes to vices.
One thing that we’ve found out is that we spend more on drugs than we do on beer. Almost twice as much in fact.
ncludes six categories of drugs: heroin, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy and imported and home produced cannabis.
Tobacco is by far our favourite vice. We spend more on smoking than alcohol in general: around £13bn a year on average since 1997.
Although we know that drug use has generally gone down, it seems we spend roughly the same as we did at the beginning of the noughties - aside from a peak during the recession years.
It’s also interesting that we spend a lot more on prostitution than a decade ago - maybe prices have increased?
Source UK Mirror
Overall the two industries - narcotics and prostitution - have contributed an estimated £11bn to the British economy. Imagine if, as well as the ONS, the Treasury also stopped ignoring their contribution to the economy by legalising them. The government's coffers would be overflowing with their tax revenues
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