Addiction: How Do They Afford It?

You often hear about drug addicts asking for money or even stealing from family members to fund their addictions. Drug addicts will do much more than steal from family members; they’ll find creative ways to coerce and steal money from retail stores, unrelated people, and right off the streets to get what they want. There’s one testament of addicts stealing streetlights and selling them for scrap metal. “130 poles vanished” leaving everyone to wonder how they got multiple 250 pound poles off the streets.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2004 18% of federal inmates admitted to committing the crime in effort to get money for drugs. As drug addiction grows, so does that number as more people try to fund their drug addictions. They’re in for trafficking drugs, shoplifting, prostitution, armed robbery and more just to continue using their drug of choice. Shoplifting, a common choice to fund their habits, has even allowed addicts to use gift cards to make money by shoplifting an item, returning it in return for a gift card and then selling the card online.

A common way, an easy way to fund addiction is simple shoplifting. There are retail stores on every corner, with merchandise right there. Gift card fraud makes it easy to turn this merchandise into ready cash that is then used to fund the addiction. It is a common easy way to get a fix.