Banged Up and Chasing the Dragon

The UK jail drug trade is estimated to be worth £100 million. That's about £1,250 a prisoner. Prisoners get paid around £7 a week, that's about £364 a year. Surely some mismatch here? And prisoners testing positive for drugs has dropped to 9% from 25% in 1997. Now the figures get even weirder of that's roughly 8,000 prisoners smacking themselves up. Have those researchers been on the wacky baccy?

This is an example of the hundred million law.

Estimate any number and it will be a hundred million.
It was amazing the cost of the Hull flooding was estimated to be a hundred million, such a round number that.

It's always a hundred million, spooky that.

But also it's good for the insurance companies to put out such a figure. How do we know what it really is, we'll miss the boring storty about the actual number but we'll remember it a hundred million and the next time we won't kick up such a fuss when they hike premiums yet again.

That's called news and perception management.