THE ECONOMICS OF DRUGS

At least 467 billion dollars was spent in 2005 on drug addiction, by federal, state and local governments, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).

The report, the first to report all costs to local, state and federal governments, found that out of this only 1.9% went to prevention and treatment.

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., the former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare responded to a new report by CASA about the state of drug addiction treatment:

“Under any circumstances, spending more than 95 percent of taxpayer dollars on the crime, health care costs, child abuse, domestic violence, homelessness and other consequences of tobacco, alcohol and illegal and prescription drug abuse and addiction, and only two percent to relieve individuals and taxpayers of these burdens, is a reckless misallocation of public funds. In these economic times, such upside-down-cake public policy is unconscionable it’s past time for this fiscal and human waste to end.”

CASA’s Vice President and Director of Policy Research and Analysis stated:

“Despite a significant and growing body of knowledge documenting that addiction is a preventable, treatable and manageable disease, and despite the proven efficacy of prevention and treatment techniques, our nation still looks the other way while substance abuse and addiction cause illness, injury, death and crime, savage our children, overwhelm social service systems, impede education–and slap a heavy and growing tax on our citizens,”

Key findings from the report include.

• Of the $3.3 trillion total federal and state government spending, $373.9 billion – 11.2 percent, more than one of every ten dollars– was spent on tobacco, alcohol and illegal and prescription drug abuse and addiction and its consequences.
• The federal government spent $238.2 billion (9.6 percent of its budget) on substance abuse and addiction. If substance abuse and addiction were its own budget category at the federal level, it would rank sixth, behind social security, national defense, income security, Medicare and other health programs including the federal share of Medicaid.

This is just the cost to government; the cost to families can be as much as a million dollars in the lifetime of one addict.

The effectiveness of drug treatment is proven in dollars and lives saved.

The information and quotations contained in this press release was taken from a study by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.  The study can be found online at their web site (www.CasaColumbia.org).

Narconon of Georgia provides drug treatment to those who are addicted to pot, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs of abuse.

877-413-3073