The Costs of the Addiction Epidemic
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the total economic blow that the nation is struck with every year from the drug and alcohol addiction problem now numbers in at more than seventy-eight billion dollars a year. Yes, that is an annual cost. This cost breaks down into massive expenditures in healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment itself, incarceration (a huge expense), law enforcement, education and community drug use prevention efforts, funeral expenses, border patrol expenses, and the necessary repair of collateral damage caused by drug and alcohol addiction.
And that is not even an agreed-upon figure. The above data is brought to us by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, but the White House Council of Economic Advisors begs to differ. According to the White House Council of Economic Advisors, the addiction epidemic cost the nation no less than five-hundred and four billion dollars in 2015. The White House Council of Economic Advisors has an entirely different method for tabulating the costs of the addiction epidemic. They take into consideration:
“Local wages, health care costs and criminal justice costs along with variation in opioid-related death and addiction rates, and average age-adjusted value of statistical lives lost.”
“Local wages, health care costs and criminal justice costs along with variation in opioid-related death and addiction rates, and average age-adjusted value of statistical lives lost.”
No matter how we examine or measure this issue, it could not be more clear that we have a huge problem on our hands, the likes of which this nation has never seen before.
Costs of Addiction in the Severely-Affected States
The addiction epidemic has not treated all states equally in its spread of devastation. While all states have been affected in one way or another, some states are more heavily affected by this issue than others are.
Let’s take a look at the per capita burden of drug and alcohol addiction in the top, most-affected states. Keep in mind that this is the cost levied on the entire population of the state on a per capita basis, not just the addicted populace:
- West Virginia by far came in with the highest total per-capita burden at $4,378 per resident. This means that each resident on average has to pay that amount every year in taxes or other methods.
- Washington, D.C. coincidentally has the next highest per-capita burden at $3,657.
- Next up we have New Hampshire at $3,640 per capita per year.
- Ohio comes in next at $3,385.
- Maryland follows Ohio with $3,337 per person per year
Now let’s look at the lowest per capita addiction difficulties on a per capita basis. What we will find is that there is still a cost for every resident of even the states that get harmed by addiction the least:
- Nebraska of all of the states bears the lowest economic burden from the drug abuse issue. This problem costs each resident about $394 a year.
- Next up we have Montana at $596 a year.
- Next, after that is Texas at $653 per year.
- Mississippi is next with only $703 per person, per year.
- Iowa is next with $705 per person, per year.
Addressing the Cost of Addiction
A big part of why the United States has to pay so much money in addressing the cost of addiction is because the U.S. is going about addressing the addiction problem all wrong. Case in point, the United States is waging a “War on Drugs” which costs the U.S. billions of dollars a year, expressed above.
However, the entire approach of the war on drugs is currently one of addressing the supply of drugs, not the demand for drugs. We need to actually help the people who actively use the drugs or who may want to in the future. That is how we will reduce this problem.
Sources:
- https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-03-20/west-virginia-and-new-hampshire-bear-highest-costs-of-opioid-crisis
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/The%20Underestimated%20Cost%20of%20the%20Opioid%20Crisis.pdf
- https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html
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