Cost of Drug Rehab
for Americans

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice estimated that Americans would spend nearly $40 billion dollars on prisons and jails in the year 2000. This being only six years ago is quite alarming. Almost $24 billion of the $40 went to incarcerating 1.2 million non-violent offenders (i.e. drug offenders). With this in mind, consider another fact. During the mid-1990’s two of America’s largest states, California and New York, the prison budgets outstripped the state’s budgets for higher-education.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimate that a full 10 percent of the American work force has a chemical dependency problem. A study done by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce concluded that these workers function at about two-thirds of what is considered normal productivity. Basically, a third of the productivity that the companies are paying for is being lost. This is a shocking amount of money that is being squandered on people who are not clearly doing their job up to their full potential, but yet are still getting paid for it.

If this information is not convincing enough to sway your opinion, that drug abusers really are costing you and I more money, here are a few more startling facts:

• Drug abusing workers are five times more likely to file a workers’ compensation claim.Drug abusers have twice as many unexcused absences from work.
• Are late for work three times more often than non-drug users.
• Request to be dismissed from work early twice as often.
• Are more likely to steal company property and are often involved in work related accidents.

This is undoubtedly surprising to hear. With these facts in mind, consider how much this is costing businesses. Not only is it costing huge businesses, but even smaller ones (although not to the degree that bigger businesses might be suffering from).

In January of 2001, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University published an analysis of costs to states from tobacco, alcohol and other drug addiction. The report concluded that states are spending nearly $2.5 billion dollars a year on treatment alone (they did not distinguish whether the treatment had been for alcohol, drug abuse or nicotine addiction). Of the total amount spent on treatment, $695 million was spent through the departments of health and $633 million through the state substance abuse agencies. The University stated that they believed most of it was spent on the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse treatment.

Copyright © 2006 Drug Rehabilitation Information.
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