The High Cost of Drug Addiction
Such drugs as CPP-109 and CPP-115, which promise to treat cocaine,
methamphetamine and other addictions, could have a dramatic social impact.
Investment opportunities in a treatment would be substantial.
Drug addiction not only ruins the lives of addicts and their families, but costs America billions of dollars. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimates the total cost of substance abuse in the United States at more than $484 billion per year. Federal, state and local governments pay costs associated with medical treatment, social work, criminal investigation, court proceedings, incarceration and controlling drug traffic. Illicit drug use is associated with HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C through sharing contaminated needles, while drug use during pregnancy passes severe medical effects to the next generation.
The 2009 report of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that in 2005 federal, state and local government spending as a result of substance abuse and addiction was at least $467.7 billion, which amounted to 10.7 percent of their entire $4.4 trillion budgets. Of every dollar federal and state governments spent on substance abuse and addiction in 2005, 95.6 cents went to “shoveling up the wreckage” and only 1.9 cents on prevention and treatment and 0.4 cents on research.
Drug abuse is of course a global problem and one that affects the U.S. as a global power. Controlling drug traffic along the U.S. border with Mexico complicates relations with our neighbor and has become a divisive political concern in the U.S. In Afghanistan, the economy largely depends on cultivation of opium poppies and drug trafficking, which compromises the American military effort there and undermines any positive influence the U.S. might have on that country. In Colombia, the notorious Cali and Medellín cocaine cartels murdered judges and journalists and nearly destroyed the country. Foreign politicians, rather than dealing with drug traffickers in their own countries, often prefer to blame the U.S. for its appetite for drugs.
Coca Leaf
The innocent-looking coca leaf is the starting point for drug traffic from South America to the United States estimated at an annual worth of $1.5 billion. The U.S. reportedly consumes each year around 300 metric tons of cocaine, about half of consumption worldwide.
photo: Wikimedia
