Did you know that every American family pays $1500 in taxes each year to cover drug-related costs to society?

All of us pay a high price for Americans' drug use—not only in lives lost, but in social costs. Over 26,000 individuals died from drug-induced causes in the United States in 2002, seven times more than those killed in all of the September 11 attacks. Direct costs include those for drug treatment, health care, costs of goods and services lost to crime, law enforcement, incarceration, and the judicial system fees. Indirect costs are those due to the loss of productivity from death, human suffering, drug abuse-related illnesses, victims of crime and crime.

According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, overall societal costs associated with drug use in the United States were estimated at $180.8 billion for the year 2002.  Most of these costs were in the area of lost productivity.

Some of the taxes coming out of your paychecks is being used to pay for the toll drugs take on all of us. Where is it going? Here's a few examples:

Drug exposed children cost society millions of dollars. The total lifetime costs associated with caring for babies that were prematurely exposed to drugs or alcohol range from $750,000 to $1.4 million. These figures take into account the hospital and medical costs for drug exposed babies, housing costs, and outside care costs.

In 2002, there were 670,307 drug abuse-related emergency room episodes in the United States-and insurance didn't cover all the costs.

There were 2.3 million young people aged 12 to 17 who needed treatment for an illicit drug problem in 2002. Detoxification treatment costs about $475 a day. Rehabilitation treatment costs about $375 a day.

In addition to emergency room visits for overdoses, there are over 300,000 people living with AIDS which they contracted from drug-related activities.

Clandestine laboratory clean-up for methamphetamine costs the government millions of dollars every year.

The High Costs of Methamphetamine

The costs associated with methamphetamine production, trafficking and use are significant. The costs include caring for children affected by methamphetamine, lab clean-up, the cost of prisoners’ health care, and even consumer costs that are passed on to all of us.

Here are a few examples:

• In Kentucky alone, taxpayers spent $1.7 million on prisoners’ teeth. 80% of these costs cover treatment and decay. “Meth mouth” is a form of tooth decay resulting from users’ neglect. This amount is double the amount of non-prisoner dental treatment. In an interview with KWCH-TV, a prisoner admitted that meth caused him to lose all his teeth. “Your teeth go to nubs, they are pretty much gone…When you’re on meth nothing matters.” (KWCH-TV interview, November 7, 2005).
  
• The Oklahoma Department of Human Services is reporting a record 7012 children in foster care, a thousand more than last year’s total. Parental neglect at the hands of methamphetamine users is contributing to this increase. (KOTV-TV, November 8, 2005).
  
• According to an article in the Financial Times ( October 17, 2005), oil industry workers who abuse and produce methamphetamine have caused delays and increased costs to oil producers. This has resulted in project slowdowns and increases in the price of oil in the United States and around the world. Workers in states such as Texas, Colorado, Louisiana and Oklahoma have been fired for making or using methamphetamine.
  
• An article appearing in HighCountryNews.org on October 3, 2005 illustrates the extent of the methamphetamine problem within the oil and gas rig workforce in rural Colorado. Meth-using workers in this dangerous industry increase the number of mistakes and accidents, endangering other workers and driving up the costs of operations. READ MORE >>