Heroin
EpidemicHeroin
EpidemicThe central missions of CASA are to identify the cost of substance abuse throughout American society and inform the American people of those costs and the impact of substance abuse on their lives: to find out what works in prevention and treatment; and to encourage all individuals and institutions to take responsibility to deal with substance abuse.
January 2001
Substance abuse and addiction is the elephant in the living room of American society. Too many of our citizens deny or ignore its presence. Abuse and addiction involving illegal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes are implicated in virtually every domestic problem our nation faces: crime; cripplers and killers like cancer, heart disease, AIDS and cirrhosis; child abuse and neglect; domestic violence; teen pregnancy; chronic welfare; the rise in learning disabled and conduct disordered children; and poor schools and disrupted classrooms. Every sector of society spends hefty sums of money shoveling up the wreckage of substance abuse and addiction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the public spending of the states. The heaviest burden of substance abuse and addiction on public spending falls on the states and programs of localities that states support. Of the two million prisoners in the United States, more than 1.8 million are in state and local institutions. States run the Medicaid programs where smoking and alcohol abuse impose heavy burdens in cancer, heart disease and chronic and debilitating respiratory ailments and where drug use is the largest cause of new AIDS cases. States fund and operate child welfare systems--social services, family courts, foster care and adoption agencies--where at least 70 percent of the cases of abuse and neglect stem from alcohol- and drug-abusing parents. The states are responsible for welfare systems that are overburdened with drug- and alcohol-abusing mothers and their children. State courts handle the lion's share of drunk driving and drug sale and possession cases. States pour billions of dollars into elementary and secondary public school systems that are more expensive to operate because of drug- and alcohol-abusing parents and teenagers.
Governors and
state legislatures have the largest financial, social and political interest in
preventing and treating all substance abuse and addiction, whether it involves
alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs, and especially among children and teens.
While the federal government has heavy responsibilities to fund biomedical
research, classify and regulate chemical substances and interdict illegal drugs,
the brunt of failure to prevent and treat substance abuse and the cost of coping
with the wreckage of this problem falls most heavily on the backs of governors
and state legislatures across America.
For three years,
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has
been scouring the fine print of 1998 budgets of the states in an unprecedented
effort to measure the impact of substance abuse and addiction on their health,
social service, criminal justice, education, mental health, developmentally
disabled and other programs in 16 budget categories. Forty-five of the states,
the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico responded to our survey--the most
extensive and sophisticated ever conducted in this field--and answered the
endless questions of our staff. Based on an exhaustive analysis of the data
collected, we also estimated the total costs of substance abuse to the budgets
of the five states (Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Texas)
that did not respond to our inquiries.
The results are
stunning, especially given that in every case we made the most conservative
assumptions about the burden that substance abuse imposes on state budgets. Four
findings are particularly striking. In 1998:
· Of
the $620 billion total the states spent, $81.3 billion--a whopping 13.1
percent--was used to deal with substance abuse and addiction.
· Of
every such dollar states spent, 96 cents went to shoveling up the wreckage of
substance abuse and addiction and only four cents was used to prevent and treat
it.
· The
states spend 113 times as much to clean up the devastation substance abuse and
addiction visit on children as they do to prevent and treat it.
· Each
American paid $277 per year in state taxes to deal with the burden of substance
abuse and addiction in their social programs and only $10 a year for prevention
and treatment.
· Of
the $453.5 billion states spent in the 16 budget categories of public programs
we examined, $81.3 billion--17.9 percent--was linked to substance abuse and
addiction.
This report is a
clarion call for a revolution in the way governors and state legislators think
about and confront substance abuse and addiction. States that want to reduce
crime, slow the rise in Medicaid spending, move more mothers and children from
welfare to work and responsible and nurturing family life must shift from
shoveling up the wreckage to preventing children and teens from abusing drugs,
alcohol and nicotine and treating individuals who get hooked.
The next great
opportunity to reduce crime is to provide treatment and training to drug and
alcohol abusing prisoners who will return to a life of criminal activity unless
they leave prison substance free and, upon release, enter treatment and
continuing aftercare. The remaining welfare rolls are crowded with individuals
suffering from substance abuse and addiction. The biggest opportunity to cut
Medicaid costs is by preventing and treating substance abuse and addiction.
Governors who want to curb child abuse, teen pregnancy and domestic violence in
their states must face up to this reality: unless they prevent and treat alcohol
and drug abuse and addiction, their other well intentioned efforts are doomed.
The choice for
governors and state legislators is this: either continue to tax their
constituents for funds to shovel up the wreckage of alcohol, drug and
nicotine abuse and addiction or recast their priorities to focus on preventing and treating such
abuse and addiction.
State spending on
children is the cruelest misallocation of taxpayer funds. We know that a child
who gets through age 21 without smoking, abusing alcohol or using illegal drugs
is virtually certain never to do so. It is a slap in the face of this knowledge
for states to spend 113 times more to shovel up the wreckage of children savaged
by substance abuse and addiction in social, criminal justice and education
programs than they spend to encourage children to stay away from these
substances and treat those who ignore that advice.
This unprecedented
report looks behind the traditional budget labels--education, criminal justice,
transportation, health care, child welfare, welfare, mental health--to detect
just how many of their taxpayer dollars the states spend to deal with the
financial burden that unprevented and untreated substance abuse and addiction
impose on public programs. It is our hope that exposing these heretofore hidden
costs will encourage governors and state legislatures to make sensible
investments in comprehensive efforts to reduce the use of tobacco, alcohol and
illegal drugs, particularly by children.
States spend some
$25 billion a year shoveling up after the savage impact of substance abuse on
our children. The largest share is spent on the burden of substance abuse to the
education system--$16.5 billion; another $5.3 billion is spent for children who
are victims of child abuse and neglect; nearly $3 billion is spent for
substance-involved youth in the state juvenile justice systems. By comparison,
pennies are spent to prevent these problems. This is perhaps the worst example
of current investment policies because of the enormous payoff that could be
realized by preventing addiction in the first place.
Children are key
to the lasting success of any effort to curb the costs of substance abuse.
Prevention and treatment efforts, especially those directed to children, must
cover all substances. First, sale of any of these substances to children is
illegal, and for good reason. Second, tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs all
affect the dopamine systems in the brain and, with repeated use, can change the
structure of the brain itself resulting in cravings and addiction. Finally, most
individuals who fall prey to abuse and addiction are involved with more than one
substance.
What this report
reveals for the first time is that the biggest bang for the buck in terms of
taming the costs of social programs will come to those states that curb
substance abuse and addiction. The return is not simply in reduced state
spending. It also comes in reduced crime--and most importantly in reduced human
suffering not only for the addict and abuser, but for parents and children,
classmates, friends and neighbors. And, it can be counted in positive economic
benefits to states from productive, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens.
Addiction is a
disease--a chronic, relapsing one-- that, untreated, has nasty and costly social
consequences: illness, disability, death, learning disabilities, poor school
performance, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, crime--to name a few.
Our fear of these consequences often leads us to respond with tough sanctions.
It is of course important to hold individuals accountable for their conduct. But
the first line of defense is prevention and we can do a much better job at it.
Treatment is no sure bet, but success rates of good programs exceed those of
many long shot cancer therapies on which we spend millions of dollars. And if we
fail to treat the disease, there is little hope of stemming these consequences.
America is not the
Garden of Eden and the challenge to state executives and legislators is to
balance the importance of holding individuals accountable for their actions with
the need to provide treatment for this disease that causes and aggravates so
many social problems. It is our hope that this report will help these public
officials find that balance.
Governors
and state legislators (as well as mayors, city councils and county officials)
hold critical keys to the future of our nation. It is the states,
in concert with local governments, which
This undertaking
has been CASA's most ambitious public policy analysis. To accomplish it we
convened an extraordinary advisory panel of distinguished public officials,
researchers and representatives of the National Governors' Association, the
National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of State
Budget Officers and the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Directors. We assembled a team of experts in economics, epidemiology and state
government budgeting and finance. We reviewed some 400 articles, books and other
publications on substance abuse and public spending. We extensively interviewed
state budget officers, devised a survey instrument and tested it in California,
Florida and New York in order to refine it before sending it to all the states.
The survey captured 1998 spending in 16 budget categories for the 47 responding
jurisdictions.
Some caveats are
appropriate. The complexity of this unprecedented effort means that this report
should be regarded as a work in progress that will be refined in the future;
that complexity has led us in every case to use the most conservative
assumptions.
In several areas,
such as public housing, higher education and state employee healthcare, because
of lack of data, we were unable to assess the impact of substance abuse and
addiction, and this report contains no costs in these areas.
As a result, this report significantly underestimates
the impact of substance abuse on state budgets.
This
report covers only state costs.
It does not cover federal matching funds that states spend (e.g., on Medicaid
and welfare); federal government costs; the spending of local governments (which
bear most of the law enforcement burden), the costs to parochial and private
schools and other private sector costs (such as employee health care, lost
productivity and facility security) which are the subject of ongoing CASA
analyses.
Finally, the human
suffering of addicts, abusers and their families and friends are incalculable.
This report
continues CASA's ongoing Analysis of the Impact of Substance Abuse and Addiction
on America's Systems and Populations. We expect that it will form the basis of a
forthcoming conference on substance abuse and state budgets as part of our
series of CASACONFERENCES.
Susan E. Foster,
M.S.W., CASA's Vice President and Director of Policy Research and Analysis, is
the principal investigator and staff director for this effort. She was ably
assisted by CASA Research Associate Darshna P. Modi, M.P.H. and data analyst,
Liz Peters. David Man, Ph.D., CASA's librarian, and library assistants Barbara
Kurzweil and Ivy Truong were a big help. Jane Carlson, as usual, tackled the
administrative chores with efficiency and good spirit.
For the financial
support that made this undertaking possible, the Board of Directors of CASA and
our staff of professionals extend our appreciation to The Starr Foundation, The
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Primerica
Financial Services, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and The Abercrombie Foundation.
While many people
contributed to this effort, the findings and opinions expressed herein are the
responsibility of CASA.
Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
Please find the entire report at CASA