The U.S. Surgeon General granted that the country’s worsening opioid epidemic received due attention amid the long election season, but said alcohol-related issues are still costlier to the public after the release of a government report on drug addiction and abuse this week.
“The opioid crisis has certainly received a lot of attention, and it is certainly tearing apart families and costing us in terms of lives lost and health care dollars. But in terms of actual cost, we lose the most lives and suffer the most costs from alcohol related disorders and alcohol related addiction,” Dr. Vivek Murthy told NPR.
The numbers in the analysis from the Surgeon General cite data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found that alcohol misuse and related disorders had an economic impact of $249 billion in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. “The impact of illicit drug use and drug use disorders is estimated at $193 billion—figures that include both direct and indirect costs related to crime, health, and lost productivity,” the report “Facing Addiction in America” states.
But illicit drug use continues to be a problem on the rise. The rate of people ages 12 or older in the last month increased from a decade-low 7.9 percent in 2004 to 10.2 percent in 2014, the last year for which figures were listed. With the exception of 2010 to 2011, the rate has gone up every year since 2007. Rates of binge drinking have remained steady, on the other hand, peaking at 23.7 percent in 2009 and reaching a low of 22.6 percent in 2011. The rate was 23 percent in 2014.
Comparing alcohol and illegal drug use, however, has received criticism in the past on the grounds that it is an asymmetric exercise. “It stands to reason that alcohol—precisely because of its wide availability—causes the most social harm,” the Spectator observed in 2010. (The reasoning in the Spectator, a U.K. publication examining its own issues, applies just as easily to American circumstances.)
“However, if all mind-altering substances were legal, the picture would obviously look completely different.”
Heroin has been at the center of public debate over the growing use of illicit drugs, a category that also includes cocaine, prescription-type psychotherapeutics, hallucinogens, inhalants, and marijuana. A U.N. study from earlier this year found that the number of users in the United States had increased three-fold between 2003 and 2014, with the chief researcher calling it a “huge epidemic“.
The issue made it onto the campaign trail, with President-elect Donald Trump saying the construction of a wall along the Mexican border could curtail the problem—the Drug Enforcement Administration says almost four-fifths of the heroin it analyzed in 2014 came from the United States’ southern neighbor—and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposing a $10 billion plan focused on prevention and treatment.
The latter could become a major matter before the Trump administration. According to the Surgeon General’s report, just 1 in 10 people who develop a substance use disorder will seek treatment.
The Surgeon General’s report “Facing Addiction in America” can be accessed here.
