Drugs a $1 billion monkey on D.C. taxpayers’ back

Published June 7, 2009 4:00am ET



Drug use in the nation’s capital will eat up nearly $1 billion — almost one out of every five D.C. taxpayer dollars — in the coming fiscal year, based on information from a new study.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse lumped together all costs associated with drug use in 2005 to determine how much federal, state and local governments were spending. Expenses ranged from health care for smoking-related diseases to incarceration for drug dealers to recovery programs for alcohol and prescription drug addictions.

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