COST OF DRUG ABUSE PUT AT $40 BILLION

Fallout Affects Every Canadian, Researcher Says

The abuse of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs costs the Canadian
economy $40 billion a year, or $1,276 for every man, woman and child
in the country, a new report says.

The study, being released today by the Canadian Centre on Substance
Abuse, says the cost is up significantly from the last comprehensive
review in 1996, and should be cause for concern.

"It's a wake-up call for all of us to rethink how it is we should
address this problem," Michel Perron, the centre's chief executive,
said in an interview.

"While this is an accounting exercise in a sense of quantifying these
costs, I think we all know that substance abuse really does affect
every Canadian from to coast to coast to coast."

The report says two legal substances -- tobacco followed by alcohol
- -- account for 80 per cent of the $39.8-billion toll that substance
abuse is taking on the economy.

However, the report says a dramatic increase in illegal drug abuse,
which ranks third, is cause for special concern. It says there was
more than a doubling of drug-related deaths between 1992 and 2002,
largely because of drug overdoses and the spread of previously
unmeasured hepatitis C.

Tobacco accounted for about $17 billion, or 42 per cent of the total
estimate, alcohol accounted for $14.6 billion, or 36.6 per cent, and
illegal drugs for about $8.2 billion, or 20 per cent.

The report measured the impact of substance abuse on the health-care
system and the criminal justice system. It also weighed the indirect
impact on productivity as a result of premature death and ill health.

Using a different breakout, the report traced $24.3 billion to lost
productivity because of death or illness, $8.8 billion to health-care
costs, and $5.4 billion to law enforcement costs.

Perron said Canadians would probably be surprised to know that 20 per
cent of all acute-care hospital days are the result of alcohol,
tobacco or illegal drug use. "This is an enormous factor which
impacts wait times, and which has to be reduced to ultimately reduce
the strain on our health-care system."