SUBSTANCE ABUSE COSTING ECONOMY ABOUT $40-BILLION A YEAR, NEW STUDY FINDS

OTTAWA - The abuse of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs costs the
Canadian economy almost $40-billion a year, a whopping tab that boils
down to $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
officer, 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 coast to coast
to coast."

The report says two legal substances -- tobacco and alcohol --
account for 80% of the $39.8-billion toll. However, the report says a
dramatic increase in illegal drug use is cause for special concern.
It says there was more than a doubling of drug-related deaths between
1992 and 2002, largely because of overdoses and the spread of
previously unmeasured hepatitis C.

Tobacco accounted for about $17-billion, or 42%, of the total
estimate; alcohol for $14.6-billion, or 36.6%; and illegal drugs for
about $8.2-billion, or 20.7%. The centre says the report, based on
data from 2002, is a more detailed and accurate reading of the costs
than the 1996 report, which put the total cost of abuse at $18.5-billion a year.