SUBSTANCE ABUSE PRICE TAG $40 BILLION

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, says a
new national report.

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 wakeup 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 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 20.7 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 called the direct and indirect costs staggering, and singled
out the impact on the health-care system in particular.

He said Canadians would probably be surprised to know that 20 per
cent of all acute care hospital days are the result of alcohol,
tobacco and 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," he said.

The centre says the report, based on data from 2002, is a more
detailed and accurate reading of the costs than the first one it
produced in 1996.

The 1996 report, based on 1992 data, put the total cost of abuse at
$18.5 billion a year.

The report says the impact of substance abuse was relatively uniform
across the country. The exception was the three northern territories
where the costs are higher than in the provinces.

The report did not explain the causes of substance abuse, but its
authors offered some analysis for the trends. Given Canada's growing
population, they said, it is not surprising the deaths associated
with abuse have risen.

They said, however, the rate of deaths from alcohol and illegal drug
use has outpaced the rate of population growth.