Societal Cost of Meth Use Is Gauged in New Study

[groovedaddy]

In the first effort to calculate the national price of methamphetamine abuse, a new study said the addictive stimulant imposed costs of $23.4 billion in 2005. While the authors, from the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., caution that many impacts were difficult to quantify, their study suggests that methamphetamine takes an economic toll nearly as great as heroin and possibly more.

Methamphetamine was named the primary cause of some 900 deaths in 2005, and the report estimates that premature mortality alone cost $4 billion. Its abuse has spread from Hawaii and rural areas of the West and South since the 1990s, slowly expanding to the Midwest and the East. In the process, it has wreaked havoc on addicts’ physical and mental health and on their families.

Federal surveys suggest that the share of Americans using the drug in a given year has stabilized, at about 1 percent of the population over age 12, which is far higher than the rate for heroin but half the rate for cocaine. About 400,000 Americans are believed to be addicted to methamphetamine, but a rising number are smoking it rather than taking it orally or snorting it. Smoking brings a faster, jolting high, quicker addiction and more ill effects.

The study is part of a project at RAND to evaluate the costs of drug addiction, financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and directed by Rosalie L. Pacula, co-director of the Drug Policy Research Center at RAND.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/05meth.html?th&emc=th

[ZombieHorde]

1. I wonder how much of that money is because of prisons. nt

[montanto]

2. I know a guy who

died from meth and another gal who almost did. Meth is nothing but Bad News.