Financial Consequences

• Costs to employers for their drug-using employees' absenteeism and reduced productivity, theft, and higher Workman's Compensation claims due to accidents and injuries.
• Costs to the law enforcement and criminal justice systems to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate drug users who commit crimes while under the influence or to obtain money for buying drugs, as well as those who traffic in drugs.
• Costs of legitimate businesses closing because they can’t compete with businesses using drug money to subsidize their operations.
• Costs of artificially inflated financial markets that have been infused with drug money abruptly crashing when governments intervene.
• Costs associated with corruption of public and business leaders.
• Political costs with financial ramifications, such as the national security costs incurred when the democracies and rule of law of our allies and neighboring countries are threatened by drug cartels.
• Costs of putting power and influence in criminals' hands.
• Costs to the health-care system of caring for drug users and those whom they injure.
• Costs to institutions, such as schools, that have to devote policies and processes and personnel to dealing with drug-using students.
• Costs to families who break up due to one or both parents’ addictions, or who have a drug-using child who needs intervention and treatment.
  

Less often do you find information about the financial cost to users of their own use, costs such as lost aptitudes and abilities and opportunities and, along with those, lost potential financial and other gain. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit think tank that seeks to improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis, and substance abuse is one of their research areas. They have studied groups of drug-using and non-using teenagers well into their adulthood and have posted on their site (www.rand.org/pubs/) a number of studies that include information on the costs to users of their own use. Some of those findings include:

Impact on jobs. "Adolescent drug use is linked with poorer occupational and job quality outcomes as much as 10 years after high school. Interestingly, which job-related outcomes are affected by early hard drug use varies by gender. Females who use hard drugs as adolescents end up in lower skill, lower status jobs, while males who use hard drugs as adolescents are more likely to end up in jobs with fewer benefits (e.g., health, retirement)." (From "High School Drug Use Predicts Job-Related Outcomes at Age 29," by Jeanne S. Ringel, Phyllis L. Ellickson and Rebecca L. Collins, published in Addictive Behaviors, volume 32, number 3, March 2007, p. [576]-589; RAND’s summary of the study is accessible at www.rand.org/pubs/library_reprints/LRP20070301/.)

Impact on life satisfaction, including socio-economic opportunities. "The present study investigated whether adolescent cigarette, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug use predicts life satisfaction in young adulthood. Survey data were used from a longitudinal cohort of 2,376 adolescents at ages 18 and 29, originally recruited from California and Oregon middle schools at age 13. Results…indicated that use of cigarettes and hard drugs at age 18 was associated with lower life satisfaction at age 29, controlling for adolescent environmental, social, and behavioral factors related to lower life satisfaction.... Results suggest that some forms of adolescent substance use limit socio-economic opportunities, and have a lasting effect on health, consequently decreasing life-satisfaction." (From "Are Adolescent Substance Users Less Satisfied With Life as Young Adults and If So, Why?" by Laura M. Bogart, Rebecca L. Collins, Phyllis L. Ellickson, and David J. Klein, published in Social Indicators Research, volume 81, number 1, March 2007, p. [149]-169; RAND’s summary of the study is accessible at www.rand.org/pubs/library_reprints/LRP20070304/ .)

Impact on life adjustment and functioning. A 1990 report by Jonathan Shedler and Jack Block ("Adolescent Drug Use and Psychological Health: A Longitudinal Inquiry," published in American Psychologist, volume 45 number 5, pp. 612-630) raised the possibility that "adolescents who experimented with marijuana were better adjusted emotionally and socially than their counterparts who avoided all drugs," a report that generated much discussion among professionals in the field of drug abuse prevention. Because Shedler and Block's study followed only 100 young people, all from the San Francisco Bay Area, RAND decided to revisit the question, "using a wealth of data on youthful substance abuse accumulated since 1985 by the RAND Adolescent/Young Adult Panel Study,... [containing]...responses from...more than 3,000 individuals who were originally recruited from 30 California and Oregon schools...represent[ing] a wide range of community types, socioeconomic status, and racial/ethnic composition." These young people were surveyed in grades 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 and again at ages 23 and 29.

The RAND study found that "Youth who stayed away from marijuana through their senior year of high school functioned better overall than did seniors who experimented with the drug. Compared with experimenters, abstainers had more parental support, devoted more time to homework, spent more time in extracurricular school activities, earned better grades, got into less trouble and were emotionally better off.... By the time they turn 23, those who had avoided marijuana in high school functioned better overall as young adults than those who had experimented with it in their youth. Compared with experimenters, abstainers were better educated, were happier with their friends, and were less involved in deviant behavior (stealing and drug selling).... Youth who experiment with marijuana are worse off in many respects than those who abstain throughout their teen years." (From the study by J. S. Tucker, P. L. Ellickson, R. L. Collins and D. J. Klein, "Are Drug Experimenters Better Adjusted Than Abstainers and Users?: A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Marijuana Use," published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, volume 39, number 4, 2006, pp.488-494. as described in a research brief that can be accessed via www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9265/.)

Impact on school attendance and its implications for long-term social and economic outcomes. Another study presented by RAND states that "Substance use initiation and frequency are associated with reduced educational attainments among adolescents." The researchers studied 1,084 American adolescents who had been in treatment for drug use and found that "reductions in the frequency of alcohol, stimulants and other drug use and the elimination of marijuana use were each associated independently with increased likelihoods of school attendance." They noted that "…Because years of completed schooling is highly correlated with long-term social and economic outcomes, the possibility that reductions in substance use may improve school attendance” should be taken into account when considering the cost-effectiveness of substance abuse treatment and other interventions. (From "Reducing Substance Use Improves Adolescents' School Attendance," by John Engberg and Andrew R. Morral, published in Addiction, volume 101, number 12, December 2006, p. [1741]-1751, which may be accessed via www.rand.org/pubs/library_reprints/LRP20070301/ .)

Impact on the overall welfare of young adults. RAND studied nearly 6,000 young people from age 13 to 29 for behavioral, socioeconomic and health outcomes at age 29. The young people were divided into five groups, including abstainers and four groups of marijuana users, grouped according to how old they were when they began using and how much they used. Researchers found that abstainers consistently had the most favorable outcomes, and the young people who used a lot of marijuana when they were young (13) had the worst outcomes despite the fact that they reduced their use as they got older. Their outcomes were worse even than those of the young people who steadily increased the amount of marijuana they used as they aged. (From “Marijuana Use From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: Multiple Developmental Trajectories and Their Associated Outcomes,” by Phyllis L. Ellickson, Steven Martino, and Rebecca L. Collins, published in Health Psychology, volume 23, number 2, May 2004, pp. 299-307; accessible via www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1192.