The social cost of drugs in France in 2010

Abstract

The social cost of drugs is the monetary cost of both the consequences of their trade and their consumption. In this paper, drugs considered are tobacco and alcohol, which are legal, plus those that are illegal. The social cost is the sum of the external cost: value of loss in quality of life, value of years of life lost and value of loss in productivity, plus public expenditure. Public expenditure consists of public spending on medical care, prevention, and law enforcement, minus savings from unpaid pensions and taxes levied on tobacco and alcohol. The parameters for the calculations have used the recommendations of a French governmental working group (2013) Quinet, L'évaluation socioéconomique des investissements publics [Internet], Centre d'Analyse Stratégique, 2013, http://www.strategie.gouv.fr/sites/strategie.gouv.fr/files/archives/CGSP_Evaluation_socioeconomique_17092013.pdf , and the health data were derived from the scientific literature. The social costs are €122 billion for tobacco, €118 billion for alcohol, and €8.7 billion for illegal drugs. The largest fraction of the costs (53, 56, and 31 %, respectively) derives from the number of deaths, 79,000 for tobacco, 49,000 for alcohol, and 1600 for illegal drugs, given the high cost of a year of life lost (€115,000). The external cost corresponds to 86, 97, and 68 % of the social cost, respectively, for tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs. The annual drug-related net expenditure represents €13.9, €3.0, and €2.3 billion, respectively, for tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs. The tax revenues on tobacco and alcohol, €10.4 and €3.2 billion, represent less than half of the corresponding healthcare costs, which are €25.9 and €7.7 billion.

Capturing the Invisible Wealth in Nonprofits to Overcome Myopic Perceptions

“…The different types of social costs caused by illegal drug use have been appropriately identified and classified (into direct, indirect and intangible costs) in numerous studies [24,29,31]. While it is certainly true that this classification is not entirely free of the problems associated with identifying and measuring the different cost items, the social cost elements that are presented in Table 1 are generally accepted.…”

“…Given the magnitude of the problem, the agent that bears the main responsibility for coordinating and implementing policies and tackling the social costs of drug addiction is the State [24], though it delegates many activities to organizations in the third sector. These organizations are the main providers of drug treatment programmes, after the public sector [25].…”

“…As such, the study of the macroeconomic impact of addiction, primarily drug use, constitutes a well-established line of research, with numerous studies addressing the issue through the cost-of-illness (COI) methodology [23]. The fundamental goal of COI studies is to evaluate the economic burden that disease imposes on society as a whole [23,24,[26][27][28][29]. When carrying out COI studies, researchers need to recognize, identify, list, measure and value the costs that a particular disease can generate [30].…”

“…The indirect costs are those related to the loss of production or productive time associated with the presence of a disease. Last but not least, intangible costs refer to non-financial welfare losses such as reduced health-related quality of life due to physical or emotional suffering [24,27,29]. These costs are extremely complex to quantify because they rarely leave documentary evidence; they are "invisible" [11,31].…”

“…For example, [23] analyse the costs arising from drug addiction examined in 11 studies of European Union countries, and none of them estimates the intangible costs. On the other hand, there are studies, albeit fewer, that incorporate these costs into the analysis, with a careful explanation of the methodology used [24,28].…”