Social Issues
Explainers on social issues surrounding addiction, covering harm reduction, families affected by substance use, legal rights, prisons, health care costs, and public policy.
Adult Children of Alcoholics and Addicts: Haven’s Story
As we focus on adults in recovery from addiction, we often overlook the needs of their children. In many cases they have to find their own way.
At a glance
- Social issues in addiction include family strain, stigma, legal problems, health risks, and community costs.
- Harm reduction approaches aim to lower overdose, infection, and injury risks, even when abstinence is not immediate.
- Children and families may face neglect, trauma, financial stress, and caregiving roles when addiction is untreated.
- Treatment and support, including counseling, medication, peer support, and legal protections, can help recovery.
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OverviewSocial Issues OverviewAlthough the costs of addiction or substance abuse are seen most clearly at the individual or familial level – substance abuse and addiction create significant challenges in our communities too. Everyone is affected by substance abuse, and the costs of addiction (health care costs, policing or incarceration costs, addiction treatment costs, decreased worker productivity, ineffective parenting etc.) are shared by all tax payers and citizens. Substance abuse is everyone’s problem and reducing the burden of addiction in our communities is in everyone’s best interest!
Although the costs of addiction or substance abuse are seen most clearly at the individual or familial level – substance abuse and addiction create significant challenges in our communities too. Everyone is affected by substance abuse, and the costs of addiction (health care costs, policing or incarceration costs, addiction treatment costs, decreased worker productivity, ineffective parenting etc.) are shared by all tax payers and citizens. Substance abuse is everyone’s problem and reducing the burden of addiction in our communities is in everyone’s best interest!
While there’s no doubt that substance abuse and addiction harms the individual and those closest to her most deeply, those that abuse drugs and alcohol also exist in larger society and so the costs of addiction and abuse extend also to larger society.
Substance abuse and addiction cost American tax payers roughly a half trillion dollars a year.
Addiction leads to poor health and corresponding health care costs – to desperation and the crime that accompanies an overwhelming need to use and to an enormous prison population, with most of those behind bars incarcerated for crimes committed while intoxicated or for drug possession or distribution.
Few families live untouched by addiction directly, but even those that never know the heartache of substance abuse close to home pay the price for addiction through its much larger social costs.
Addiction and substance abuse affect everyone.
Society and Addiction
Some of the many ways addiction affects society include:
- Increased health care costs
- Reduced productivity
- Greater incidences of on-the-job accidents
- Increased social welfare costs
- Incarceration
- Drug violence
- Organized crime
- Petty crime to fuel a drug habit
- Impaired driving
- Children born with physical or brain damage to mothers who used drugs or alcohol while pregnant
- Increased transmission of HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and other infections diseases – transmission through the sharing of needles or pipes or through risky sexual activity
- Overdose death
- Ineffective or absent parenting
- Family breakup
- School drop out
- Many more
A Few Statistics
While numbers can’t tell the human story of alcoholism and addiction, they do speak somewhat to its devastating social costs.
- Underage drinking costs America more than 61 billion dollars per year. These costs include health care, legal and quality of life costs. 1
- Since 1985, there has been an alarming increase in the number of incarcerated Americans. In federal prisons, 80% of this increase are those incarcerated for drug offences
- Drug and alcohol abuse costs the American economy between 400 and 500 billion dollars per year
- The health care costs for those that abuse alcohol are roughly twice the costs of non abusers
- 1 in 4 deaths in American can be linked to alcohol, tobacco or drug use2
- Of the almost half a trillion dollars federal state and municipal governments spend because of substance abuse, only about 2% of that money goes to treatment or prevention! 3
Articles (14)
Children Living with Addicted Parents – Spotting Neglect and Knowing When to Intervene
Children living with drug or alcohol addicted parents may experience neglect and endangerment. Here are 13 situations that warrant outside intervention.
The Importance of Harm Reduction Programs: Why Abstinence-Only Programs Aren’t Enough
Some drug users are willing to get help but aren't ready to quit at this moment. Recognizing this, harm reduction programs exist to minimize the health, economic and social costs of drug use at the personal and community levels.
When Addiction Counselors Relapse: Overcoming Professional Obstacles to Recovery
Substance abuse counselors are supposed to take a whole year off after relapse. Don't these people also need to eat and pay bills? Here's a different approach to getting treatment and getting better - without losing everything.
Medical Marijuana; the Facts
Is marijuana good or bad, and if it offers so much to people with cancer, AIDS and multiple sclerosis...why does it remain illegal? Learn the facts, the benefits and the risks, and learn why medical marijuana faces some significant challenges to acceptance and legality.
Drugs and Prisons
The number of Americans imprisoned on drug offenses, the cost of keeping them within the corrections system and the racial disparity of this offender population.
Marijuana Amotivational Syndrome?
Does it exist? Learn about marijuana amotivational syndrome; the truth, the facts and the hearsay.
Marijuana Caused Infertility
Marijuana, smoked by either a man or a woman, reduces the chances of a successful conception.
Addiction – A Brain Disease, Not a Moral Failing
As much as some would like to call those with addiction weak willed or immoral, the truth of it is that addiction is simply a treatable brain disease.
Binge Drinking: Health and Societal Costs
Binge drinking is bad for you and bad us. When you binge drink you put yourself at an increased risk of accidents, trauma and assault, and when you binge drink regularly your risks for a host of chronic disease go up substantially; but binge drinking affects more than the individual alone, at the societal level, binge drinking costs Americans well over $100 billion dollars per year.
Infectious Disease Risks Associated with Drug Use and Abuse
Unfortunately, the damage done through drug abuse far exceeds the sometimes substantial destruction of the drug alone, and can also include infectious diseases and other health risks. Don't risk your health and happiness for a few hours of dwindling pleasure; get help and get better today.
Alcohol Policies and Laws to Reduce Alcohol-Related Harms – Which Programs Work and Which Programs Don’t
Although a legal substance, a lot of legislation regulates how we can buy, sell and consume alcohol – and this is understandable, since alcohol misuse costs Americans an estimated $223.5 billion per year. Find out what types of alcohol polices actually work well to reduce the harms of excessive alcohol use and which ones – though they may sound good – do not work very well at all.
Your Legal Rights To Confidential Drug Treatment
You have a legal right to confidential treatment, and you cannot be discriminated against on the job, in the housing market, or for access to any governmental programs. Find out what your rights are, and get help today.
Addiction and Health Care Costs
Why cuts to addiction treatment funding may not save money in the short, medium or long term - Uncovering the hidden long term health care costs of untreated addiction.
American DUI – The Ugly Truths
Although drunk driving isn’t as common as it was 20 years ago, well over 10 000 Americans are still killed every year in alcohol involved traffic accidents, and if you’re driving around after midnight on a Friday night, then about 5% of those driving around you are over the legal limit. In all, drunk drivers take 159 million perilous and sometimes tragic driving trips in America each year.