Pubdate: Thu, 01 Feb 2001
Source: Northwest Florida Daily News (FL)
Copyright: 2001 Northwest Florida Daily News
Contact:  http://www.nwfdailynews.com/

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT DRUG WAR'S COST

A new study on the impact of substance abuse - Florida alone spends $214.70 
per person in public funding, in one way or another, on the consequences of 
alcohol, drug and tobacco use - prompts mixed feelings.

It's hard to challenge the basic assumption behind the study: that the 
three substances in question exact a profound toll on society. But the 
study, by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance 
Abuse, tries to make too much of a case.

For one thing, a significant chunk of the public funding spent on substance 
abuse goes for prosecuting and incarcerating those who use or traffic in 
drugs. Of the $81.3 billion that all state governments spent on substance 
abuse's ill effects in 1998, fully $30.7 billion was consumed by prisons, 
juvenile justice and court costs. While some of that figure represents the 
cost of cracking down on drunken driving, clearly a lot of the same pool of 
money is a projection of the drug war.

In other words, to an extent, the government is spending tax dollars on a 
concern of its own creation. If it hadn't criminalized the use of some 
mood-altering substances by consenting adults - even as other mood-altering 
substances, such as alcohol, remain perfectly legal - the public wouldn't 
have to shoulder the enormous cost of busting and jailing those involved in 
drugs.

The drug war aside, there's a more philosophical reason to second-guess the 
study's findings. The study makes such sweeping connections between 
substance abuse and social woes that, using the same logic, all sorts of 
activities could be blamed for the same kinds of wide-ranging ills.

For example, to estimate substance abuse's costs to public education, 
research-ers considered the expenses caused by all abusers. That includes 
mothers who drink while pregnant and have children with fetal alcohol 
syndrome, thereby raising the costs of special education, or students who 
use drugs, leading to drug testing and drug-related violence that, in turn, 
might require more spending on security. And so forth.

OK, but what about driving? Don't cars foul the air, causing respiratory 
ailments, drawing down health care resources? That's to say nothing of the 
ripple effects of car accidents - on survivors, on health care, on 
insurance premiums, which all of us pay. Or what about eating fatty foods - 
and the attendant cost in cardiovascular care? Don't such activities 
warrant comparable concern?

Which isn't to dismiss the troubling social impact of substance abuse.

But the hazard in trying to nickel-and-dime every side-effect of something 
like substance abuse is that such an approach too often winds up as a 
premise for more government intervention, whether through restrictive laws 
- - a failure, as the drug war shows - or through more subsidies, such as 
tax-funded treatment programs.

With freedom comes responsibility: Each must confront his own addictions 
without leaning on taxpayers, and without being leaned on by the law.
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