Social and Economic Impact of Drugs
The use of some substances to produce pleasant effects on the brain is referred to as drug misuse or substance abuse. There are approximately 190 million drug users worldwide, and the problem is growing at an alarming rate, particularly among young individuals under the age of 30. Aside from the long-term health consequences of drug misuse, needle users are at risk of obtaining HIV and hepatitis B and C infections.
Drug misuse may be found in people of all ages and from all walks of life and socioeconomic backgrounds. However, men are more likely than women to take drugs, single persons are more likely than married people, and city inhabitants are more likely than rural ones. Drug usage is also more common among prisoners, street children, and younger people.
Reasons for Drug Use includes curiosity and peer pressure, particularly among students and young adults. The usage of prescription medications designed to treat pain may have evolved into recreational use and become addicted. Chemicals may be employed in religious ceremonies or practices. Other reasons may include recreation purposes or for creative inspiration.
Social Impact of Drug Use
Drug abuse not only endangers an individual’s health but also causes social difficulties. Alcohol and drug misuse burden families and deplete national resources.
Families suffer as a result of cultural and social factors associated with drug use, such as their understanding of the disease process and the addict’s behaviour as a result of drug abuse, draining of family resources, shrinking from responsibilities, sickness and death as a result of drug abuse, extramarital relations, distortion of interpersonal family relationships, and violence. Denial, blame, suppressed anger, melancholy, bargaining, obsession, personality change, and codependency are all common family reactions to drug addiction.
According to studies, drug misuse leads to poverty and family collapse. Weekly medication spending was $13, with total expenditure ranging between the US $250 and $25,000, according to an Indian survey. Poverty is commonly passed down from parents to children in drug-affected homes. A drug-dependent family member died as a result of drug addiction in 14% of households.
Women abusers are on the rise in South Asian nations, accounting for up to 17% of all lifetime abusers. According to reports, a sizable proportion of female drug addicts are divorced, separated, or widowed (India and Sri Lanka). Women abusers are more stigmatised in society than males, and they suffer considerably when a family member consumes drugs. Women’s treatment facilities are few, stigmatising, and unsuitable for their requirements.
Evidence also confirms the link between drugs and criminality. Crimes include drug dealing, petty theft, and driving under the influence of alcohol. Drug addiction had an impact on jobs; over three-fourths of addicts were unable to work, and students were unable to attend classes. Drug addiction was cited as the basis for roughly half of all employment changes. In terms of employer response, three-fourths sympathised and counselled; 11% of abusers’ employment was terminated, and 8% of companies tolerated the employee’s drug misuse problem. Drug misuse has a massive and diverse socioeconomic impact.
Economic Impact of Drug Use
Advantages
While the perceived benefits of drug usage are fleeting and swiftly outweighed by significant health and financial cost to society, there are undoubtedly substantial earnings for providers and traffickers of illegal narcotics. This is demonstrated by suppliers’ and traffickers’ willingness to operate in illegal marketplaces. However, producer and trafficking nations tend to pay heavy social and political costs for short-term economic advantages. The majority of the wealth created by medicine sales is retained in the consumer nations, implying that the majority of earnings are made and reinvested in the industrialised countries. The illicit drug industry’s distribution stage generates more than half of the value added (gross profit) of cocaine and heroin.
Many of the ostensibly favourable economic benefits of illicit drug manufacture and trafficking are not as helpful to the countries involved as they appear on the surface. Several producing nations have begun to suffer from what is known as Dutch disease, which causes stagnation or even contraction in non-drug-related industries, increasing their economies’ reliance on a single illicit product. Drug traffickers appear at irregular intervals to acquire farmers’ illicit drug harvests, causing boom and bust in local economies, particularly in places or nations where no vertically integrated illicit drug economy has been formed or is beginning to emerge.
Costs
Drug usage is most common among young individuals aged 15 to 35, with a specific concentration among those aged 18 to 25. As a result, it covers people who have recently entered or are going to enter the labour force. Given many nations’ high unemployment rates, entrance into the labour force is frequently a big issue. Consumption of illicit substances reduces one’s chances of entering or remaining in the labour field, while frustration caused by an inability to find a suitable job encourages drug usage, creating a vicious cycle. In both industrialised and developing nations, there is frequently a high association between unemployment and drug use.
The connections between low productivity, accidents, and drug use are widely recognised. Employee drug abusers incur enormous additional costs on the business sector, lowering its competitiveness. Regardless of their current level of development, nations will struggle to improve if they must rely on a workforce that is weakened by widespread drug misuse. The influence of drugs on productivity is determined by the type and quantity of drugs used, as well as the work performance requirements. Drugs have a greater impact on jobs that demand higher-level of judgement, continual attention, quick memory, and fine motor abilities than physical labour.
The more developed a society and the more skilled occupations it has, the more prone it is to drug usage and the higher the societal cost.
Other important cost categories were the value of drug law enforcement and legal expenditures (9%), jail costs (5%), and government prevention, care, and rehabilitation costs, which included treatment of individuals with drug-related HIV or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) (2 per cent). The costs of early mortality lost wages, and lower productivity was not factored into these figures. According to estimates of 130,000 to 150,000 heavy abusers, the average yearly cost to society per addict was therefore over £13,000, or around $23,100.
It will involve a significant cultural shift in how we think about, talk about, look at, and act toward people with substance use disorders. Negative attitudes and ways of talking about substance abuse and substance use disorders can become entrenched, but social attitudes can be changed.
Once we develop a positive attitude towards people struggling with substance abuse disorders. We would be able to help them in better ways that will help them in rehabilitation as well.
Author : Katyayani Kaushik
References :
- How Illicit Drug Use Affects Business and the Economy — obamawhitehouse.archives.gov
- The Social Impact of Drug Abuse on Community Life — ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
- UNDCP, The Social Impact of Drug Abuse, Position paper for the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 6–12 March 1995)
- Economic Consequences of Drug Abuse—incb.org/
- Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking — unodc.org
- Economic Effects of Alcohol and Drugs — https://www.stepstorecovery.com/