What Drug Abuse Costs Business
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The Department of Health and Human Services report that teenage drug use
is up from 5.3 percent in 1992 to 11 percent now has rekindled a question:
how much impact does drug use have on business?
- A study by Dorothy Rice of the University of California in San Francisco
concludes that drug abuse costs companies $44 billion each year -- based
on absent days, premature deaths and insurance and health care costs.
- Billions of dollars more are siphoned off from the legitimate economy
by the underground economy that has sprung up to service the drug trade.
One businessman, a Maryland contractor, reports that his insurance premiums
dropped from $25,000 a year to cover 60 employees, to $120,000 after he
implemented a drug-testing program. He considers the $10,000 more he spends
each year for drug screening and drug counseling money well-spent.
Source: Perspective, "Just Say No," Investor's Business Daily,
August 30, 1996.
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