Adriana Belmonte
April 29, 2021, 9:29 AM
Substance use disorder (SUD) is a rapidly growing issue in America, and the costs of treatment is highest for alcohol-related abuse across America.
According to a recent study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), substance use disorder costs hospital systems upwards of $13 billion a year. The estimated costs for each substance group ranged from $4 million for inhalant-related disorders to $7.6 billion for alcohol-related disorders.
“It’s not surprising because alcohol is the most accessible of all the substances,” Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), told Yahoo Finance. “I can go one block from my house and when everything was closed, the liquor store was open in my neighborhood. It’s accessible in every single way. We’ve made alcohol drinking part of our social interaction, part of our everyday routine. We may drink a glass of wine with dinner. So that’s not surprising at all.”