News / Education
Drug Abuse In Baby Boomers Rising
Risk to Health Care System
The report entitled An Examination of Trends in Illicit Drug Use among Adults Aged 50 to 59 in the United States is the first in a series of new scientific reports being published periodically by SAMHSA, highlighting the problem of drug addiction in America.
“These findings show that many in the Woodstock generation continue to use illicit drugs as they age,” said SAMHSA Acting Administrator Eric Broderick, D.D.S., M.P.H. “This continued use poses medical risks to these individuals and is likely to put further strains on the nation’s health care system -- highlighting the value of preventing drug use from ever starting.”
The cost to the nation’s health system represents a clear problem to the efforts to salvage the nation’s ailing health care system. The federal government spent $238.2 billion (9.6 percent of its budget) on substance abuse and addiction. If drug abuse and addiction were its own budget category at the federal level, it would rank sixth, behind social security, national defense, income security, Medicare and other health programs including the federal share of Medicaid.
Victor Capoccia, director of the Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap initiative:
"Addiction treatment has an unforeseen benefit of making health reform more affordable, When addictions go untreated, a person's medical care is fragmented, inefficient and ultimately, more costly. There is tremendous momentum now to reform the nation's health care system, and including addiction treatment is a win-win for the nation. Access to effective treatment will help Americans live longer and healthier lives, and it will save billions of dollars over a decade's time compared with the cost of not treating persons at all."This is especially important for the baby boomer generation; the generation represents the coming burden on the health care system. This generation is approaching the time when health care costs rise due to age. Providing drug treatment to this generation will help control the future cost to the new health care system.
Narconon of Georgia provides cost effective drug rehabilitation and addiction treatment programs. Narconon is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the best possible drug treatment and to delivering drug education to prevent the cause of addiction before it begins.
