This report, published by the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being and funded by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Block Grant, details the financial burden of substance abuse on the health care system. According to the report, $116 million of the health care budget was spent on substance abuse treatment in 2007 and that figure is projected to increase to $201 million by 2010.

From the report:

This report uses a mix of methodologies from two previous studies that have attempted to estimate the cost of drug and alcohol use. The first, “Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets,” was released by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in 2001, and was recently updated in 2009. The second study, titled “Integrated Funding Analysis of Mental Health and Substance Use in West Virginia,” was released by the Public Consulting Group (PCG) in 2007. However, the present study makes some unique contributions to the two reports. First, it provides more recent estimates of the cost of drug and alcohol use to the state. Second, it provides cost trends over the past 8 years and, based on those trends, makes projections for costs in year 2017. Unless otherwise noted, linear trend was assumed for these projections. Third, this report includes certain sectors that are impacted by drugs and alcohol use but were excluded from one or both of the previous two reports. Finally, this report was initiated with the intent of producing annual updates; consequently, only data that are available annually were used.

Full report: The Financial Burden of Substance Abuse in West Virginia (PDF | 3.92 MB)

The West Virginia Partnership to Promote Well-being. (2009). The financial burden of substance abuse in West Virginia: the healthcare system. Shobo, Y., Coombs, W. & Whisman, A.