...
By Jasmine Laws
Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
A new study has found that substance use disorders (SUD) cost the U.S. economy just under $93 billion in 2023 from a combination of missed work, reduced work productivity and lost household productivity.
The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on December 8, was conducted by a team at the Division of Injury Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Public health strategies addressing the prevalence of SUD and reducing lost productive time have the potential to reduce these losses and offer cost savings for the U.S. economy," the study authors wrote.
Read More
Why It Matters
Drug addiction is recognized as a substance use disorder, a complex condition characterized by an individual's uncontrollable use of a substance despite its harmful consequences, although SUDs are not specific to drug use and can also include a patient's relationship with alcohol, tobacco and even medications.
In recent years, the U.S. has seen an ongoing substance abuse crisis. While drug overdose deaths fell sharply in 2024, with the steepest year-over-year decline in five years, there is still a high prevalence of SUDs in the country.
According to a 2023 report by the federal agency Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and above have a substance use disorder. This equates to just over 17 percent of the population. Among those with SUDs, just over 27 million had a drug addiction specifically.
...
What To Know
To gather their results, the CDC researchers used national survey data primarily from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and analyzed adults 18 years of age or older with SUDs.
The study found that the morbidity-related productivity loss attributable to SUD among U.S. adults was estimated to be $92.65 billion in 2023, and it was higher among males than females as of the total cost, with males accounting for $61.19 billion and females accounting for $31.45 billion.
The cost of Americans' inability to work as a result of SUDs was $45.25 billion, while absenteeism because of SUDs cost $25.65 billion.
Presenteeism—where employees continue to work despite being sick or unwell, reducing the productivity of their work—cost $12.06 billion, and the cost of household productivity loss was $9.68 billion.
Ramesh Ghimire, an economist at the CDC and one of the authors of the study, told Newsweek: "The magnitude of presenteeism and household productivity losses was noteworthy—together, these were comparable to absenteeism."
He said that, given the findings, any "interventions aimed at improving workers' functioning, not just their attendance, could yield substantial economic benefits."
"Economic harms from substance use disorders extend well beyond medical expenses and are borne by families, employers, and individuals. Effective prevention and treatment interventions have the potential to generate substantial cost savings for the U.S. economy," Ghimire added.
SUD-related absenteeism days were highest among adults aged 18 to 25 years, the study found, while presenteeism and sick days were highest among those aged 65 years or older.
The highest proportion of adults unable to work because of a substance use disorder was among those aged 50 to 64 years.
The population of people with SUDs is "large and diverse," Brendan Saloner, a professor of alcohol and addiction studies at Brown University, told Newsweek.
He said this means there are many who are "functional and able to fully contribute economically," but others find that substance use "limits their full economic potential because of the physical and mental health complications that often go with addiction."
"The numbers in this study help to quantify our general understanding of how debilitating substance use disorders are to our collective productivity," he added.
He said it was also important to note that the study provides insight into impacts among people who are alive, but "if you add in the value of lost lives the impact is way larger."
What People Are Saying
Brendan Saloner, a professor of alcohol and addiction studies at Brown University, told Newsweek: "We often think of the impact of substance use disorders in terms of someone showing up to work hung over, but that is only part of the story. The larger issue is that many people find that substance use has a long-term erosion of their economic capability, pushing them out of the labor market entirely. I want to be clear that this is not just about individual people and their choices, this also reflects choices that are made in our economy. Employers often discriminate against people in recovery, which can also keep people who might otherwise be productive out of the labor force."
Sean Murphy, professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine, told Newsweek: "Although $92.7 billion is a staggering figure, I am not at all surprised by this estimate. We have long known that insufficiently treated substance use disorders impose a large economic burden on society, including through reductions in productivity. And given that substance use disorders affect millions of working-age adults in the U.S., even relatively small individual losses accumulate quickly. To me, these findings further support the fact that substance use disorder is a chronic condition and must be treated as such."
He added: "Substance use disorders are known to impair an individual's ability to comprehend issues and concentrate on tasks, as well as their ability to make logical decisions; consequently, productivity can be negatively impacted through a number of channels, as the authors show. So in addition to the costs associated with inability to work and absenteeism, you have large losses due to presenteeism. Additional costs not accounted for by the authors would include those associated with increased rates of turnover."
What Happens Next
The study authors said the findings suggested that policy efforts to tackle the prevalence of SUDs could benefit the U.S. economy.
Saloner said, "We could be putting much more resources into supported employment programs, which work really well and are not being used as widely as they should be."
Update 12/9/25, 11:59 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comments from Ramesh Ghimire and Sean Murphy.
Update 12/11/25, 3:18 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with Brendan Saloner's new affiliation and to clarify his comments.
Update 12/12/25, 9:46 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a different affiliation for Sean Murphy.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines