Substance Use Disorder Disorders (SUDs) are a bigger problem than cancer and diabetes.
Yet, we use less resources to treat the issue of addiction in the United States.
On November 17th, the Surgeon General released a new report on the problem addiction, and urged for more awareness and action to be taken against the prevalance of substance use disorder.
As we know, the disease of addiction certainly doesn’t discriminate. You can be rich or poor, male or female, with or without additional illnesses that predispose addiction (as is treated with dual diagnosis). It is with exposure alone that an addict becomes addicted, not a negative character trait. And exposure to drugs like opioids, specifically, are especially dangerous, and highly addictive.
We don’t spend enough energy on treating substance use disorder. 20.8 million people in our country battle SUD, and “[t]his is similar to the number of people who have diabetes, and 1.5 times the number of people who have all cancers combined.”
Recognizing and spreading awareness that drug use is a disease, and not a personal flaw, is crucial to treating the epidemic of substance use disorder in our country.
What is the impact of SUDs, economically? The U.S. spends “$420 billion a year in the form of health care costs, lost economic productivity, and cost to the criminal justice system.” Overall, alcoholism and alcohol abuse causes the most deaths, and costs the most.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy states, “[t]he problem that we have right now is that we’re not implementing any of these evidence based interventions.”
That brings us to yet another important question, why do programs like DARE fail? How can we provide improved drug resistance education for future generations, who may be fighting the drug epidemics we face now, to an even greater degree? That’s the next important step.
