Abstract
Background: The COI (cost of illness) methodology is the underlying principle of the methodologies which enumerate the drug-related economic social costs, as reflected by International Guidelines for Estimating the Costs of Substance Abuse adopted by WHO. Despite of the standards that should guarantee comparability of outcomes in time and space, up to date COI studies in national countries differ substantially in the range of costs included.
Methods: 25 studies estimating social costs of alcohol, tobacco or illicit drugs in 16 countries between the years 1992 and 2005 were reviewed in order to present comparative results. Items that lack comparability were identified and removed from the total sums.
The total cost assessed in each study was presented as a percentage of GDP. Results: Social costs of substance abuse were the following in: tobacco had averaged at 1,48 % of GDP, alcohol at 1,01 % of GDP and illicit drugs at 0,65 % of GDP in individual countries.
A comparison to preliminary results of the costs of substance abuse in the Czech Republic will be presented, same as the methodological challenges and implications for further COI studies. It is shown that illegal drugs in total represent a much lesser burden than legal drugs, as for the number of people using them, the impact on health – this all despite a great share of law enforcement cost.