Policy Recommendation: An Agenda to Combat Substance Abuse

This paper examines the reasons to be pessimistic and optimistic about the nation's substance use problem, and then it provides a workable agenda for solving the problem. 

Key points from the report include:

• More than 550,000 (27 percent) of the 2,420,000 deaths that occur in the United States each year are from substance use. There are 440,000 annual deaths from tobacco, more than eight million people are disabled with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other tobacco-related illnesses. There are 100,000 annual deaths from alcohol use. There are 20,000 yearly deaths from the use of illicit drugs
• Rates of one-year remissions vary from 5 percent to 20 percent for smoking and from 40 percent to 60 percent for alcoholism and drug use.

This document is available at www.rwjf.org/publichealth/product.jsp?id=14983.